Coby White Sends Blunt Message After Hornets' 27-Turnover Collapse

The Detroit Pistons scored the last 19 points of the third quarter Monday night at Spectrum Center. The Charlotte Hornets never got within 21 points after that and lost 124-91.

Charlotte committed 27 turnovers, and Detroit scored 37 points off them. The total tied the Hornets' season high, according to the team's postgame recap.

Coby White played his first game of the season after missing the first seven with a left calf strain. White said he does not expect Charlotte to go from 20-plus turnovers a night to 5 overnight.

"The main thing, we talk to amongst ourselves," White said. "We're just making sure we don't get too high or too low. This isn't the end of the world. It's one game. We got to continue to get better, continue to grow. But we got to be honest with ourselves. It was a four-point game with five minutes left in the third. And then that four-point game obviously turned into 124 to 91, so."

"We look at that, see how can we get better, see what we can fix," White continued. "Obviously, turnovers are a big problem, something we have to cut down on. But we just kind of give them the ball. I think they have 30-some points off our turnovers, so that's hard to beat a team, especially a Detroit Pistons team, who was obviously the number one seed in the East last year, really good team."

Detroit went 60-22 last season and finished first in the Eastern Conference. The Pistons are 6-1 after their third straight win.

A Dennis Schröder layup with 4:58 left in the third quarter made it 79-75. Cade Cunningham answered with a 25-foot 3-pointer 19 seconds later.

Over the rest of the quarter, the Hornets missed 8 shots and turned the ball over 4 times. Ryan Kalkbrenner had 2 of those turnovers, 37 seconds apart. Cunningham scored 11 points in the run, and 2 of his baskets were a fast-break layup and a fast-break dunk off back-to-back Charlotte giveaways.

Detroit had 16 fast-break points in the third quarter. Charlotte had none.

Eight games in, the Hornets are still a new group with new faces. In those moments, White wants them to come together as a unit and figure out the problem.

"We just got to continue to build the habits we want to build, but also we got to learn from the last couple games we've had," White explained. "One turnover leads to two, two turnovers lead to three. One miscommunication defensively leads to another one, then that leads to another one. So how do we stop the bleeding?"

"In the game, it's going to be turnovers," White continued. "It's going to be miscommunications on both sides of the ball. How do we not let it continue to derail us from what we're trying to do?"

Cunningham finished with a season-high 33 points on 13-of-20 shooting, along with 5 rebounds, 7 assists, and 5 steals. He sat the entire fourth quarter. Duncan Robinson scored 24 points and made 6 of his 9 3-point attempts.

As a team, Detroit shot 57.3% from the field and went 18-of-37 from deep. The Pistons finished with 27 fast-break points to Charlotte's 4.

Through eight games, Charlotte has committed 158 turnovers, the most in the league. The Hornets have committed 82 of them during their current four-game losing streak.

Last Wednesday in Detroit, the Pistons forced 25 turnovers and won 97-89. Hornets coach Charles Lee benched Naz Reid at halftime of that game.

Charlotte also committed 30 turnovers in an Oct. 14 preseason loss at Boston. After Monday's game, Lee said in the team's postgame recap that the Hornets have to "look in the mirror and figure out how we can take care of it a little bit better."

White wants Charlotte to keep playing fast and up-tempo, with the count closer to 13 or 14 than 25.

"It's hard to get the offense going when you don't even get up shots and you keep turning the ball over," White said. "So it's hard to get the offense going when you have 25 turnovers. That's really tough and really challenging. And you don't necessarily have a flow when you do stuff like that. So it'll come."

"I think we have some solid looks tonight when we didn't turn it over, and some looks that didn't fall," White continued. "But it's hard to score points and get a flow offensively if we're averaging however many points off turnovers — well, however many turnovers a game, 20-plus at least."

Charlotte shot 38.1% from the field and 13-of-44 from 3-point range. Brandon Miller led the Hornets with 17 points on 7-of-18 shooting. Naz Reid added 13, and Grayson Allen and Sion James scored 11 apiece.

The Hornets visit the Brooklyn Nets on Wednesday at Barclays Center, with tip-off set for 7:30 p.m. ET. Charlotte won there 110-103 in the Oct. 21 season opener.