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The Play: At the start of the third quarter, with the Charlotte Hornets hosting the Cleveland Cavaliers, Jeremy Lin found Marvin Williams for an open three-pointer:
Why It Matters: With the Cavaliers rejuvenated under new coach Tyronn Lue, riding a five-game win streak into Charlotte, the Hornets won the third quarter of this game 33-17. This quarter turned a nine-point Hornets deficit into a seven-point Hornets lead, with Charlotte ultimately winning by nine points (106-97). According to analytics site Inpredictable, Charlotte’s win probability went from 24.9 percent at the start of the quarter up to 77.8 percent at the end of it. Even more impressively: the Hornets did it all with starting point guard Kemba Walker and starting center Al Jefferson out due to injury.
Even though the Hornets are the ninth seed in the Eastern Conference, their patchwork starting lineup was able to exploit key mismatches over the Cavaliers’ starting lineup during this third quarter. Strong work from Williams on both the offensive and defensive ends of the floor were essential to the Hornets’ advantage. Note above that Williams, typically a small forward, was being guarded by paint-bound power forward Tristan Thompson. Williams didn’t flash open as much as Thompson simply drifted away from him. An extremely similar action happened just minutes later, with Thompson once again leaving Williams to drain three more points:
Whatever advantage that the Hornets had over the Cavaliers on the offensive end of the floor would be nullified if Charlotte couldn’t also maintain an advantage on the defensive end. This is where Williams really came through for his team, willing to take a physical beating as he “played up” against a larger position. Coming down the floor immediately after his second made three, Williams fiercely denied Kevin Love in the post, winning a turnover for the Hornets:
Despite Lue’s urgings that the Cavaliers play faster as a team, Cleveland was nonetheless beaten down the floor by Charlotte’s center, Cody Zeller. This sequence, spearheaded by Williams, brought the Hornets from down five to tied within half a minute.
It’s important to have floor spacers like Williams not just because of the made three-point baskets they’ll provide, but also for the driving and cutting lanes that they open up for teammates below the rim. With Thompson now more wary of Williams on the perimeter, here’s Jeremy Lin and Nicolas Batum collaborating to slice and dice the interior of the defense, with Lin earning the and-1:
Michael Kidd-Gilchrist, despite his infamous offensive limitations, in many ways holds this entire lineup together for Charlotte because of his unique ability to ably guard LeBron James, one-on-one. This is not to say that Kidd-Gilchrist can shut LeBron down for the entire game — James scored 23 points on 21 shots. Kidd-Gilchrist can muck up James’s offensive game for possessions at a time, though, and without receiving any help from teammates:
This was just Kidd-Gilchrist’s third game of the season, and in the 98 minutes he’s played, the Hornets have pummeled their opposition by a margin of 14 points per 100 possessions — which is equivalent to a blowout every night. Charlotte has gone 2-1 since Kidd-Gilchrist’s return and are now just a game-and-a-half outside of the Eastern Conference’s eighth seed. The Hornets also have an average point differential better than two current playoff teams (the Chicago Bulls and Miami Heat), making a rise into the playoff picture feel even more likely.