The Charlotte Hornets are trying to salvage a victory from a disastrous road trip.
The New Orleans Pelicans are trying to salvage anything they can from a disastrous season.
The Hornets (35-42) are 0-3 on a road trip that concludes Wednesday night in New Orleans with Charlotte’s playoff hopes hanging by a thread. The Hornets started the road trip in ninth place in the Eastern Conference but have lost games against the Los Angeles Lakers, the Golden State Warriors and the Utah Jazz to fall behind Orlando and into 10th place.
The losing streak dropped Charlotte three games behind eighth-place Miami (38-39) for the final playoff spot in the conference with five games to play.
The 137-90 loss at Golden State on Sunday was Charlotte’s most lopsided loss of the season.
The Hornets played better Monday to conclude the back-to-back games, led by Kemba Walker’s 47 points, but still fell to the red-hot Jazz, 111-102. Walker had 22 of his points in the fourth quarter.
“I think our overall effort was much better,” Charlotte coach James Borrego said.
“I think the attention to detail is not there. That’s where we have to grow as a team. Especially from the start, you have to know coverages, you have to know what we’re in. That’s our next step. We’re playing a lot of young guys right now.”
The Hornets missed 20 of their first 21 shots from 3-point range and finished 7 of 30 from beyond the arc.
“When shots aren’t going down, you have to continue to defend, run,” Borrego said.
“We got good looks in the first half — they didn’t fall. You got to stick with it. You can’t hang your head. Keep playing, keep defending, not giving up transition points and continue to play hard. I think we had stretches where we were OK in that area, but not consistent enough for 48 minutes.”
The Pelicans (32-46) have long since been eliminated from playoff contention and have lost 10 of 12 after a 130-102 home loss to the Lakers on Sunday.
It’s unlikely that All-Star forward Anthony Davis will play again this season because of lower back spasms. Two other starters — Jrue Holiday and E’Twaun Moore — are among four other players sidelined.
New Orleans committed 24 turnovers that turned into 32 points for Los Angeles, which was playing without LeBron James and several other key players who are injured.
“It comes down to turnovers, just careless turnovers,” said Jahlil Okafor, who is starting in Davis’ place. “A lot of them were unforced — just mental lapses that we had.”
Former Laker Julius Randle scored 17 to lead New Orleans. Christian Wood added 15 points and 11 rebounds. Okafor scored 15, Solomon Hill had 14, Cheick Diallo had his ninth double-double with 12 points and 10 rebounds, and Ian Clark scored 11.
“The guys that we have on the floor, we’re all trying to make our way in this league,” Okafor said. “We have a lot of young guys playing like me, Christian Wood, (Kenrich Williams), we’re all still trying to figure it out. We’re just trying to finish the season out on a high note.”
The game against the Hornets is the second-to-last home game for New Orleans, which has a total of four games remaining.
“We just have to be better as a team,” Randle said. “Let’s move on to the next one. We got four more to continue to compete and get better and then head to the summer and get back to work. We’ll be all right.”