Coming into Monday night’s game, LaMelo Ball was the story in his first start of the season. Coming out of the game, though, it was Malik Monk who took center stage.
Monk scored a career-high 36 points with nine 3-pointers, none bigger than the one to tie the game at 113 and force overtime. In the extra session, Gordon Hayward and Devonte’ Graham combined for 10 of the team’s 16 points to secure a 129-121 win.
“Give Malik Monk a ton of credit,” head coach James Borrego said. “He’s stayed ready. He’s stayed professional. He’s earned this. He deserves this and he was fantastic tonight.
“He kept us in that game early as well,” Borrego continued. “It’s not just the close of the game. Malik kept us in that game from the first half on. Give him a ton of credit.”
True to Borrego’s words, it was three first-quarter threes from Monk that allowed the Hornets to trail by just one point after the first frame. As Miami built up a nine-point lead late in the second quarter, it was Monk who hit a pair of threes to pull Charlotte within three by halftime.
And when P.J. Washington went down in the third quarter, the second starter to go down in as many games with an ankle injury, and the Hornets needed someone to fill his minutes in the fourth, it was Monk who poured in 14 fourth-quarter points.
It was the latest standout performance for Monk, who has come on strong in the last week after only stepping on the court four times in the first 17 games. More than just his on-court struggles, Monk battled back from being diagnosed with COVID-19 at the start of this season and an indefinite suspension at the end of last season.
“A lot of work, man,” Monk said of what his last half-year has looked like. “A lot of shots a night, a lot of shots in the morning before I had Corona, which set me back for a little bit. Then I came back I thought I was going to be in a rotation, wasn’t in a rotation, was [expletive]. Very, very, very, very [expletive]…but I just stuck with it. I just stuck with.
“You can’t take what coach is doing personally, because he’s trying to win,” he continued. “It’s all together, we’re all trying to win. But if you take that personal, you’re going to mess yourself up and be down, get in the game and not be ready. And I finally realized that this year and I didn’t take it personal and realized it’s just business. Coach can’t make everybody happy. So once I realized that, I was ready and just locked in.”
Locked in Monk was on Monday. As Jimmy Butler took over for a stretch of eight-straight Miami points in the fourth quarter, it was Monk that responded with a pair of 3-pointers to keep Charlotte in shouting distance. And when the Hornets trailed 111-101 with 3:11 left, it was Monk that helped kickstart a run.
And when the game was on the line in the final seconds, it was Monk that Borrego drew up the final shot for. After taking an in-bound pass from Gordon Hayward, Cody Zeller’s dribble hand-off to Monk cleared just enough space for Monk’s ninth three of the night, tying the game at 113-113 and capping off a 12-2 run.
“I saw nobody was holding their head down,” LaMelo Ball said of the team’s mindset in the final seconds of regulation. “I even told Malik, I said ‘You’re about to hit this last shot and we’re going into overtime.’ It happened and then from then on, right when we got overtime, we damn near pretty much knew what it was going to be. We said ‘We’re here now, we obviously not going to lose. We came this far.’
“The mentality was definitely to dig deep, get the win and that’s what we came out with.”
After a dunk from Zeller after a dish from Ball was offset by two Butler freebies to start overtime, Hayward scored the next four points before Graham buried a contested 3-pointer and a pull-up jumper to seal the comeback win.
“It’s been a resilient group all year,” Borrego said. “We never drop the sword. Our mentality is we keep fighting to the end. We’re down ten with two-plus minutes to go. Nobody hung their heads but even before that, we’re down two starters. Everybody’s chipping in. Everybody’s fighting. Nobody’s doubting.
“The definition, for me, of resiliency is you reform, you reshape yourself. And when things don’t go your way, you’re down, we found a way to reshape and reform ourselves and pull out a win when the odds said it was not in our favor. This is a resilient group, a tough group, a group that believes in each other. I thought they were fantastic down the stretch.”
The win was the third-straight for Charlotte, all coming against Eastern Conference playoff teams from last season in the Pacers on Friday, Milwaukee on Saturday and the Heat on Monday. The streak pulls Charlotte within a game of .500 with two more daunting games against Philadelphia and Utah to end the week.
Even with the status of both Rozier and Washington uncertain moving forward, the resilient Hornets are ready for whatever challenges await them next.
“(We’re) definitely digging in for the wins,” Ball said. “I mean, you’re going to have hard games, blowout games, all type of games. But in order to be in the playoffs and keep winning you have to go through that type of stuff. As long as we keep winning and going like this, I feel like we’re going to be good.”