On the Hornets' possession, Rozier's stop and pop jumper after isolating was once again disrupted by Butler and clanked off the rim.
Since the opening, he had taken four straight shots, been stripped once, and bricked the other three. He was 0-for-4!
In the NBA, you couldn't judge whether a player was truly capable just by looking at the stats.
Stats could be very deceptive sometimes.
You had to watch the games, and more importantly, watch how that player performed under intense defensive pressure.
Rozier's 20+5+5 stat line looked pretty good, but much of it came from the Eastern Conference, where the defensive pressure in many games was not that great.
And setting the stats aside, his 39.8% Shooting Percentage and 36% Three-Point Percentage did not look good for a guard either.
To put it bluntly, with seven straight losses and that Shooting Percentage, he was clearly just an empty-stats player.
Only Jordan stubbornly kept praising him. No one else did, not even the Charlotte media.
He really was far worse than Walker.
Walker brought the ball upcourt, hit a crossover dribble into a behind-the-back dribble, then drove and finished with a 180-degree turnaround layup in midair.
He was fired up. Once his body got going, everything came naturally.
On the sideline, Hornets Head Coach Clifford wore a helpless expression. He rubbed his already bald head and signaled for a defensive substitution.
If Rozier kept playing like this, he might really get beaten into depression.
The Hornets switched Batum onto Walker, but the result was still not much better.
Although Batum was Walker's former teammate, he was a guard-forward swingman who leaned more toward small forward. He was simply too much slower.
Butler and Tang Tian were happy to play supporting roles in this quarter, while Walker became the unquestioned