Charles Lee on the boos after a 47-point home-opening loss: ‘They are fans, they are entitled,’ and the Hornets ‘just got to play better’

Charles Lee did not argue with the crowd. The Charlotte Hornets were booed repeatedly at Spectrum Center on Friday night, in their first home game since trading LaMelo Ball, after a 128-81 loss to the Atlanta Hawks that was the largest win in Hawks history. Asked what he would tell the fans, Lee said the noise was something his team had earned.

“At home, on the road, if you hear boos, you got to be able to play better basketball,” Lee said. “That’s not something that we can control. They are fans, they are entitled. And if we’re not playing good basketball, I think they understand the game. So we totally respect it, and we just got to play better.”

The sellout crowd of 19,524 had plenty to react to. Charlotte turned the ball over 25 times, Atlanta scored 25 points off those turnovers, and the Hornets made 11 of 51 threes. The Hawks led 56-43 with 4:38 left in the first half and then scored the next 18 points, a run that carried into the third quarter, and they led by as many as 49.

‘Are we going to look for excuses?’

Lee opened his news conference by calling the night “a good learning experience for our entire group,” and he framed it as a test of what the Hornets do when a game turns on them. “When things aren’t going your way, what is your focus going to be?” he said. “Are we going to look for excuses? Are we going to look for people to bail us out of those tough times? Or are we going to band together and try to figure it out on our own?”

He said the shots were not the main problem. “I actually thought that there was some quality looks that we got in there,” Lee said. “There was some lapses defensively in terms of offensive rebounds, potentially during that stretch, guys getting back-cut and stuff like that. So I felt like a lot of self-inflicted wounds.”

Charlotte had 20 turnovers in its opening win at Brooklyn on Wednesday, and Lee would not blame the jump to 25 on the players he is missing. Kon Knueppel (hamstring), Coby White (calf) and Grant Williams (hamstring) all sat again. “We can’t make excuses for who was on the floor, who was off the floor,” he said. “I think that is just on us as a group to take a little bit more pride in every possession, value the ball, and again, just do what we do, be in the positions that we need to be in.” He said part of it was a new group still learning “each other” and the offense, and that some of the giveaways were “just a little too casual.”

Atlanta’s ‘pesky’ defenders

Lee gave the Hawks credit for the way they wore his ball-handlers down. “Number one is their physicality,” he said. “They got a bunch of really pesky, physical, on-ball defenders, and you got to be able to physically deal with it.” He said the mental side mattered just as much: “All those punches, all those grabs and holds, it actually wears them down. And I think that those Atlanta defenders have some better experience to understand how to just wear you down as the game goes on. You got to be able to sustain your mental and physical toughness.”

Dyson Daniels was the clearest example, with 11 points, 9 rebounds and 7 of Atlanta’s 17 steals in 23 minutes. Quin Snyder said Daniels “just finds so many ways to impact the game,” on the offensive glass, on defense and with the ball. “Anytime he generates possessions for your team, the more possessions the better,” Snyder said. “He does that at an elite level.”

Snyder tied the blowout to the identity he wants for a Hawks team that is 2-0. “We’re trying to develop an identity, and that identity is defending, running and sharing the ball,” he said. “When those three things happen, particularly in that sequence when you get stops and we can get out and convert, and take advantage of the stops or creating some steals, that fuels runs.” Atlanta had 37 assists, 19 fast-break points and all five starters in double figures. Jalen Johnson and Aaron Wiggins scored 19 each.

Miller, and what the players said

Brandon Miller, who signed a five-year, $209 million extension this week, scored 6 points on 2-of-14 shooting and went 1-of-11 from three. Lee said he was not worried. “I think that Brandon’s focused a ton on just playing the right way,” he said. “He’s taken some quality looks. Some things early in the year, you’re just trying to find your legs, your rhythm. I have the utmost confidence that some of these shots that he’s taken, he’s going to continue to knock down at a higher clip as we just keep going throughout the year.”

Sion James said Atlanta “were picking us up really high and trying to keep us on the sidelines,” and that most of the live-ball turnovers came from Charlotte’s own choices. “We were driving into traffic sometimes or just driving with no kind of outlet, and when that was the case, there was just nowhere to go with the ball,” he said. He also smiled at his coach’s “learning opportunity” line. “Coach is super positive, so I’m not surprised that he said that,” James said. “But at the end of the day, whether it was by 47 or by one, we lost the game. It’s one loss on our record.”

Moussa Diabaté put it on effort. “I think our energy wasn’t right from the start of the game,” he said. “At the end of the day, it don’t matter if you’re not playing with energy. All these turnovers, rebounds, whatever it is, it’s not going to matter.”

There is no time to sit on it. Charlotte hosts the Miami Heat on Saturday at 6 p.m. ET, which is 1 a.m. Sunday in Cairo, on the second night of a back-to-back. Miami is 0-2. The Hawks play their home opener against the Houston Rockets on Saturday at 8:30 p.m. ET, or 3:30 a.m. Sunday in Cairo.