It came down to a war of attrition and the Hornets delivered the last sting.
The Charlotte Hornets and the Dallas Mavericks gave basketball enthusiasts a highly competitive game with their nip and tuck Martin Luther King Jr. Day matinee in the ‘Queen City’. The heart-stopping back-and-forth affair was tight throughout with the Hornets eventually coming out on top, 110-105, extending their winning streak to three straight and four of their last five.
The first half belonged to LaMelo Ball.
Charlotte’s superstar point guard and franchise player was in total take over mode in the opening 24 minutes, putting up an efficient 20 points on 13 shots with four dimes and a single turnover. Ball was feeling it from the perimeter, swishing 3-pointer after 3-pointer that only a select group of guards in the NBA could even dream of.
Mavericks’ coach and NBA Hall of Famer Jason Kidd compared Ball’s three-point shooting prowess to all-time greats Steph Curry of the Golden State Warriors and Milwaukee Bucks Damian Lillard prior to tipoff, and Ball lived up to the pre-game praise from the jump.
Daniel Gafford led the way for Dallas for the lion’s share of the afternoon. His counterpart, Mark Williams, has been the talk of the Hornets for much of the past few weeks due to his dominant form since his return, but Gafford took him to school and gave him the business.
In a hard fought fourth quarter, Williams, Miles Bridges, and Nick Smith Jr. led the way. The trio scored 19 of the team’s first 25 points as the Hornets erased the one-point deficit they faced going into the frame.
The victory is Charlotte’s third win in a row, as their January hot streak rolls on. The Hornets are now 4-3 in the month with a nine-game home stand on the horizon so they can look forward to some home cooking, following a brief one-game road trip to Memphis.
Smith Jr. saw a dramatic uptick in his responsibilities with the Hornets when the calendar flipped to 2025, and his fellow back court mates continued to miss time due to injuries. That increase in his role came with a rise in production.
Smith Jr. poured in a season-high 19 points against the Mavericks and delivered clutch buckets and assists as the clock wound down in the fourth quarter. With Brandon Miller set to miss an extended period, Smith Jr. should continue to see more minutes in first-year coach Charles Lee’s rotation as he continues to make his case as a long-term piece in Charlotte.
As mentioned above, just when the Hornets were starting to feel some cohesiveness and had their entire starting five healthy, one of their biggest stars, Miller, went down with a wrist injury that could potentially keep him on the shelf for the remainder of the 2024-25 campaign. Miller suffered a torn scapholunate ligament in his right wrist with no clear timetable for his return. For the time being, the Hornets are saying he is out indefinitely.
Williams saved his afternoon with a solid second half performance, but he spent the majority of the first 24 minutes of the contest either on the bench saddled with foul trouble or stuffed in the basket by Gafford. It was a humbling experience for the emerging big man who has been playing like he did in college in recent nights.
An uncharacteristically hot shooting day led Charlotte to the upset victory. The Mavericks controlled the paint, both outscoring Charlotte inside and drawing nearly twice as many fouls before garbage time, but the outside shooting was the great equalizer.
The Hornets buried 17 threes, their most since knocking down the same number against the Washington Wizards on December 26th.
Charlotte’s next game is on Wednesday night when they travel to Memphis to take on Ja Morant and the Grizzlies.
The Mavericks hosts Rudy Gobert and the Minnesota Timberwolves on Wednesday night.
