Seth Curry, starting for injured Brandon Miller, limps off in Hornets’ loss to 76ers

Brandon Miller dazzled in a stylish bright orange sweatsuit rather than a uniform on Friday night.

The Charlotte Hornets rookie sat out their 121-114 loss to the Philadelphia 76ers at Wells Fargo Center due to a lower back injury, leaving them shorthanded on the first game of their two-game road trip. Miller got hit in the back in the second half of Thursday night’s loss to Milwaukee and was still sore following pregame warmups in Philadelphia, causing the Hornets to hold him out and go with Seth Curry in his place, giving Curry his first career start with his hometown team.

But in keeping with the story of the Hornets’ season, Curry also got injured, forcing him to exit the action late in the fourth quarter with a sprained right ankle. And that was moments before Cody Martin departed the game with a left ankle sprain.

Curry, while attempting to go for an offensive rebound and keep a loose ball alive, landed on the foot of Philadelphia center Paul Reed and crumpled to the court, unable to get on his feet to run back on defense. He required assistance walking to the Hornets’ locker room, which has been an all-too common scene for the Hornets in 2023-24.

They have the second most games missed due to injury this season, trailing only Memphis.

“I have no idea,” coach Steve Clifford said when asked about the status of Curry and Martin. “... Just hopefully those two guys are Ok. … We’ll keep our fingers crossed and get ready to go on Sunday.”

Although an exact timeline is unclear, Miller isn’t expected to be sidelined long term, league sources told The Observer. It’s the seventh game Miller missed this season and he joined Hornets star point guard LaMelo Ball on the bench. Ball continues to rehab his sprained right ankle and hasn’t suited up since Jan. 26 against Houston.

Miller is having a strong first season, posting 16.5 points, four rebounds and 2.3 assists per game with 47 starts under his belt. He’s been as good — or even better — than the Hornets could have expected when they selected him No. 2 overall behind San Antonio’s Victor Wembanyama in June.

Even with all their injuries, the Hornets have to do a better job at finishing the right way over these remaining 23 games. They were on a stretch that had them feeling good about themselves in the aftermath of the All-Star break, picking up wins in Utah and Portland.

But they hit speed bumps in their back-to-back games against Milwaukee and could use a turnaround against Philadelphia — a team that’s traditionally given the Hornets fits.

One thing’s certain: don’t look for Clifford to toss out just any lineup combination over the remaining month-plus of this season. He’s going to be strategic about how the Hornets approach things the rest of the way, insisting the alternative method isn’t conducive to establishing the right culture and principles.

“Playing to win is important,” Clifford said. “We are going to play to win. We may play some guys to see what they can do and everything, but when you start doing that, let me just tell you, it’s weeks of losing. And we are not going to do that. And I also think what people don’t also understand is (when they say), ‘Why don’t they just play those guys?’ It kills your season. Kills it.

“That stuff kills your season. I’m just saying as somebody who’s lived it. And when you do that, you are absolutely crushing everything you’ve built in the locker room about accountability, about playing (time). You can’t play guys who don’t deserve to play minutes more than they deserve, and then look at pro players and say, ‘Go play hard, do your job, do this stuff’ is difficult. It kills everything.”

With the NBA’s longest playoff drought at eight years and counting, the Hornets don’t really have that luxury anyway. It’s imperative they begin to incorporate a different mindset into their preparation, and the time to change their perspective is immediate and not in a few months.

“A team sport is different than an individual sport and they have to learn what real details are,” Clifford said. “What real execution is. And again, you start paying around with guys like that, you can mess the whole thing up.

“You don’t take 20 games at the end of the year, and play for fun, and come back next October 25th and say, now this we want to win. You either build the right mentality or you don’t. And that’s the way it works.”