The Charlotte Hornets, for the time being, are standing in the season with a score of 10-40 and are occupying the thirteenth position in the Eastern Conference. They recently lost to the Toronto Raptors with a concluding score of 117-123.
Steve Clifford, the veteran head coach, had joined the Hornets in 2022 and one of the areas the club wanted to strengthen was its offense. However, unfortunately, the area still lacks its velocity and the head coach has recently shared his opinions regarding that as well.
Steve Clifford calls out the Charlotte Hornets
“Let’s be honest. And it’s why I was brought here and I’ve failed miserably, we don’t care about defense all the time.”
(Via @NickCarboniWCNC) pic.twitter.com/cvaVRofM2K
— NBACentral (@TheDunkCentral) February 8, 2024
According to SI, Clifford stated, “I mean let’s be honest, it’s why I was brought here and to this point, I have failed pretty miserably is we don’t care enough 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. When the ball starts going in the basket, a lot of times we don’t care about defense anymore.”
“You’ll never win. You might win games, you might have a decent year but you’ll never win. You’ll never win a playoff series, you probably wouldn’t win a playoff game. Those are the teams that get to the end of the year and if they’re talented enough to get to a playoff series, they get their ass kicked.”
Here's the full quote from Cliff (and a lot more) https://t.co/sipFtV9ljO pic.twitter.com/N1jr5BPu8a
— Nick Carboni (@NickCarboniWCNC) February 8, 2024
He further continued, “You’ve got to defend in the NBA. There’s never been a team, never, that’s been good and had a playoff run that wasn’t good defensively. That’s fact. Now, there have been teams that have struggled offensively going all the way back and were really good on defense and won. That’s got to be a big, big part of what we do.”
“Last year, the one thing I felt good about was we had a stretch of 20 games after the All-Star break where we were second in defense. They bought in, we took it to the next level and for whatever reason, we have not gotten anywhere close to that this year. But we’ve got these four games left and then we can refresh a little bit and start again.”
Steve Clifford: “Let’s be honest. And it’s why I was brought here and I’ve failed miserably, we don’t care about defense all the time.” #hornets
— Nick Carboni (@NickCarboniWCNC) February 8, 2024
Clifford has been transparent in his assessment of the squad and his statements are supported by this season’s statistics. The head coach highlights what is going on and looks forward to the resting period so that the team can return with a more stable approach ahead of the rest of the season.
