{"id":125744,"date":"2025-02-26T06:23:30","date_gmt":"2025-02-26T11:23:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/?p=125744"},"modified":"2025-02-26T06:23:30","modified_gmt":"2025-02-26T11:23:30","slug":"hornets-new-nba-record-in-futility","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/2025\/02\/26\/hornets-new-nba-record-in-futility\/","title":{"rendered":"Charlotte Hornets Set New NBA Record In Futility"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Charlotte Hornets certainly aren\u2019t battling for a playoff spot this season. Despite the 10th-seeded Chicago Bulls being 12 games under .500 in the Eastern Conference, Charlotte has no realistic chance of moving to that position. They have now lost four in a row, dropping their record to 14-43, second-worst in the East. The Hornets set a new NBA record in futility Tuesday when looking at their last three outings, all lost in blowout fashion.<\/p>\n<h2>Charlotte Hornets Set New NBA Record In Futility<\/h2>\n<h3>Hornets Set New Record For Worst Three-Game Stretch<\/h3>\n<p>There\u2019s a difference between an <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/2025\/02\/24\/dyson-daniels-deflections\/\" target=\"_self\">NBA<\/a> team not being good and one that is just not being competitive. Of late, the Hornets are in the latter column, and they have now secured a record they wish they hadn\u2019t. In their last three contests, they have been outscored by a whopping 131 points. That is the worst point differential over a three-game stretch in NBA history by 17 points.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">With tonight&#39;s 36-point loss to the Golden State Warriors, the Charlotte Hornets surpassed the Portland Trail Blazers&#39; 2022 record of 114 points for the largest point margin in three consecutive NBA losses. The new record is 131 points. <\/p>\n<p>53 + 42 + 36 = 131 \ud83d\ude2c <a  href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/I5YUyr6g0f\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">pic.twitter.com\/I5YUyr6g0f<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; r\/CharlotteHornets on Reddit (@HornetsReddit) <a  href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/HornetsReddit\/status\/1894619391318278222?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">February 26, 2025<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>Charlotte\u2019s most recent depressing outing came on Tuesday. On the road against the Golden State Warriors, they fell by the score of <a  href=\"https:\/\/www.espn.com\/nba\/boxscore\/_\/gameId\/401705400\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">128-92<\/a>. Remarkably, that 36-point loss is the closest of their last three games. The Hornets were without their leading scorer <a  href=\"https:\/\/www.basketball-reference.com\/players\/b\/ballla01.html\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">LaMelo Ball<\/a> in the contest due to right ankle injury management. By looking at Charlotte\u2019s final numbers for the game (37.1% shooting, 24 turnovers), it\u2019s fairly evident why they lost in blowout fashion. Down by 15 at halftime, Golden State outscored them 41-24 in the third quarter, putting the game completely out of reach.<\/p>\n<p>Ball played in the prior two games for Charlotte though, and those ended up as even larger blowouts. Tuesday was the second of a back-to-back for the Hornets as they were on the road against the Sacramento Kings on Monday. That was a 42-point loss for Charlotte as the final score was <a  href=\"https:\/\/www.espn.com\/nba\/boxscore\/_\/gameId\/401705394\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">130-88<\/a>. The Hornets shot just 35.3% from the field and were outscored 42-16 in the final stanza.<\/p>\n<p>The worst of the three losses though came last Saturday in an away outing against the Portland Trail Blazers. What was the final score? Portland 141, Charlotte 88. The <a  href=\"https:\/\/www.espn.com\/nba\/boxscore\/_\/gameId\/401705376\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">53-point victory<\/a> was the largest in Trail Blazers history. The Hornets shot just 34.7% from the field in the contest.<\/p>\n<h3>West Coast Trip Nearing Its Conclusion<\/h3>\n<p>The Hornets are nearing the conclusion of a six-game West Coast trip (thankfully). They have one game remaining on it when they take on the Dallas Mavericks on Thursday.<\/p>\n<p>Prior to the three non-competitive games they recently lost, they actually started the trip with a notch in the win column. That came last Wednesday when they eked by with a three-point win over the Los Angeles Lakers. That was followed by a 15-point loss at the hands of the Denver Nuggets the very next day.<\/p>\n<p>With 25 games remaining, the Hornets are on pace for their worst season by record in over a decade, owning a win percentage of .246. In 2011-12, while known as the Charlotte Bobcats at the time, they went 7-59 in a lockout-shortened season. Their .109 winning percentage that year is the <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/2025\/01\/20\/commanders-drought-over-wizards-even-longer\/\" target=\"_self\">worst in NBA history<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Photo credit: \u00a9 Ed Szczepanski-Imagn Images<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Charlotte Hornets certainly aren\u2019t battling for a playoff spot this season. Despite the 10th-seeded Chicago Bulls being 12 games under .500 in the Eastern Conference, Charlotte has no realistic chance of moving to that position. They have now lost four in a row, dropping their record to 14-43, second-worst in the East. The Hornets [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5060,"featured_media":125762,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1608,7,62,3],"tags":[823,49749],"class_list":["post-125744","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-basketball","category-hornets","category-nba","category-news","tag-lamelo-ball","tag-nba-record"],"modified_by":"Kenny Kluska","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125744","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5060"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=125744"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125744\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":125765,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125744\/revisions\/125765"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/125762"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=125744"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=125744"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=125744"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}