Nets pull away from Hornets after LaMelo Ball leaves with ankle injury, win 97-89

By Brian Mahoney

Nic Claxton scored 16 points and the Brooklyn Nets pulled distant aft LaMelo Ball was lost to different ankle injury and bushed the Charlotte Hornets 97-89 connected Monday night.

Cam Johnson and Day’Ron Sharpe each added 14 points for the Nets, who won for the 5th clip successful six games successful the champion agelong of their archetypal play nether Jordi Fernandez. This was their 2nd casual triumph implicit Charlotte during that span.

Moussa Diabate had a career-high 21 points and grabbed 10 rebounds for the Hornets earlier helium was forced retired of the crippled with a close oculus abrasion. Tidjane Salaun scored 16 points.

Ball played the archetypal 10 minutes and the Hornets announced astatine halftime helium wouldn’t play the remainder of the nighttime due to the fact that of close ankle soreness. He had lone precocious returned from a five-game lack with a sprained near ankle.

Takeaways
Hornets: Charlotte is 1-16 successful games Ball has missed this season. Not surprisingly, this crippled got distant from the Hornets erstwhile their constituent defender was mislaid with them trailing by three.

Nets: With 1 crippled to go, the Nets should consciousness bully astir they are playing going into the All-Star break. They’ve present won consecutive games astatine location for the archetypal clip this season.

Key moment
Charlotte trailed by 2 astir 2 1/2 minutes into the 2nd 4th earlier a 9-0 tally gave the Nets a 47-36 pb and it was ne'er adjacent again. Brooklyn led by treble digits astir each the 2nd half.

Key stat
Even though helium missed the past 3 quarters, Ball was inactive tied for the squad pb successful 3-pointers until Salaun made his 2nd of the crippled with 5:34 to play. Charlotte finished 6 for 31 (19%).

Up next
The Nets big Philadelphia connected Wednesday successful their last crippled earlier the All-Star break. The Hornets are astatine Orlando connected Wednesday.