So is it the brand of the athlete or the brand of the team?

It's a great question.

We only have 30 minutes, right? So a couple of ways that this affects alumni.

You're speaking to the school spirit of it all, school pride.

Yeah.

It affects it in that we don't develop relationships with players the same way we used to.

I am one that thinks that matters a ton, especially in college athletics.

What's happening with Charlotte as it relates to the Hornets and other professional sports?

Yeah.

They kept doing it again in Jacksonville.

Trevor Lawrence was hitting Brenton Strange in the backup tight end, and every tight end was eating again.

Like, okay, this is happening once more.

And then against Houston, the more fascinating conversation as to how much we should worry about it in the now – What should we worry about it for the future is over there on the right side of the offensive line with your first round pick.

Yeah.

Reeling had a terrible day against two of the best edge rushers in the league.

If your offensive line is a big red flag like we think it's going to be for the Carolina Panthers, well, that also goes into how you talk about Bryce Young.

Oh

man.

I love this because it's so true.

We had a joke on the world famous text line about, Hey, we used to think that XL could be this deep threat as a first round receiver.

Now we're just happy when he knows how to stay in bounds.

Now we're just happy when he knows where to line up on the line of scrimmage, which isn't entirely false.

How does Dave Canales handle all of this? How does he handle it specifically with Jonathan Brooks? Okay.

But I'm just kind of curious, is there anything behind the scenes that maybe we're not picking up on because we're too busy tweeting about Xavier Leguette being inbounds?

So like, where, where do they, where do they sit now? Like, what's, what's, what's going on with this team?

Uh, well, y- you gotta start with the LaMelo Ball trade.

[laughs] Just...

Look, h- here's where I'll start.

I thought we were past the potential of moving on from LaMelo, and I think all of that felt true to us Hornets fans because you had, I don't wanna say reached the other side, but you had gotten to a play-in tournament appearance, or it felt stable, where w- what it felt like at this go, at, at this time, was all you had to do was add a few more ingredients, including LaMelo Ball, and then we would get to our first ever playoff appearance since the Hornets have come back, or, uh, outside of the 2015-16 playoff appearance.

But it's, it's, we haven't had very many around here.

So once we had gotten past LaMelo not being injured as much, he played 72 games last year, it just felt like, okay, now we finally get to see what he looks like with enough talent around him.

Okay

Is that part of the idea here?

Yeah, I think it's part of it, right? I mean, I think there's a lot of why you might want to move on from Lomelo.

I think health has to be towards the top of those reasons.

I think maybe you feel like you can be a better basketball team with all of these assets you collect, especially if you want to parlay those assets.

The trade exception, $41 million, biggest trade exception we've seen in NBA history.

It's a big chunk of change, man.

You can just absorb and legally circumvent the cap.

you speak to that

Charlotte? Like, why, why, w- what, what's the decision process behind he can't be the engine that drives this team, you know, to the next step?

Yeah.

Look, I think you look back at the three prior seasons to this last one, and you're seeing somebody that didn't get over 50 games.

47, 22 the year prior to that, 36 the year prior to that, and then you get to a spot where he was an All-Star after playing 70 games in a season.

Even got hurt his rookie year.

So you're talking about four years where he did suffer some kind of significant injury in three of those years, where he didn't pass the 50 game threshold.

I think a lot of it is health.

Uh, there was a fractured ankle in there, but I also know that there's some noise there with, with, uh, some of the, quote-unquote, "tanking" or the soft tanking over the last few years.

No, no.

I didn't know.

So it looks like the Hornets have been looking to upgrade at the center position.

I love Moussa Diabate and everything about him.

It's hard not to like him as a fan favorite.

Having won Hustle Player of the Year, he was fantastic this past season.

He does play defense, right? He's an amazing defender and getting better offensively.

Do you think the 18th pick is going to help you better or help you more this coming season than DeMontis Sabonis?

No, no, no.

I didn't know.

So it looks like the Hornets have been looking to upgrade at the center position.

I love Moussa Diabate and everything about him.

It's hard not to like him as a fan favorite, having won Hustle Player of the Year.

He was fantastic this past season.

He does play defense, right? He's an amazing defender and getting better offensively.

Do you think the 18th pick is going to help you better or help you more this coming season than Demonta Sabonis?

No, no.

I didn't know.

So it looks like the Hornets have been looking to upgrade at the center position.

I love Moussa Diabate and everything about him.

It's hard not to like him as a fan favorite.

Having won Hustle Player of the Year, he was fantastic this past season.

He does play defense, right? He's an amazing defender and getting better offensively.

Do you think the 18th pick is going to help you better or help you more this coming season than Demonta Sabonis?

What are you watching for when the Hornets are on offense, Walker?

taking care of the basketball specifically and specifically second half and then okay let's fine-tune it even more fourth quarter that that has been a real issue for this Hornets team all season long the turnovers have been an issue relatively throughout a lot of these games especially in the games recently against the best opponents but in the second half and in the fourth quarter man that's when they've lost some of these matchups you go back I'll go back to, I guess, the Knicks game that they won at the Spectrum Center before they then had a back-to-back loss against Philly and Boston following that.

Against the Knicks, there were about nine possessions in a row.

And then in six or seven of those nine possessions, they had a turnover in the fourth quarter.

Kobe White was excellent.

End of quarter, Kobe is a real thing.

And so the fact that he was able to take over a little bit, that staved the Knicks away from winning that ball game.

Walker, when Miami's on offense, what are you watching for?

Mayday, mayday.

What do they do if they actually get a good night's rest? Do they win by 60? Anyways, all right.

The Hornets, they beat the Celtics 118 to 89.

It's the Celtics' largest loss of the season, losing by 29.

Boston never led in this game.

It marks Boston's second wire-to-wire loss of the season.

It's the first since November 1st, okay? All the way back, November 1st against the Rockets.

They began the game with purpose, and that purpose was to destroy, was to annihilate, was to send a message to the rest of the NBA, and that message is the Hornets are here, they're here to stay, and there's nothing, there's not a single thing you can do about it."

it was just doubly embarrassing because it came on the heels of the Rockets not making any moves at the deadline and they're like we're happy with our team this is great and they just got like blasted by the Celtics the night before so it's like two brutal back-to-back losses and like you know on paper you know maybe the perception of the Hornets needs to you know be be adjusted because of how well they're playing this season but again on paper you're like it's Charlotte like that's supposed to be a win and then and then you get blown out and you're like what the hell happened in your eyes what was you know kind of the main reason for such a lopsided game uh the last time these two teams played

well and what's interesting is like the rockets we have them a lot around here uh we used to at least called fake comebacks where again you would bring it you kind of make it interesting and then you'd still end up losing by 10 that's what happened here like charles lee had to bring musa back in the game in the fourth quarter because Houston just got a little too close for comfort.

We tried to throw the white flag and our bench just couldn't keep enough distance from the Rockets.

And so Charles Lee did have to go right back to Musa Diabate to help him out.

So the Hornets have been a good free throw shooting team.

That's something that helped having the five-point advantage there from the three-point line.

But really, when I think about the Rockets, you think about...

What's the Hornets biggest weakness that the Rockets can try to exploit in this next matchup to get their get back and get some revenge for the previous loss?