CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP) \u2014 Jalen Johnson had 19 points, eight assists and seven rebounds and Atlanta hammered the Charlotte Hornets 128-81 on Friday night in the Hawks’ largest blowout in franchise history.<\/p>\n
The 47-point victory topped the previous franchise mark of 46 set in a 126-80 win over Sacramento on Nov, 15, 2017. <\/p>\n
Aaron Wiggins added 19 points off the bench on 7-of-9 shooting and all five Atlanta starters finished in double figures in scoring, including Nickell Alexander-Walker with 14 and C.J. McCollum with 13.<\/p>\n
Naz Reid led the Hornets with 17 points.<\/p>\n
The Hornets did little to win fans over in their first home game since trading away star point guard LaMelo Ball, a widely unpopular decision in Charlotte.<\/p>\n
The Hawks forced 14 turnovers in the first half alone, leading to 15 points on runouts and built a 25-point first-half lead.<\/p>\n
The Hornets were booed loudly as they walked off the floor at halftime by the sellout crowd of 19,524 that was expecting better from a team that won 44 games last season. <\/p>\n
The boos grew louder as the Hawks put the pedal down in the third quarter and pulled away, pushing the lead to 49 in the fourth quarter.<\/p>\n
Charlotte’s Brandon Miller endured his second straight poor shooting night since signing a franchise-record five-year, $209 million contact extension earlier this week. He finished with six points on 1-of-11 shooting from 3-point range. He is shooting 16% (4 of 25) from beyond the arc.<\/p>\n
The Hornets played their second straight game without last season’s NBA rookie of the year runner-up Kon Knueppel (hamstring), starting point guard Coby White (calf) and reserve forward Grant Williams (hamstring).<\/p>\n
Coach Charles Lee said before the game he doesn’t have a timetable for their return Friday night, but did say all three players are making good progress in rehab and trending in the right direction.<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t\tUp next<\/p>\n
Hawks: Host the Rockets on Saturday night.<\/p>\n
Hornets: Host Miami on Saturday night in a rematch of last year’s play-in tournament game. <\/p>\n
___<\/p>\n
\n See AP\u2019s full NBA coverage here\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP) \u2014 Jalen Johnson had 19 points, eight assists and seven rebounds and Atlanta hammered the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":892593,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[64],"tags":[160359,2724,355,99],"class_list":["post-892592","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-ap-sports","tag-associated-press","tag-nba","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/892592","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=892592"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/892592\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/892593"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=892592"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=892592"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=892592"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}