Both the Charlotte Hornets and the Detroit Pistons have a lot similaries so I though it would be interesting to look at these teams ahead of the game and some of their potential matchups. I’m in a McDonald’s bathroom as I’m writing this and there’s poop on the floor so I’ll try to be relatively quick.

LaMelo Ball vs Cade Cunningham: The star matchup. Each team’s best player but I honestly don’t have a lot to say. While we haven’t seen a lot of Cade Cunningham he looked amazing on his season debut against the Heat putting up 30/3/9/1/1. LaMelo is coming off a serious injury and Steve Clifford talked about him being a little rusty but trying to get back into rythm. In his season debut against the Hawks, Ball had 15/6/10/1/0 but did so on a pretty miserable 4/15 (although all of his makes were 3’s so while still bad it isn’t as bad as it looks from an efficiency standpoint) but unlike Cade he was actually able to get the job done and lead his team to win. Both players aren’t exactly the strongest defenders so they could both definelty go off tonight.

Brandon Miller: After a bumpy Summer League and Preseason started this season on fire. In 25 minutes off the bench he recorded 13 points, 3 rebounds and 2 assists against the Atlanta Hawks. He shot 3/7 from 3 (42.9%) and hit both of his 2-pointers. Not only was he efficient but he was clutch too as he scored 8 crucial points and almost single handedly reclaimed our lead so we could eventually beat the Hawks. It’s pretty much impossible to predict how he’ll do tonight as the sample size is far too low and rookies tend to be very inconsistent but as long as he hits his 3’s there is not much else he really needs to do.

Mark Williams vs Jalen Duren: This will be an interesting matchup because as most of you know Jalen Dueen was actually drafted by us with the 13th pick the same year as Mark Williams, he was of course quickly traded to the Pistons. Both players have almost identical games on offense but their defense differ from each other quite a lot. In my opinion Mark Williams is a far better defender. Last year we immediately went from one of the worst defenses in the league to one of the best once he became our starter, his impact on that end of the floor was insane. Jalen Duren however looked far more inexperienced on that end, he definetly had his moments but he was overall very inconsistent as a defender. While not the best stat, Duren had a negative DBPM and averaged 1.3 blocks per 36 minutes compared to Mark’s 2.0. Also while the sample size isn’t very big the Detroit Pistons’ defensive rating was actually better in the games he didn’t play compared to in the games he did play. Williams’ defensive playstyle is also very different from Duren’s since Williams is far more versatile as a defender and ventures out to the perimeter far more often where he actually does suprisingly well. Williams can also play different roles on defense. Take for example Charlotte’s back-to-back wins against Dallas which pretty much ended their play-in hopes. In those games Mark Williams played a defensive role more similar to Giannis than a traditional Center as he was moving around more than usual and providing help defense on both the perimeter and the interior. Both players put on a show in their respective opening nights with Mark Williams putting up 13/15/1/3/1 (most rebounds in the league) on 88.8% TS and Jalen Duren putting up 17/14/4/0/4 on 69.0% TS. I personally think Mark Williams will do well against Jalen Duren as he often does very well against shorter centers. Bam Adebayo in his two games against Mark Williams only put up 15.5/5/5 on just 48.3% FG (no 3’s even attempted) meanwhile Mark had his iconic breakout game where he recorded 18 points and 20 rebounds against Bam, completely dominating him. Another example is OKC’s Jaylin Williams who in his only game against Mark (in which Jaylin played as their starting Center) wasn’t able to score a single point. Mark however put up 17/13/2/2/2 on 7/7 shooting from the field in just 21 minutes. We unfortunately don’t really have any data for games between Mark Williams and Jalen Duren since in the 2 games they played each other Mark only played a combined 12 minutes so this is their first true showdown.

Terry Rozier: Terry is someone who might be a key player tonight as he historically does very well against the pistions. He has put up at least 20+ points in his last 5 games against the Pistons and in his last 2 seasons he has averaged 23.6/5.4/4.9/1.7/0.4 against them which is imprissive considering ALL of those stats are better than his normal ones during that span. He also played very well in his season debut against the Hawks putting up 24/5/6 on decent efficiency. I could definetly see him going off and being a key-player in tonight’s game.

Conclusion: I think the Hornets will come up on top but it’s difficult to say since the Pistons are one of the few teams with players more inconsistent on offense than the Hornets. The main adventage I think the Hornets have against the Pistons is on the defensive end. While time will tell, Mark Williams and Steve Clifford seem to have turned our defense around. Coach Clifford is also often able to squeeze as much defense as possible out of his players. If you look at who played for the Pistons on their opening I don’t know if there are any players I feel 100% confident saying are above average at defense for their position. Ausar Thompson had 5 blocks in his debut but he has literally only played 1 game, Jalen Duren might have taken a jump but while he was decent for a rookie he’s just too young and the rest are pretty much whatever. Isaiah Stewart has had very solid defensive impact for the Pistons ever since he came in to the league so I’d say him but there are a lot of good defensive Power Forwards and Centers in the league. Therefore, like I previously said I have the Hornets beating the Pistons with realtive ease but I can defiently see the Pistons putting up a fight if everything falls in to place for them or if LaMelo has another hyper-inefficient night.