Hornets coach Steve Clifford lays into team in postgame press conference

The Charlotte Hornets dropped their ninth consecutive game on Wednesday night in a 123-117 loss to the Toronto Raptors. And after the game, Hornets head coach Steve Clifford got brutally honest about the state of the team, and even how well of a job he has done as a head coach.

The loss drops the Hornets to 10-40 on the season, the fourth-worst record in the NBA at this point in the season. Obviously, that can come with a ton of frustration and disappointment within the Hornets’ locker room,

This was evident in Clifford’s postgame press conference, calling out the Hornets’ defensive effort and saying that he has “failed miserably” as a coach to fix their defense.

“Let’s be honest, it is why I was brought here,” said Clifford in a video shared on Twitter/X by Nick Carboni of WCNC Charlotte. “And to this point, I have failed miserably. We don’t care about defense all of the time. We’re better than we were in some ways. But we’re a sometimes team. Sometimes we run back, sometimes we don’t. Sometimes we care about guarding the ball, sometimes we don’t. When the ball starts going in the basket a lot of times we don’t care about defense anymore. You’ll never win.

“You might win games. You might have a decent year here and there. You’ll never win a playoff series. You probably wouldn’t win a playoff game. Those are the teams that get to the end of the year and if they are talented enough to get to a playoff series, guess what? They get their asses kicked. You’ve got to defend in the NBA. There has never been a team, never, that has been good and had a playoff run that wasn’t good defensively. And that’s fact. That’s gotta be a big big part of what we do.”

Here's the full quote from Cliff (and a lot more) https://t.co/sipFtV9ljO pic.twitter.com/N1jr5BPu8a

— Nick Carboni (@NickCarboniWCNC) February 8, 2024

You would be hard-pressed to find a more brutally honest assessment of his team from any other coach than this was from Clifford.

The stats this season back up what he is saying, as the Hornets are allowing the sixth-most points in the NBA on the year.

As for what is next for the Hornets, Clifford detailed how he is eager to see the All-Star break for a much-needed reset period coming up for his team.

“We have these four games left or whatever we have here, refresh a little bit, and start again,” Clifford added.

[Nick Carboni on Twitter/X]