Brandon Miller's Career-High 39 Points Power Hornets Past Reunited Davis-Young Wizards

Brandon Miller scored a career-high 39 points on Monday night, lifting the Charlotte Hornets to a 110-103 win over the Washington Wizards at Spectrum Center in a game that offered the first extended look at Washington's reconstructed frontcourt pairing of Anthony Davis and Trae Young.

Miller made 15 of 28 shots, including 5 of 10 from three-point range, and added six rebounds, three steals and two blocks in 36 minutes, according to the official NBA game log. It was one point better than the 38 he scored in a November 2024 overtime win over Detroit, previously the high mark of his career, per a running tally of his career bests kept at Screwball's NBA statistics archive.

The win pushed Charlotte to 3-1 to start the season, tied for the best record in the Southeast Division, while Washington fell to 2-2. Charlotte built its margin in a 35-point second quarter and withstood a late surge from the Wizards, who outscored the Hornets 35-30 in the fourth but ran out of time.

A long way back

Miller arrived in Charlotte as the No. 2 overall pick in the 2023 NBA Draft, taken after a single standout season at Alabama in which he averaged 18.8 points and 8.2 rebounds a game and became the only player to win Southeastern Conference Player of the Year, Freshman of the Year and tournament MVP in the same season. He led the Crimson Tide to the conference's regular-season and tournament titles and a No. 1 overall seed in the NCAA Tournament that year. His rookie and sophomore seasons in Charlotte were defined as much by durability questions as production, culminating in last season's shoulder injury.

Miller's night carried extra weight given how his previous season ended. He missed 13 consecutive games last fall after a left shoulder subluxation, then played through the injury for the remainder of the season with a brace before undergoing surgery in May to address shoulder instability, according to a report from WTOP at the time, which said the Hornets expected a full recovery but offered no firm return date. Monday's performance, in just his fourth game back, was the clearest signal yet that the shoulder is no longer limiting him.

Charlotte got secondary scoring from Naz Reid, who had 18 points and 12 rebounds, and from Grayson Allen, who made 7 of 7 free throws on his way to 15 points. Forward Moussa Diabate controlled the glass with 17 rebounds, 11 of them offensive, helping the Hornets overcome a rough shooting night from point guard Dennis Schroder, who finished 4 of 15 from the field.

Washington's rebuilt frontcourt

For the Wizards, the game was a measure of a pairing that had barely shared the floor until now. Washington acquired Trae Young from the Atlanta Hawks roughly a month before trading for Davis, who arrived from the Dallas Mavericks in an eight-player deal at the February trade deadline, according to NBA.com's report on the trade. Both players were limited by injuries once they got to Washington — Davis by a torn ligament in his left hand, Young by knee and quadriceps issues — and the pairing played only a handful of minutes together before the season ended. A Fox News report on the trade detailed the full return package, which sent Khris Middleton, AJ Johnson, Malaki Branham, Marvin Bagley III and five draft picks back to Dallas. Young signed a four-year, $212 million extension with Washington in June.

On Monday, both looked the part. Davis scored 29 points on 11-of-22 shooting, including 3 of 6 from three-point range, to go with 10 rebounds in 36 minutes. Young ran the offense for 38 minutes, finishing with 22 points and 10 assists against only two turnovers. Rookie wing Kyshawn George added 20 points off the bench, and the Wizards' fourth-quarter push — built largely around George and Young — briefly cut what had been a double-digit Charlotte lead before the clock ran out.

Center Alex Sarr contributed 12 points, six rebounds and two blocks, though his and Davis's plus-minus marks (both minus-5) reflected how much of the damage Charlotte did in the middle two quarters, when the Hornets outscored Washington 61-47.

Miller was drafted specifically to give Charlotte a tall, scoring wing alongside point guard LaMelo Ball, and Monday's performance was the clearest evidence yet that the pairing can carry a game on its own merits rather than potential. The Hornets built their 35-point second quarter on a mix of Miller's perimeter shooting and Diabate's offensive rebounding, a combination that repeatedly extended possessions and wore down a Washington defense that had no answer for either.

What's next

The result keeps Charlotte unbeaten at home through two games this season and hands Washington its second loss in four tries as the Davis-Young pairing continues to find its footing together. For a Wizards franchise that sent four players and five draft picks to Dallas just to acquire Davis, on top of the separate trade for Young, the early individual returns on both stars have been strong even as the team record lags; Monday's result will add to the pressure on Washington's coaching staff to find lineups that let both stars anchor winning basketball together, not just produce gaudy individual numbers in a loss. Both teams remain in the first full week of the 2026-27 regular season, with the real test of the new-look Wizards likely to come once Davis and Young log enough shared minutes to smooth out rotations — a process that, on the evidence of Monday night, is still a work in progress even as the individual numbers impress. For Charlotte, the more immediate question is whether Miller's health holds up over a full season; Monday was only his fourth game back from a surgery that kept him out of the lineup for months.