By Sam Perley, hornets.com
All eyes around the league will be on Charlotte Wednesday night when one of the more intriguing matchups of the NBA calendar will take place at Time Warner Cable Arena as the Hornets welcome the undefeated Golden State Warriors to town.
With a 10-7 record (8-2 at home), the Hornets have started the season as one of the league’s surprise teams and are currently sitting sixth in a much-improved Eastern Conference. Despite being written off by many nationally following the season-ending shoulder injury to star defender Michael Kidd-Gilchrist in the preseason, Charlotte has seen little drop-off in production with the tied-for-ninth-ranked defense in the NBA so far this year (98.8 points allowed per game).
What’s even more surprising though is that the Hornets currently have the league’s seventh-best offense (102.5 points) and are also the second highest-scoring team at home in the Eastern Conference (105.7 points), behind only the Cleveland Cavaliers. Last season, Charlotte put up just 94.2 points, which was third-worst in the league and better than only the Philadelphia 76ers and New York Knicks. The Hornets also averaged just 95.0 points at home, which was ranked second-to-last in the NBA, ahead of just the Knicks. Along with the improved play of Marvin Williams, the offseason additions of Nicolas Batum, Jeremy Lamb and Jeremy Lin have been a major reason for the immense offensive turnaround in Charlotte.
The Hornets will be presented a unique test to see how good they really are this week when the defending NBA Champion Golden State Warriors make their lone regular season appearance in Charlotte on Wednesday night. Currently the owners of a perfect 18-0 record, the Warriors are off to the best start in league history and have won a total of 21-consecutive games dating back to the NBA Finals last June. Assuming Golden State can beat the Utah Jazz on Monday night, the Hornets will be next in line to take a shot at knocking the Warriors from the ranks of the unbeaten.
Another interesting dynamic to this game is the return of Charlotte’s own Stephen Curry, who starred at nearby Charlotte Christian School and Davidson College prior to being selected seventh overall in the 2009 NBA Draft by the Warriors. Curry will be making the annual pilgrimage to his hometown the same night the Hornets will also be honoring his father, Dell Curry, who is a longtime member of the Hornets organization. The elder Curry, who played for the Hornets from 1988-98 and currently serves as the team’s color commentator on its Fox Sports Southeast broadcast, is still the franchise’s all-time leader in points (9,839), games played (701), field goals made (3,951), three-pointers made (929) and double-figure scoring games (522). Dell Curry also won the NBA’s Sixth Man Award at the end of the 1993-94 season, making him the first and (as of now) only member of the organization to garner this particular honor.
The true beauty of this game with the Warriors lies in the fact that not only do the Hornets have a chance to do something no other team in the league has done this season, but they could also forever immortalize themselves as a footnote in the NBA record books as the team that ended the best start by any team in history. In what will surely be an exciting, yet emotional evening, on Wednesday night, the Hornets showdown against the Golden State Warriors will also certainly serve as an early indicator of not only where this team ranks amongst the NBA’s best, but also just how far it has come in such a short amount of time.
Key Matchup vs. Warriors: Kemba Walker vs. Stephen Curry
Kemba Walker’s most difficult task of the season so far will come Wednesday night when the Hornets welcome Stephen Curry and the reigning NBA Champion Golden State Warriors to Charlotte… Walker has been playing superb basketball for the Hornets as of late, with averages of 23.0 points on 54.3 percent shooting (45.5 percent from three-point range), 4.8 assists, 1.6 blocks and 2.2 steals over Charlotte’s last five games… The Hornets’ star point guard will try his luck against the league’s best in Stephen Curry, who is making a strong case for a second-consecutive MVP award this season… The former Davidson Wildcat is first in the league in scoring (31.9 points) and has made 90 three-pointers so far this season, which is 38 more than the second-ranked player… a major element to Charlotte’s chances of pulling off the upset win on Wednesday night against the Warriors will undoubtedly be Walker’s ability to put together a stellar all-around performance against premier point guard and reigning MVP, Stephen Curry.