The middle section of the NBA regular season can be funky and volatile, but it’s worth noting that only two teams have won eight of their last 10 games, and neither of them are inner-circle championship contenders. In particular, the LA Clippers’ recent success is a surprise, given that at their worst, the Clippers were just 6-21.
Tonight, LA has a good opportunity to move to 10-2 in its last 12 and climb to just one game behind the Memphis Grizzlies in the Play-In Tournament race. The Clippers will host the Charlotte Hornets at 10:30 p.m. ET at Intuit Dome.
LA will be completely healthy besides Bradley Beal, Bogdan Bogdanović, and Derrick Jones Jr., all of whom have missed most of the season with injuries and haven’t factored into the Clippers’ recent success. The Hornets will also have a clean injury report.
LA is a 4.5-point favorite at DraftKings Sportsbook (-192 on the Moneyline), with the point total set to 223.5. Charlotte is +160 on the Moneyline. Below, I’ll break down tonight’s clash of recent risers and offer my prediction.
Charlotte Hornets at LA Clippers preview, prediction
In their nadir, the Clippers looked as if they might not even have a representative at the All-Star game that they’ll be hosting at Intuit Dome next month, but Kawhi Leonard’s recent form has to make him a lock. Across LA’s winning stretch, Leonard has averaged 32.5 points, 7.5 rebounds, and 3.9 combined steals/blocks per game on 51-41-91 shooting splits. All in all, he’s leading the league in steals for the second time and in free throw percentage for the first time while putting up career-best scoring. Its turnaround isn’t just Leonard: James Harden is averaging 25.6 points per game on much better efficiency than what he posted last season, and while Ivica Zubac definitely won’t make the All-Star team, he’s picked it up since returning from an ankle injury at the start of the calendar year.
The Hornets, meanwhile, almost certainly won’t have a representative at the showcase, but their lengthy rebuild is finally starting to bear some fruit. The team’s gem is Kon Knueppel, who’s averaged an ultra-efficient 19.1 points per game and is a near-certainty to eventually break Keegan Murray’s rookie three-point record, but Knueppel is one of just four Charlotte players averaging between 19 and 20 points per game. Brandon Miller, LaMelo Ball, and Miles Bridges are also hovering around that number, and after a slow start to the season, Ball’s efficiency is starting to tick upwards. He’s made 47.2% of his triples across the Hornets’ last 13 games, in which the team has gone 6-7 to climb into the fringes of the Eastern Conference Play-In picture.
Hornets at Clippers pick, best bet
The question of just how real both teams’ hot form is remains. Across the past 11 games, the Clippers have the league’s third-best offense, the seventh-best defense, and the second-best net rating, while Charlotte has the league’s best offense and third-best net rating in that span despite going just 5-6. A quick examination of each teams’ schedule suggests that LA’s form is likely more sustainable than the Hornets’: Charlotte’s numbers are largely buoyed by a 150-95 demolition of the lottery-bound Utah Jazz and a 17-point win over the Washington Wizards, while the Clippers have picked up victories over five teams who would make at least the Play-In Tournament if the season ended today. The Hornets did have one extremely impressive — and stunning — win over the Oklahoma City Thunder, but the rest of their results have been mediocre.
Better rim protection has been a key aspect of LA’s turnaround. After spending much of the season as among the worst rim-protecting teams in basketball, the Clippers have allowed fewer-than-average attempts at the rim and a lower-than-average percentage on such tries across the last 11 games, despite Zubac — the sixth-place Defensive Player of the Year finisher last season — missing most of six games. They’ve benefited somewhat from the fact that opponents have converted their midrange jumpers at the league’s fifth-lowest clip, and they’ve allowed a few too many corner threes, but LA’s defensive improvement seems sustainable overall. Charlotte has also done a decent job protecting the rim: of the 50 players who have played at least 25 games and guarded five shots per game within six feet of the basket, rookie center Ryan Kalkbrenner has allowed the 10th-lowest percentage and Knueppel the 15th-lowest. The Clippers have been a better finishing team, but the Hornets have gotten downhill at a higher rate.
The visitors have been especially dominant on the glass, ranking second in the league in rebounding percentage across the last 11 games despite Kalkbrenner missing all but one of them, and given their personnel, it makes some sense: Ball is a six-foot-seven point guard who has consistently ranked among the better rebounders at his position, and Moussa Diabaté is among the best offensive rebounders in basketball. Rebounding is an area in which LA has struggled this season, even during its hot stretch: it ranks seventh-to-last in second chance points across the last 11 games while Charlotte ranks first. The hosts have made up for their lack of rebounding by improving in transition defense, but the Hornets have been solid there, too. Charlotte has also been better at drawing fouls.
Shooting luck would suggest that both teams are bound to cool down from deep. Across the last 11 games, the Hornets have converted their wide-open threes at the league’s third-highest rate, while the Clippers rank fifth, though besides Harden and Leonard, Charlotte has the better pure shooters, based on expected three-point percentage differential. The Hornets’ shooting is also more sustainable in that they’ve produced the fifth-most uncontested triples across the last 11 games, trying 6.2 per game more than LA has. Defensively, the Clippers have done a better job closing out on opposing shooters, but they’ve been more fortunate in that opponents have shot worse. All in all, the shooting edge should favor Charlotte.
The fact that nearly all of the fundamentals favor the Hornets suggest that this game should be close, even though Charlotte has played in a few outlier games and even though home-court advantage is a swing of 4.2 points per 100 possessions in favor of LA. I’m not quite willing to pick the Hornets on the Moneyline — Charlotte had merely the ninth-best net rating in the 10 games prior to the Utah result — but the spread seems reasonable. The Hornets have been the East’s second-best team against the spread this season.
