Preview: Charlotte Hornets open season at Houston Rockets – At The Hive

What: Charlotte Hornets (0-0) at Houston Rockets (0-0)

When: 8:00pm Eastern

Where: Toyota Center; Houston, TX

How to watch: FanDuel Sports Network, NBA League Pass

Game Lines: Hornets +7.5, O/U 229.5

Outfitting: Hornets–Association (white), Rockets–Icon (red)

Injuries:
Hornets: Josh Green-questionable (achilles), Mark Williams-out (foot), DaQuan Jeffries-out (hand)

Rockets: Steven Adams-questionable (calf)

The Charlotte Hornets open their 2024-25 season with a game that strays a bit from the norm. They start on the road against a Western Conference opponent and don’t start at 7:00pm Eastern time. Hope you’re able to handle that extra hour of anticipation.

We’ll get out first look at the Hornets on the newly rebranded FanDuel Sports Network, who confirmed that Eric Collins and Dell Curry will still be on the call for the purple and teal.

As for the on court product, the Hornets take on a Rockets team that was a trendy dark horse team last season after they splurged on Fred VanVleet and Dillon Brooks in the offseason. While they did take a big step forward, they still were firmly mediocre. They finished the 2023-24 season with a 41-41 record and on the outside of the play-in tournament.

The problem has been some stagnation among the team’s high draft picks. Jalen Green still hasn’t quite figured out how to be a positive presence on the floor despite his supreme scoring talent. Jabari Smith hasn’t been at all what the Rockets were hoping to get with the third overall pick. The team was worse with both players on the floor last season and had a -3.7 net rating when both were on the floor together. That’s the third worst net rating of any of the top 20 two man combos used by the Rockets last season (Jabari Smith is in all three).

Both players are still young, so there’s plenty of room and time to grow, and the Rockets are going to need it. They just inked Jalen Green to a three year contract extension worth $106 million.

The Rockets are led by Alperen Şengün, who comes from the Domantas Sabonis, lightweight Nikola Jokic school of European centers. He led the team in scoring at 21.1 points per game last season and chipped in over nine rebounds and five assists to go along with that. He’s the kind of savvy, mobile big that tends to give Nick Richards problems. We’ll see what the Hornets do to try to neutralize him.

Fred VanVleet is exactly who he was supposed to be. He’s a steadying presence in the back court and can get hot from deep and win some games on his own. Tari Eason is a wrecking ball off the bench and Cam Whitmore is a potential breakout candidate in year two. Dillon Brooks is annoying.

It’ll be our first chance to see the new look Hornets in earnest. The team shuffled lineups all preseason, so we won’t know what the starting lineup will be until close to tip time. The one thing that seems certain is that the Hornets are going to get up a lot of 3-pointers. The Rockets had the best 3-point defense in the league in terms of percentage last season. We’ll see if the Hornets can break that to start 2024-25.