I watched the Hornets-Knicks game last night with some interest to watch the Kemba Walker-Jeremy Lamb backcourt. THe Hornets are without 2 starters, Nicholas Batum and Michael Kidd-Gilchrist, and their jobs are being done mostly by Dwayne Bacon and Michael Carter-Williams. Kemba and Jeremy played well, and as Walt Frazier said, with Lamb and Bacon in the game, there was plenty of meat on the floor, although only Lamb tasted good last night (Bacon failed to score). Charlotte had 15 3s in the game (4 by Kemba and 3 by Lamb), but they faded badly in the 4th quarter, missing their last 7 and getting beaten up a little bit on the boards. The Knicks had far more energy late and are now 6-4, which is very surprising especially considering the Knicks played a 19 year old rookie point guard most of the 4th quarter (Frank Nkilitina). Nkilitina is long and athletic and looks like he could be a real good player down the road, but right now he seems to be playing a lot based on his defensive abilities on the ball. He looks a little indecisive on offense and I think it will take time for him to develop into a good offensive player.
I was amused watching the defense of Dwight Howard on Kristaps Porzingis, who had a game high 28 points. Howard played very physically with KP, consisting in a lot of pushing and shoving and whenever KP tried to run the baseline under the hoop hoping for an entry pass, Howard shoved him out of bounds. Howard mostly got away with it, and wore KP down a bit. KP hit 3 3 pointers early in the game, and it occurred to me that a 7'3" who can stroke like that from 3 cannot be covered. Nobody in the NBA can get a hand in this guy's face when he is shooting 3s. The 7 footers in the league are not really built to defend on the perimeter, although Howard did do a pretty physical job on KP rest of the game.