Keeping with the holiday theme, let’s go ahead and list the good things that can be immediately extracted early on from the finale of the Charlotte Hornets’ exhaustive road trip.
They didn’t fall behind by 20 in the first quarter and actually led after the opening minutes for once. Nobody got injured. It was 60 degrees at tipoff at the base of the snow-capped Rocky Mountains in late December.
That’s the gist of it.
Considering they were in their personal house of horrors and being tormented by reigning MVP Nikola Jokic, it felt more likely the guy with the oversized red jumpsuit, pot belly and gray beard was going to show up at Ball Arena than the Hornets turning things around.