The Charlotte Hornets finished in a play-in tournament spot during the 2021-22 season; it appeared as though things were on the come up for them, with rising stars LaMelo Ball and Miles Bridges leading the way. But the Hornets wanted to expedite their timeline of contention, so they brought in veteran head coach Steve Clifford, who had helmed the team from 2013-2018, so he could help fix the team’s 22nd ranked defense.
But over the past two seasons, one calamity after another has beset the Hornets franchise. Ball has endured a ton of injury problems, Bridges missed an entire season due to his legal troubles, and their best rim protector, Mark Williams, has been sidelined since mid-December. As a result, the Hornets have now become one of the worst teams in the NBA, ranking dead-last in the league in defensive rating in the aftermath of their 123-117 loss to the Toronto Raptors on Wednesday night.
As a result, Steve Clifford is now pointing the finger at himself for not fulfilling the Hornets’ expectation out of him to help make them a stouter defensive unit in a tell-all postgame interview.
“Let’s be honest. And it’s why I was brought here and to this point, I’ve failed miserably, we don’t care about defense all the time. We’re better than we were in some ways but we’re a sometimes team. Sometimes we run back, sometimes we don’t. Sometimes we care about guarding the ball, sometimes we don’t,” Clifford said, via Nick Carboni of WCNC Charlotte.
The Hornets’ lack of defensive stability has been made worse by the fact that they have been fielding a depleted team for most of the season. Moreover, they already aren’t the most stifling defenders in the world from a talent level, but they’re merely compounding matters by showing a lack of effort.
“When the ball starts going in the basket, a lot of times we don’t care about defense anymore. You’ll never win. […] You got to defend in the NBA. There’s never been a team, never, that’s been good, and had a playoff run, that hasn’t been good defensively. That’s a fact,” Clifford added.
At this point, it’s not like the Hornets’ defensive ineptitude is in Steve Clifford’s control. At some point, the Hornets players have to rally each other to put up more respectable efforts on the defensive end on a nightly basis so they can avoid getting their backsides handed to them every night.
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