Charlotte didn't need a superstar rescue act to end its six-game losing streak. The Hornets beat Cleveland 124–112 on Monday night, 9 November (US time), with Grayson Allen scoring 27 points and Naz Reid adding 25 points and 13 rebounds. More telling than the final margin was the way Charlotte built its advantage: 23 made three-pointers, a dominant night on the glass and a lead that reached 33 points before Cleveland's late rally.
The perimeter turnaround was startling. Charlotte entered the game shooting just 28.8 per cent from three, second-worst in the NBA, then went 23-of-46 against the Cavaliers. Allen made six triples and Reid four. That's 69 points from outside the arc, a volume Cleveland couldn't offset simply by shooting a respectable percentage overall. The Hornets had been searching for reliable offence; for one night, the floor looked a lot wider.
Charlotte's 40-point second quarter changed the contest. The Hornets led 69–53 at half-time after Allen, Reid and reserve Tidjane Salaün combined for 52 of those 69 points. That scoring distribution mattered with leading scorer Brandon Miller unavailable. Rather than asking one player to replace Miller's production, Charlotte got perimeter shooting from multiple spots and made Cleveland defend beyond its preferred matchups.
The shooting barrage wasn't the entire story. Ryan Kalkbrenner collected 15 rebounds and Charlotte won the overall rebounding battle 49–32, including a 17–3 advantage on the offensive glass. Extra possessions gave the Hornets room to survive cold patches and helped explain how Cleveland could shoot 51.2 per cent from the field yet still lose by double digits. Reid's 13 rebounds made his 25 points even more valuable: he wasn't merely stretching the defence, he was helping Charlotte finish possessions.
Cleveland's starters couldn't steady the game. Donovan Mitchell scored 11 points, well below his usual offensive responsibility, and the Cavaliers fell behind by 27 after three quarters. Meleek Thomas led Cleveland with 18 points, but the deficit had grown too large for a conventional late push. Cleveland's reserves did trim it to 118–110 with around four minutes left, making Charlotte work for the final whistle after what had looked like a comfortable rout.
The Hornets answered that pressure with the kind of possession they'd struggled to string together during the losing streak. A Kalkbrenner tip-in and a Royce O'Neale three restored breathing space; O'Neale's shot with 2:40 remaining pushed the margin back to 13. It wasn't a flawless close, but it was a composed response after Cleveland had finally found some momentum.
For Charlotte, the useful takeaway isn't that 50 per cent three-point shooting will become the norm. It's that Allen and Reid can supply two different scoring threats while Kalkbrenner controls the boards, giving a depleted line-up a workable offensive identity. The Hornets finally turned a promising shooting stretch into a win. For Cleveland, the rebounding deficit and slow defensive response are harder to dismiss than the late rally: a team with ambitions beyond the regular season can't keep giving opponents that many second chances.
The NBA box score captures the mismatch: Cleveland shot a higher percentage overall, but Charlotte owned the glass and made enough threes to dictate the terms. The Reuters recap records the late baskets that protected the win, while the game report puts the shooting turnaround in context. Charlotte's next challenge is to keep the rebounding and shared scoring, even on nights when the long-range shots aren't falling quite so freely.
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