Report: Monta Ellis calls team meeting after Pacers' blowout loss
Veteran shooting guard Monta Ellis was not happy with his team after the Indiana Pacers lost 117-95 to the Charlotte Hornets on Wednesday.
Ellis assembled his teammates for a closed-door meeting and demanded more responsibility out of the players for the remainder of the season, Candice Parker of the IndyStar reports.
An unnamed team source told Parker that Ellis' message was that, "We're not doing what we're supposed to do."
The problem for Indiana on Friday was its ordinarily sturdy third-ranked defense. It allowed the struggling Hornets to post an ungodly offensive rating of 123 on Wednesday as they scored 117 points in a relatively slow-paced contest.
The Hornets shot 51.7 percent from the floor and 42.9 percent from deep, up from their season averages of 43 percent and 35.3 percent, respectively.
Wednesday's loss dropped the Pacers to 28-25 - good for sixth in the Eastern Conference. They're performing up to preseason standards, more or less, but they've gone just 16-20 since opening the year at 12-5.
Ellis' backcourt partner Paul George echoed his teammate's frustrations.
"We've just got to get a better focus as a team," George said postgame. "We should have been more dialed in."