Knicks 99, Hornets 98: “The ‘better team’ side of that equation”

A Friday noon game in Charlotte the day after Thanksgiving always felt like one the Knicks could lose. Especially as the shorthanded Hornets, missing three starters, led for so much of the contest. Especially after Josh Green ended the first half thusly.

For most of this one, the Knicks looked like they’d taken tryptophan gummies before tip-off. By halftime they were shooting poorly and had as many assists as turnovers — odd for a Knick team leading or nearly leading the league in that differential; odder still that they should struggle against a hollowed-out Hornets side whose only definable trait is sucking.

In the 1992 draft, two future Hall of Famers were available at the top of their class (the third, Christian Laettner, made the Hall too, for his collegiate feats). For a decade after that draft, the Hornets were .500 or better every year, a run that began with the selection of 1992’s second overall pick, Alonzo Mourning, and whose 10-year run closed featuring the second pick of that same draft’s second round in P.J. Brown. Been 20 seasons since a slight sojourn as the New Orleans Hornets saw the Hive return to Carolina. 80% of them have been losing seasons. Last time they won a playoff series was against Patrick Ewing’s Orlando Magic.

For much of their history, the Hornets have been shorthand for “dregs.” What’s the line every sportswriter goes to when imagining a brutal slog of a dog days run? “A Tuesday in March in Charlotte.” Do you know how bad you have to be for the mere mention of your name to provoke a lessening of expectations? A sense of futility?

Siberia is frigid, and has no LaMelo Ball highlights to dimly light the lamp of hope until he forces a trade somewhere bigger. North Carolina is warm. Wilmington has lovely beaches. Chapel Hill and Durham are holy sites in the religion of roundball. How badly must a warm-weather team nestled in one of hoops’ hotbeds suck to become synonymous with hopelessness? In theory, playing the Hornets seems the height of simplicity.

The reality of this game was closer to what you see in the clip below.

In the corner, Seth Curry gets a Cody Martin pick and dribbles left, looking like he wants to dish to the cutting Martin headed baseline. But Josh Hart has recovered to contest the pass and Karl-Anthony Towns is blitzing his rotation toward Martin, so Curry gets stuck making a jump pass out to KJ Simpson. If you don’t recognize that name, don’t feel bad: the rookie Simpson played more minutes today (16) than he had the entirety of his NBA career prior (15). Nick Smith Jr., who played a season-high 11 minutes, doesn’t slip setting a pick so much as he jukes it; as Simpson dribbles into a double-team, Smith Jr. is wide open, albeit a healthy distance behind the 3-point line. This is not a promising premise. This is quintessential Tuesday-in-March Charlotte. And yet, for 44 minutes, it was working.