Kemba Walker missed last night’s Charlotte Hornets game with a knee cyst and might miss several more. This means the Hornets are now down their top two scorers for the forseeable future. That said, they still managed to muster enough offense to beat the Indiana Pacers in overtime at the low score of 80-71. It might mark how the Hornets will have to play the next stretch, by uglying up the game. The Pacers were more than happy to oblige.
The Hornets got strong rebounding efforts from forwards Bismack Biyombo and Michael Kidd-Gilchrist. Biyombo collected fourteen and Kidd-Gilchrist grabbed sixteen.
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The man who made the scoring difference was Gerald Henderson, which makes sense. Henderson scored thirty-one in a game not long ago, so the twenty that he laid down on the Pacers did not come from nowhere. The Hornets will need a dedicated scorer or two in the short term here.
That brings us to Lance Stephenson. Stephenson still played limited minutes, but contributed thirteen points and apparently got in the heads of his former teammates. The injury situation is a great opportunity for Stephenson. The knock on Stephenson is that he was not fitting into the Walker-Jefferson model. That model is out the window right now. If Lance wants to dominate the ball, no one is going to stop him if he produces.
Betsided
The injury to Walker may make it clearer to the guys upstairs that the season might be lost. The trading talk might get more intense. The Nets-Thunder deal that would have sent Stephenson away for Jeremy Lamb and Jarrett Jack is dead, but there may be another deal out there.
The Hornets play the Timberwolves on Monday, which is a game that they could win in their weakened state. Not everybody is going to play like Indiana did last night.