Charlotte Hornets: What Sparked Their Game 3 Victory

After suffering back-to-back double-digit losses to open their series against the Miami Heat, the Charlotte Hornets fought back to grab a much needed win in Game 3 to keep their playoff hopes strong.

After the first two games in their series against the Miami Heat, you could sense the Charlotte Hornets were starting to feeling the pressure of being down 0-2.

Throughout the first two games in the series, the Heat had dominated the Hornets on both ends of the floor and it left the Hornets looking overmatched multiple times against a Heat team that has been on this stage many times before.

That pressure certainly didn’t let up after it was known that the Hornets were going to be without one of their key players in Nicolas Batum for potentially the rest of the series after he suffered a left foot strain towards the end of Game 2.

However, it was easy to question whether the Heat’s performance, specifically their torrid shooting numbers, were an anomaly, along with whether they could take care of business as the series went to Charlotte.

All of that stoked up the pressure for a pivotal Game 3 and being down a key player, the Hornets had to deliver the kind of performance that got them to the postseason in the first place.

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That was exactly what the Hornets delivered Saturday evening as the Hornets topped the Heat 96-80 to put the series at 2-1 in favor of the Heat.

What fueled the Hornets to their Game 3 victory was pretty simple as it was a total team effort on both ends of the floor.

Though it wasn’t a promising start by any means and with the Heat coming out swinging, especially from downtown (the Heat were 5-of-7 when shooting from deep in the first quarter), it looked like we were in for another game that resembled what we had already seen in the series.

Yet as the second quarter progressed, the Hornets’ swarming (no pun intended) defense started to surface and the Heat played right into the Hornets’ plans.

Like Hornets head coach Steve Clifford preached in his highly engaging press conference after Game 2, the Hornets were leaving some of the Heat’s less-effective shooters open for deep shots and as those misses started to pile up, the Hornets started to get in a rhythm defensively.