The Brooklyn Nets returned to Barclays Center on Wednesday night still hunting their first home win of the season, with the Charlotte Hornets standing in the way. Brooklyn entered 0-3 at home and was trying to stop the slide in front of a crowd that had not seen a victory yet.
That search for a breakthrough came only two nights after the Nets lost 103-90 to the New York Knicks, leaving the team with an immediate chance to turn the page at home. The matchup carried extra weight because Brooklyn had forced 21 turnovers in the first meeting between the teams, a game Charlotte won 110-103, and the Nets had also just ended a long drought against the Knicks after losing 15 straight to them.
Nolan Traoré gave Brooklyn a reason to believe the offense can hold up when it matters, scoring 17 points against the Knicks. Mikel Brown Jr. added 13 points off the bench in that game, but the Nets still left the floor with another home loss. For Brooklyn, the problem has not been one thing alone. The team has been giving up too much on the road to recovery whenever the offense cools, and at home that has shown up as a mix of missed shots and empty possessions rather than a single flaw.
Charlotte arrived with its own issues. The Hornets had lost four straight games and had been beaten by 33 points by the Detroit Pistons on Monday, a game in which they committed 27 turnovers. That followed a stretch in which they had 82 turnovers over four losses, so the ball security problem was not a one-night lapse. Brandon Miller, averaging 23.5 points per game to start the season, was still the central scoring threat even while shooting 37.8% from the field; he scored 18 points on 7-of-21 shooting and 3-of-14 from three in the first matchup with Brooklyn.
The one missing piece from that earlier meeting still mattered. Kon Knueppel, Grant Williams and Coby White did not play when Charlotte beat Brooklyn 110-103, so Wednesday offered a different version of the same matchup. If the Nets were going to get that first home win, they would have to make the turnovers they forced before count for more than a close loss, and they would have to do it before the season’s first home crowd started to feel like the hardest game on the schedule was the one in their own building.
