I've poured over the various sites that give Draft information and put together the players I'd like to see the Hornets bring in for workouts and possibly snag in the Draft if they don't trade the pick.  In accordance with the off-season priority I put up yesterday, I focused mostly on the various big men available late in the first round, then the wings, then the backup guard slot.

The hard part about this is the prospects available this late are so hit and miss.  You can see reasons why they might succeed, but you can see reasons why they'd fail miserably as well.  Guess that's why our pick, on average, produces a useable player 29% of the time.  Yay!

For each player I included where Draft Express feels they will be picked(DX) and where they are ranked on Chad Ford's top 100 players at ESPN.

Big Men(PF/C)
If Marreese Speights or Roy Hibbert fell to us at 27, either would be good as a back up big prospect, I just don't think either of them will.  So here are the big men I think will be available that we should take a look at, ranked in the order I like them right now.

Ryan Andersen, California DX: 31st ESPN: 40th
Andersen is a very good shooter,(49 FG, 41 3pt, 87 FT) and may be the next coming of a forward like Rodney Rogers or maybe Keith Van Horn.  He's proven he's also a very good rebounder, and an adequate defender.  I think he'd be an excellent fit for the second unit, particularly because he's still a young prospect(20), which means he has a good chance to improve even more.

Richard Hendrix, Alabama  DX:33rd ESPN 37th
For a big man with the reputation of being a bruiser, Hendrix rarely turns the ball over, passes decently, and is unselfish.  He's not the most athletic guy around, but he reminds me a little of Brandon Bass without the baseline jumpshot.  I'd say he has a shot to be a solid rebounding big man, maybe in the Paul Millsap mold.

Jason Thompson, Rider DX: 28th  ESPN: 39th
Not well known, Thompson is a fairly aggressive and decently athletic big man, stands at 6'11, and can hit the mid range shot at a nice clip.  I think he'll be a solid backup in the league, and may end up being one of those 10 and 8 guys.  Reminds me physically of PJ Brown, but needs to keep a cooler head, and it will probably take him a few years.

Joey Dorsey, Memphis DX: 47th  ESPN: 42nd
I think this may be a bit of a reach at 27.  Dorsey did a lot of things really well; I love his energy and rebounding and defense, but he's undersized, and unlike David West, he can't shoot.  A lick.  Free Throw percentage is usually a solid indicator of whether a guy will be able to hit an outside shot with consistency.  Dorsey shot 38%.  Ben Wallace made a career without being able to hit a free throw, but I'm not sure Dorsey will ever be able to get an Afro that big.

Wing(SF/SG)
First, I'd love Chris Douglas-Roberts, who the latest ESPN mock draft has coming to us.  However, I've already stumbled across a half-dozen articles saying how great CDR is and how people will be sad to have passed on him.  If the hype machine is already starting, I doubt he'll fall to 27.  Brandon Rush(meh) and Chase Budinger(intriguing) are players that probably won't fall as far as 27 either.  Players who probably will be available at 27:

Courtney Lee, Western Kentucky DX:26 ESPN:35
Lee is a an impressive shooter, firing away at 47% FG, 39% 3pt and 82% from FT in college.  In a lot of ways, he strikes me as similar to Morris Peterson: He can rebound well, is solid defender, and lacks a little of a slashing game.

Shan Foster, Vanderbilt DX: 40th ESPN: 52
Shan is a monster shooter.  52% FG, 47% 3pt and 84% FT.  He may seem as bit of a reach at 27, but the guy is a lot like Rasual Butler, except without all that missing from the three point line.  He could easily play a role as an outlet shooter for Paul and Pargo – something our second unit could use. 

Bill Walker, Kansas State DX: 41 ESPN: 22
I mention Bill because some boards have him coming to us in the draft.  I'm not sold on him at all.  Sure the guy was coming off an injury, but that's his third knee injury.  Regardless, his primary game is as a slasher, and while that can be useful, his ranged shot is not accurate at all.  The Hornets offense requires spacing, and that's part of the reason Desmond Mason didn't work well in it.  Walker probably fits the same bill.

Guard(PG/SG)
I only came up with a couple guards who fall where the Hornets will be drafting on most boards that I'd even consider.  I also had one semi-surprising guy I would love to see get a shot at a Hornets Roster spot.

Mario Chalmers, Kansas DX: 36th ESPN: 24
Chalmers is intelligent, good with the ball, and a solid shooter.  If Pargo left, I would feel fine with Chalmers stepping in as a backup PG, though I'm not sure about his skills as a scorer in the off-guard slot, a role Pargo sometimes fills with panache.

Chris Lofton, Tennessee DX: Undrafted ESPN: 84
Lofton looks like he may go undrafted this off season.  If he does, I hope the Hornets extend him an invitation to training camp.  Lofton had some very good years previously, and showed promise as a combo guard in the league.  He played poorly at the start of this year, but later it was found that he had been fighting cancer during the season.  There are a lot of reasons I'd like to see him get a chance, but they aren't all even sentimental.  I think he has a chance to be a quality NBA player – and I would possibly even suggest considering him as our 27th pick if certain other prospects weren't available. 

Ty Lawson, North Carolina DX: 27th ESPN: 29
Ty has some pretty excellent-looking numbers, but in college the difference in pace between teams can be massive.  North Carolina played at break-neck speed, so Lawson's numbers are a bit inflated.  I like the idea of a Point Guard who wants to run, run, run, but let's be honest.  Other than Julian, who is going to run with him?  Our team is a slow one, and I don't think Lawson would be a great fit.

Of the prospects above, my overall ranking is:

• Ryan Andersen
• Courtney Lee
• Richard Hendrix
• Mario Chalmers
• Jason Thompson
• Shan Foster
• Joey Dorsey
• Chris Lofton
• Ty Lawson
• Bill Walker

The Hornets got the first thing they needed yesterday, when Byron Scott had his contract extended.  Scott has caught more than his fair share of criticism over the last couple years for things as wide-ranging as his comments about liking Oklahoma City to his substitution patterns to claims that he gave up on some players too early.

There is one thing, however, that is undeniable about Byron Scott:  This is his team.  Now, I don't want to confuse what Byron does with what Jeff Bower does.  Bower gets the players, and Scott coaches them, but Scott won't tolerate players that don't work hard or that make lots of mistakes on the defensive end.  Bower knows that, and it has a strong impact on the sort of players the Hornets try to acquire – or trade away.  The results are telling.  This is a team that I love to watch, more than any other Hornets team in the past.  I'm glad Scott will remain.

The next thing the Hornets need is for Chris Paul to sign on the dotted line for his extension.  We can offer him more than any other team can, and he seems to be committed to the Hornets and New Orleans, so I feel fairly confident he will sign. 

What I think remains to be seen is if he'll ask for a shorter, three-year deal like Dwayne Wade and LeBron James, or take the full five year extension allowed by the NBA's Collective Bargaining Agreement.  Why would Paul take a shorter extension, risking a couple years of guaranteed money?  It's due to the way the CBA sets up maximum raises per year for a contract – and the maximum a veteran can be signed to in a year.  I won't bore you with the details, but base salaries for a veteran of 7 years are 5% higher than those players can sign for earlier in their career, so Paul can make more net salary if he becomes a free agent at the start of year 8 and signs a new maximum contract.

Of course, who cares about the money.  Paul needs to be signed to whatever he wants.  And Shinn has already said he'd do that.

On to the rest of the team.  For this post I will be evaluating the roster for what the Hornets need before moving on in later posts to talk about what the Hornets can or should try to get considering their salary constraints.

The starting five is good.  In the 1208 minutes they the were on the court together, they scored 1.15 points per 100 posessions and allowed 1.05.  The sixth man, Pargo, despite flaws that I sometimes have a hard time getting past, actually helped form an even more potent quintet of Paul-Pargo-Stojakovic-West-Chandler, posting an offensive efficiency of 1.19 and defense of 1.03.  That's a pretty potent starting five and sixth man.

The bench is better than it appeared.  All year long it was hammered by pundits as a detriment to the team, when the reality is it on average extended our lead by 1.9 points per game.  Like I've said in  earlier posts, this is due to the second units stellar defense, which allows it to overcome it's abysmal offense, which produced a league worst 96.6 points per posesssion.

So do the Hornets stay put?  No.  Not a chance.  There were nine benches that out produced ours this year.  In order of production, they were: the Pistons, Lakers, Jazz, Nuggets, Celtics, Spurs, Rockets, Magic, and 76ers.  Having a better bench than 20 other teams is nice, but as you can see the teams the Hornets need to gain ground on – Detroit, Boston, LAL and San Antonio – all have better benches.  Much better, in fact: in the case of those four contenders, their benches out-produced the Hornets bench 4 to 1 or better.

To gain ground on those teams, The Hornets need to pick up at least two more bench players.  The ideal bench is to have a backup guard, a backup wing, and a backup big, and let the rest of the roster get spot minutes.  Pargo is decent as the backup guard.  I hope Jeff Bower will make a push to re-sign him if he opts out and then focus on the other two spots this off season.

A backup wing is what Bonzi was supposed to be, but the longer he played, the more lethargic he seemed to get.  "Lethargic" is not how I want to describe a player on my favorite team, so I'd prefer to see him walk this summer(forgive me, munciemug).  Julian Wright has shown the potential to be a good wing, but as of right now, potential is all he's shown.  The Hornets should try and pick up another wingman to push him/cover for him while he's developing.

The backup bigs on this team were terrible.  Ely loved him some turnovers, and hated him some passing.  His rebounding was adequate.  Armstrong questionably outdid Ely by showing even more love for turnovers, less passing, and about the same rebounding.  Andersen didn't show anything at all during his stint.  Of these three, I think Armstrong still has the best potential to be termed 'serviceable', since a player usually takes three years to blossom and he's only just completed his second year.  Ely is in his sixth year and Andersen is 29.  They aren't going to improve much.  That leaves us with a need for a big man, since hoping for a bad player to develop and become useful seems to be a bad gamble to me.

In summary, in order of importance, this would be my list of off-season priorities:

1. Chris Paul's extension
2. Sign/trade/draft for a backup Big man
3. Re-sign Pargo
4. Sign/trade/draft for a backup Wing man

Tomorrow I'll hit the draft and talk about the prospects I like for the team.  Next week I'll make my list of veteran players I'd like to go after either as free agents or in trades.

Just checking in quick to help you freshen up your desktop. Dariusz Ejkiewicz (aka Fartman), has delivered another fine wallpaper, this time inspired by the NBA's "there can only be one" campaign that's been everywhere throughout the playoffs. You'll find the download links below the image.

1280×960 | 1024×768

While we're at it, check out some more of Dariusz's work over at his own site: ejkiewicz.com. You'll also find more of his wallpapers on Hornets Asylum, and the official website of Chris Paul.

Following up on my previous draft post, I wanted to address how the Hornets, as an organization, have done with the draft, and what we can hope from our pick. This year, we only hold the 27th selection of the draft, since our second round pick will be going to Seattle.

In general, the Hornets have done fairly well in the draft. Here are their drafts for the last 15 years, minus the last two, since it's still not entirely clear what's going to happen with Hilton Armstrong and Julian Wright.(though I am worried due to Cedric Simmons and Hilton not showing much yet)

As you can see, the Hornets have consistenly done better than Average in the draft. Their three misses were on Kirk Haston, Greg Graham, and George Zidek. So we can rely on a pretty solid scouting effort by the Hornets staff. Of course, the scouting staff may identify talent, but it has to be on the board in order for the Hornets to take advantage of it, and we are picking 27th. Here are the historical stats for the 27th pick:

Since 1984, there has been only one great player selected at this position, though that one player should be a Hall of Famer: Dennis Rodman, selected in 1986. A few other servicable players were also selected at this position – former Hornet Elden Campbell, Pacer guard Jamaal Tinsley, Spur guard Jacque Vaughn, Denver forward Linas Kleiza, and Laker guard Sasha Vujacic. Outside of those players, the 27th picks have generally lasted about 3 seasons and then quietly left the NBA.

As you can see, our odds of selecting someone who can contribute are mediocre at best. For the last 21 years, 29% of the players picked 27th were contributers to a team, and the other 71% did nothing of note.

For me, the Hornets are right at the edge of being a real Contender for the title. Even with a solid Hornets scouting crew, I'm not sure I'd want to take a 1 in 3 gamble in the draft that I'd get someone useful. I'd rather use the pick as a sweetener to enable us to shed one of our two bad contracts(James, Butler) and get something useful back to strengthen the bench.

With that said, I'll continue to evaluate the prospects that seem likely to fall to us 27th in future posts. And who knows, maybe twenty+ teams will forget about Jerryd Bayless or OJ Mayo and they'll land in our laps.

If you made it to a game at the Arena this past season, you're probably familiar with Mikey. He was the guy busting a lung from the front row of 303. I first met him while waiting for the streetcar to take me to the Hornets-Sonics game back on December 10th. He turned out to be somewhat of a legend, and we've been good friends ever since. Anyways, since Mikey's from New Orleans and he's been down with the Hornets ever since they first moved here, I asked him to write up his memories of the season here at Hornets247. I'll shut up now and let him tell it…

Let me start this off by first saying that I totally
understand that teams play for championships, and thusly, I am due a certain amount of criticism for even writing this. I am an admitted Hornets fan; have been since they moved to my hometown back in 2002. I moved back to New Orleans in August of 2005, just before the storm that changed the landscape of this entire region, and moved the team that I was looking forward to following. I made it a point to support whatever the Hornets did in New Orleans in an effort to let the powers-that-be know that there were fans in this torn and tattered city that cared about the NBA.

I was there for the three games in 2005-06, and the six game package the following season. About the time I was buying my tickets for the 2006-07 "six pack", I heard that the All-Star game was to be played in New Orleans in 2008. I knew that could only mean one thing: The team that I was longing to support was coming home.

As soon as humanly possible, I jumped at the opportunity to purchase a ticket package for the soon-to-again-be New Orleans Hornets. After two years of exile in Oklahoma City, they were coming home.

Since I purchased that six-pack in 2006-07, I was invited to the Draft Party last May. Before that event, I took a hard look at my finances (which I would recommend anyone do if they are thinking about purchasing season tickets for any major sports franchise), and decided that given the right deal, I would be able to afford season tickets. On Draft night I was married up with a sales rep; we'll just call him Julio. He and I talked about the upcoming season, and what we expected. I told him that I wanted two seats because I felt I could always find someone else to fill the second. He gave me a deal in section 303 that I could not refuse. And there I was, a season ticket holder for a major league sports franchise for the first time in my life. Not only that, but I was able to somehow be a part of the team that I had been longing to support for years.

That was also the night the Hornets drafted Julian Wright. Let me go on record to say that I really approved of the pick because of the upside that Julian possessed. Another part of me really wanted to draft Glen Davis because of his LSU roots, and I thought that would be an immediate ticket-seller. Selling Tickets was a major issue in the early days of 2007-08. The journey through this historic season had begun, but I had no idea what this team and this community had in store.

Opening night happened to be Halloween night. I didn't wear anything crazy, although there were some wacky costumes out there. I just had on my usual teal hat, which I continued to wear every single game day. The Bugs were playing the Sacramento Kings, and there was a certain amount of nervous energy at the start of the upcoming season. How was this young team going to play in the first game of their first full season back in the Big Easy? Were they going to be accepted by the fans of New Orleans? What was the attendance going to be? As I entered the stadium, I ran into my friend, Mike, who happens to run the Hornets' Nest. Before the game began, we were greeted to a short speech by Hornets owner, George Shinn. When Shinn took the mic, he was met with mixed reviews. You could actually hear some boos from the crowd. The game quickly turned into a rout as the Kings could never really make a significant run, and the Hornets cruised to a 14-point victory.

Attendance that first night was announced at just over 15,000, way better than I had expected. However, things would most certainly get worse before they got better. November brought some horrible attendance figures, such as the barely 8,300 folks that saw the Allen Iverson-less Sixers, and the T-Wolves a few weeks later. Through the first full month of the season, the Hornets record stood at 11-6, but it was pretty evident that the New Orleans fan base had not gotten the message.

It was clear to me at that point that the 07-08 season would be a test of legitimacy. Are the Hornets a legitimate team? Is Byron Scott a legitimate head coach? Is Chris Paul a legitimate superstar in the making? Is New Orleans a legitimate NBA city?

December started with a bang as the Hornets defeated the Dallas Mavericks in an overtime thriller, capped off by a Peja Stojakovic shot that was worthy of his likeness parading around on giant popsicle sticks. It was a huge game, and a huge moment. The Hornets had once again answered the bell of legitimacy by defeating a team that had beaten them 21 consecutive times before. Chris Paul answered some of his critics, again, to the tune of 33 points and 12 dimes. Attendance for this game was a shade over 12,000, but at the time, that was a GOOD night!

Next in December came the Pistons, a top-tier team, and 10,000 showed up to witness that event. This was not a good sign. The lone bright spots of the month attendance-wise were the Phoenix game, and when Lebron brought his Cavs to town for the Hornets first sellout of the season. Yes, that's right: the first sellout was on December 29, 2007. That's game 14 of 41.

It appeared as if the city of New Orleans was either slow to warm to the Hornets, or had turned a blind eye to them. My friends and I were looking for reasons why. The Hornets ended the 2007 calendar year with a loss to the Toronto Raptors, but their record was a respectable 20-11. Why weren't people coming? Was it because the Saints and LSU were still playing football? To put it a different way, the Hornets played the Memphis Grizzlies in New Orleans Arena on the same that the 1A and 2A high school football state championships were being played in the Dome. Attendance to the Hornets game was barely over 10,000. Attendance to the state championship games was almost 30,000 (although one of those teams WAS John Curtis).

The Hornets were clearly looking like the odd man out. I remember listening to a broadcast on WWL, a local radio station, when the host asked how people felt about the Hornets. I probably heard seven or eight responses to that question, and not a single caller had been to a game. When asked if they would attend a game, they all declined to say yes. Even the host himself admitted he had never been to a game because he wasn't "a basketball person". It was like the city was turning against their prodigal basketball team.

Then came something that was so unexpected, so out of left field, we didn't even know what to make of it at first. George Shinn had re-negotiated his deal with New Orleans and the State of Louisiana that included an attendance "out clause". He was immediately made public enemy number one. When I asked folks if they were going to games, they immediately cited this attendance benchmark as the reason they wouldn't go see the team play. "Why bother? They are just gonna move next year anyway. I won't waste my money on that." Yet this attendance benchmark was a stroke of genius. Shinn had issued a challenge to this city. His timing was perfect, because while folks were raking his name over the coals, and probably making little George Shinn Voo Doo dolls, the Hornets were in the midst of a nine-game win streak. Additionally, right around the corner was the single event that changed the hearts and minds of New Oleanians for good.

The NBA All-Star game was rapidly approaching, but in the midst of the Hornets longest winning streak of the season, they had some legitimizing of their own to do. Both Chris Paul and David West were named to the Western Conference All-Star Team. That moment, coupled with a convincing win in San Antonio, and a double-overtime win in Phoenix that was probably the most amazing game of the regular season, further cemented the Hornets as a team on the rise.

Up to this point in the season-long battle for legitimacy, many of the Hornets were proving themselves. Byron Scott was in the running for the head coach of the Western All-Star team, and you even started to hear grumblings about Coach of the Year. Chris Paul was just flat out dominating everybody, drawing comparisons to the likes of Kevin Johnson, Tiny Archibald, and Isiah Thomas. David West, on the other hand, was causing us here at the 247 to have various conversations about what his nickname should be. Let's not forget about Peja though. He was also locked in his own battle for legitimacy. After playing only thirteen games the previous season, there had been questions about how his health would hold up. It would seem he bounced back, having made the All-Star three-point shooting contest. That only left one element remaining in this whole equation to prove themselves: the fans.

I signed up to be a volunteer at the All-Star Jam Session, and when I arrived at the orientation meeting, I was astonished at the turnout. There were people everywhere. The NBA had come to town, talking big talk about re-energizing this area. Let me just tell you… they walked the walk too. The NBA took this city by force, blitzkreiging this community with signage and special events. I remember going to a Hornets radio show at Gordon Biersch, on Thursday night before the big game, with ole Ron Hitley, and who is sitting ten feet from us only OSCAR FREAKING ROBERTSON!

I also got to witness Chris Paul judge a dunk contest at the Jam Session, and had Chris Tucker come through my attraction. It was an amazing week, capped off by an amazing All-Star game. In the fourth quarter of the main event, Byron Scott let the young guys show their stuff. Chris Paul and Brandon Roy did not disappoint. Lebron James won the day with the dunk to end all dunks, but CP3 won the heart of a city that night.

The word was out. Everybody wanted to know who this Chris Paul was. It was almost like the city looked in the mirror and said a collective "What the hell were we thinking?!" Earlier in the season I would try to talk about the Hornets at work, and usually got the cold shoulder. After the All-Star game, all of a sudden I was showered with questions about the team. I was "Hornet Guy", or "The Yelling Guy".

The attendance started to climb too, little by little. I recall a game recap that Ron did, but I don't remember what game it was [Ron's note: it was this one]. I can still see the typed words in my mind's eye… the words "We turned a corner tonight". You could almost feel it. The city woke up, smelled the coffee, hell, insert cliche here!

Finally the city started to show signs of its legitimacy too. When I'd leave for work in the morning wearing my teal hat, folks near my home now knew what significance it held. I would get a "Go Hornets!" as I got into my truck to head to work. I'd get a "Game day today baby. YEAH!" or "When does the game come on?" whenever I wore my hat to work.

To us here in the Easy, the Hornets were legitimate. The type of character the team possessed, the enthusiasm that the young men played with, it was all on display at the New Orleans Arena. In fact, it had been there all season, but now people were getting to see it for themselves. All you had to do, though, was take one look at a national newspaper, national sports website, or listen to a national sports radio show, and you knew that the Hornets hadn't earned any national credibility.

After the All-Star Break, all the national know-it-alls predicted the inevitable downturn for the Hornets. None of them (except John Hollinger) thought the Hornets could sustain. The Bees opened the second half of their season with the Dallas Mavericks, and their new point guard, Jason Kidd, who Chris Paul promptly used and abused with 31 points and 11 assists.

Then the Hornets lost their next three straight, and you could hear it all over the airwaves; "They're done.", "They were a nice story, but it had to catch up to them eventually.", "They are too young and too inexperienced." It was too late though, national media, New Orleans was behind this team. Average attendance for the last five home games in February, after the All-Star break, was 16,264. One of those five was the infamous Wizards game that I still don't want to talk about to this day, and barely 11,250 saw that one.

I'll admit, even I looked at the Hornets schedule after the All-Star break and thought, "Man, that's a meat grinder." In the beginning of the season, I predicted that if the Bees stayed healthy, we would win 46 games. After the All-Star break, I upped my prediction to 51.

The Hornets stumbled a bit coming out of February, but didn't falter. Then came the month of March; two games against the Celtics and Rockets, a game against the Lakers, the Spurs, and Pistons, and we ended the month in the midst of the longest road trip of the season. EVERYONE thought we would fall out of the playoff picture. All the Hornets did was split with the Celtics and Rockets, beat the daylights out of the Lakers and Spurs, and lose to Detroit, albeit without David West. Even Josh Childress, Atlanta Hawks reserve swingman (at least one of them) showed his love for the Hornets; well, Tyson Chandler at least.

All the fans did in March was continue to flood through the turnstiles at New Orleans Arena. We had indeed turned a corner. Sometimes I would just sit back in my chair, look around at the newly packed New Orleans Arena, and just smile. I'd think to myself, "This is what NBA basketball is all about."

At the end of March / beginning of April came the road trip. It was a six-game journey that took our beloved Bugs through four of the top five teams in the East at the time. The end result was a 5-1 record, and another team record was broken. Some friends and I were crazy enough to greet the team at the Airport when they made their triumphant return. You can see the photos of that night here on the 247. (Please, don't adjust your computer; that really IS Chris Paul pausing for a photo op with us.)

You know, sometimes I really enjoy being wrong. As I previously stated, I predicted the Hornets would win 46 games, then 51. Well I was wrong twice, because when it was all said and done, our record was 56-26. That was good enough for the Southwest title, and a number two seed in the West heading into the playoffs. Still, the season-long battle for legitimacy was not over.

How was this young team going to react to being on the big stage? Surely their inexperience would do them in? Well, no, it didn't do them in, and don't call me Shirley. My playoff goals for the Hornets were simple: Learn as much as you can, protect home court at all costs, and learn how to win a road game.

I believe the boys learned a lot from this year's playoffs. They went 6-1 at home, with the only loss coming against the Champs in Game 7 of the second round. The Bugs also defeated the Mavericks in the American Airlines Center, their first victory ever in that building. Chris Paul and David West decided to put the entire NBA on alert, using the playoffs as their personal coming-out party. Byron Scott, much maligned in national media circles since his termination in New Jersey, had vindicated himself, and won the Coach of the Year award. More importantly, he earned the unwavering respect of his players. New Orleans was transformed from an apathetic, almost comatose fan base into one of the best places to see an NBA game played at its highest level.

And in the end, as our beloved Hornets were about to go down in defeat at the hands of the defending Champs, New Orleans once again stood tall, giving our Bees a standing ovation as thanks for one of the most terrific sports experiences the city had ever witnessed. There I was, clapping along with thousands of others. Sure I was sad that it was over, but at the same time I couldn't wipe the smile from my face. The city and the Hornets went down fighting in that Game 7, but I was smiling because I knew that we had won our legitimacy.

Dale "Mikey" Corcoran

First off, if you haven't read it, go read Ron's last post about his Memories of the season.  If you don't, this post will explode.  Seriously.  Be afraid.  Now, on to the post-season:

The first step of any off-season is the Draft.  As a long-time lover of the draft and the evaluation process that leads up to it, I've spent some time in the past talking about it.  Last night was the Draft Lottery, where the League determines whom amongst the 14 teams that missed the playoffs would gets the top picks of the Draft.(Chicago won it, with only a 1.7% chance of getting it) Happily, the Hornets are not in the lottery.  Sadly, that means we probably aren't likely to get much in the draft.  At my old blog, I generated two posts regarding the draft, and I'm going to re-introduce them here over the next few days before moving on to evaluating the team for the offseason.  I apologize if you've read it before.

An Evaluation of Draft Picks and Their Value

How is this useful?  The Hornets will own the 27th pick of the draft this year.  With this information we can determine if its worth keeping, what we should expect to get in return for it should we trade it, and what should we expect to get if we use it.

To determine the value of a pick, I determined an overall ranking based loosely on the Wages of Wins Win Score(My favorite player eval score) and applied it to all the players who have been taken in the drafts since 1984.  I also cut off my evaluation of players after 2005 since most players don't reach their true level of play until their third season.  Finally I jammed those numbers into a simple Grade ranking. Below is what each grade means, and I give an example player the Hornets drafted.

• N/A – the player never logged an NBA minute. (Tim Pickett, Andrew Betts)
• F – The player never developed and earned only minor garbage time minutes. (Kirk Haston, Marcus Vinicius)
• D – A substitute – possibly in the rotation, but a 7th or 8th man at best.(Lee Nailon, man we had him STARTING?)
• C – A fringe starter, good backup.(Ricky Davis, JR Smith)
• B – A good starter (David West, Jamaal Magloire)
• A – A star(Baron Davis, Chris Paul)

Interestingly enough, when I was doing my analysis, the picks fell rather logically into groups based on their average rating so I’ve collated those groups in the below table and then determined the % chance of receiving each classification of player.

So what does this tell us? The 1st pick is worth a lot more than any other pick, period. With the 1st pick of the draft, there is a 70% chance to land a major player. As soon as the pick drops to any of the spots between 2nd and 6th, the team becomes just as likely to get a 6th man as they are to get a star. The team's odds of getting a bust has also now increased to 28%. That's really significant: One out of every four players taken 2 through 6 in the draft is likely to be a bust. That means at least one(and maybe 2) of the following players taken in last year’s draft will probably never pan out: Kevin Durant, Al Horford, Mike Conley, Jeff Green, Yi Jianlin.

I should also note there is no significant difference between picking 2nd and picking 6th. The players taken in those spots produce almost equally in the NBA.

The next group are Picks 7-11. As you can see, the odds of picking up a starting-caliber player or better has dropped to less than one in three. Still, with one of these picks, there is a great chance of landing a useful player(54%), and better than a 6% chance you'll get a star.

Picks 12-19 are where the numbers start bottoming out. While still likely to land a rotation player, the chance of getting a star is small.  You are also more likely to get a total bust(37%) than you are to get a starter.(17%)

20-28 continues the trend, with more players falling into the grades D and F(67%) though it is still possible to land a good player.  The odds are that one of the players picked in this range will at least be a starter, and another one will land in a rotation.  The rest?  Not so good.

Picks 29 through 38 are essentially the last chance to get anyone worth drafting. Almost half the players taken here will stick with a team for a couple years and a rare few will pan out and be good.(5%) The bad news is a team is more likely(17%) to have the draft pick never play an NBA minute than become a valuable contributer to the team.(15%)

Players taken after 38 are pretty much throw-aways. Almost half will never play in the NBA, and a bare 2% will ever be considered good. If the team digs up a rotation sub, they've beaten the odds.

For me, it started on Wednesday, December 5th.

That night at the Arena, we got blown out by the Pistons with only 10,312 people in the stands, most of them not at all convinced that this NBA thing was going to last in Louisiana. The atmosphere was pretty good despite the loss. Cheap tickets, Dance Cam, and Honeybees in the flesh. Later I managed to sneak down courtside and shake the hand of George Shinn as the fourth quarter expired, telling him his Hornets were the reason I'd moved my entire life all the way to New Orleans just three days prior. He seemed amused by that.

Two days later, I was back at the Hive to witness my first Hornets' victory. It was a closer game than it had to be against the visiting Grizzlies, but Chris Paul broke their hearts and got mine pumping when he ripped through the lane and dropped the gamer just 1.8 seconds shy of the overtime buzzer. Goosebumps.

I was getting to every game after that, eventually committing to season tickets. I'd usually ride the streetcar down St. Charles, hop off at Girod and make the short walk to the Arena. Met some good people on those trips, and soon started tagging along to Gordon Biersch for postgame, listening to Joe Block manning the airwaves and occasionally getting wasted after the big wins. Good memories, hazy as they were.

Victories over Phoenix and Cleveland were the highs in December, but January was when everything really took off. The Saints had just wrapped up another disappointing season, and the Hornets were primed to step in and provide therapy for the sports fans of New Orleans. By the time the calendar flipped to February we'd racked up twelve wins and just two losses on the hardwood, including a nine-game winning streak that really started the city buzzing. The peak of that streak was on a Monday night at the Arena against the Denver Nuggets, when 15,601 fans showed up to see Chris Paul deliver a 23-17-9 performance and lead the Hornets to 24-point victory. The corner had been turned. The city was convinced. These Hornets were for real.

Of course, it took the rest of the country a little longer to realize. Our Hornets had blown out the Spurs in San Antonio just two days before that Nuggets game. America had shrugged. Fast forward to a day after Mardi Gras and the Hornets found themselves in a double-OT thriller in Phoenix, when Peja Stojakovic threw in an impossible shot at the sixth buzzer to end the madness. America clapped politely.

Then came All-Star weekend, and New Orleans finally got the love it deserved. We handled the event like Las Vegas couldn't, and convinced the world that not only did New Orleans still have serious soul, but it also had a pair of serious ballers on that All-Star squad, and more where they came from.

That made for one crazy stretch run, as the Hornets battled to stay atop the Western Conference and Chris Paul continued his ambush of Kobe, KG and LeBron to earn consideration as the league's MVP. We toppled the Spurs, Lakers and Celtics ten days apart in March, Byron Scott's men now playing to consistent sellout crowds, each one louder and more passionate than the last. The Hornets took to the road and won five of six as April came upon us. The Western Conference title was ours for the taking, but some late slippage saw the Lakers swoop in and steal it.

We didn't care. Give us our Southwest Division banner, a city now hopelessly in love with this team, and a first round playoff dance with the Dallas Mavericks. Yeah, those same Dallas Mavericks we hadn't beaten on the road since about the time Byron wore short shorts. Second seed, but we were the underdogs. Obviously America needed further convincing.

And so it began. Jerry Stackhouse read from his sucker book as Chris Paul left the defense shook. That would be David West going toe-to-toe and finger-to-face with the reigning MVP, Tyson Chandler crushing oops, and Peja heads circling the Arena. We were up 2-0 before the Mavs knew what hit 'em, then stole one on the road as Jason Kidd lost his cool. His punishment for the attempted assassination of Jannero Pargo: watch Byron get his redemption trophy, then go home for the Summer. Meanwhile, the Hornets advanced.

New Orleans fully fanned up and ready to explode, we welcomed the Spurs to the Hive, 18,000 strong and dressed in gold. Two games, two blowouts, and the defending champs were on the ropes. Bruce Bowen couldn't stop Chris Paul. Tim Duncan had malfunctioned. Serbsicles were everywhere. Then we flipped to San Antonio and the third quarter wasn't our friend anymore. Popovich adjusted and Duncan deleted the virus. It was all square coming back to the Crescent City, with the Spurs seemingly in control. Turned out it was David West's time to shine, as he dropped a godly 38 and 14 with a mortal spine. The Hornets won, the series made no sense, and we were left with two shots at a spot in the Conference Finals. A month before, there was me thinking that the Hornets could not be more loved in New Orleans. I was wrong. After that win, the hype was at an all-time high.

Game 6 followed the erratic script. The home team dominated the third and cruised the fourth. Robert Horry came up villainous. David West barely got up at all. It would take a Game 7 to decide the series, the biggest game in franchise history, and we had three whole days to think about it.

…

Some say we didn't believe. The crowd was nervous, the Spurs played to win while we played not to lose. Maybe. For the first time in seven games, the visitors owned the third quarter, building up a 15-point lead as we entered the final frame. The crowd remained loud and boisterous, but between the roars you could just about hear the sound of 18,000 hearts breaking. We couldn't go out like this.

And we didn't. Sure, we lost the game, but not before we scared the living shit out of those Spurs. Final minute of a Game 7 against the defending champs, and we were right there. No shame in that, and the crowd full of newborn basketball fans knew it, too. As the final seconds ticked off the clock, the season decidedly over, enough people were left in the stands to put that December 5th crowd to shame. We finished it out with a standing ovation for a magical season, knowing we have many more ahead of us here in New Orleans. And finally, it seems the rest of the world knows that, too.

…

I sat back down as the crowd filed out of Game 7, watching the memories of the past five months flash by on the big screen. Fifteen, maybe twenty minutes later, after the screen had gone black, the music had stopped and a second security dude had told me to get the hell out, I was finally ready to leave. As is the case with a great movie, I just couldn't do it until I'd watched those credits roll.

So the Spurs came up big and got the Game 7 win over our Hornets here in New Orleans last night. Four losses in five games to end your season is tough to swallow, but it was a great ride nonetheless. For the last time this season, here's your news wrap…

We'll open it up with John DeShazier of the Times-Picayune…

• Destiny smiled at the Hornets one final time Monday night at the New Orleans Arena.

  This time, though, she had a front tooth missing and a couple of cavities in the back — which is about as pretty as it got for the Hornets in Game 7 of the Western Conference semifinals, a 91-82 loss in which San Antonio finally quieted the Hornets, their fans and their most successful season.

• "Tremendous team," Spurs forward Tim Duncan said of the Hornets, after finishing with 16 points and 14 rebounds. "They're young, they're incredibly talented. They have an unbelievable leader in Chris Paul.

  "A lot of credit to those guys. Just a tremendous team."

• "I don't think there's any doubt their time will come," Spurs coach Gregg Popovich said. "They were really something else, and we were very fortunate."

Marc Stein at ESPN.com…

• It took until the final game and 17th day of this second-round series for the heartbroken locals to get their first glimpse of them, but the execution masters from the Alamo City duly arrived for this Game 7, snuffing out the Hornets and their storybook season with a 91-82 victory that sends San Antonio into a Western Conference finals showdown with old friends Kobe Bryant, Derek Fisher and Phil Jackson.

  It was a prototypical performance from the Spurs' Uglyball manual. It was the sort of professional clampdown that will inevitably generate widespread shrugs from folks out there that were smitten by the irresistible Chris Paul and hoping for something different: Namely CP3 dueling Kobe for a spot in the NBA Finals.

• The win also sealed the Spurs' first-ever comebacks from series deficits of 2-0 and 3-2 … and established them as just the 14th team in league history out of a whopping 213 to win a Game 7 on the road.

John Hollinger says the long bombs made all the difference in this one…

• What changed was a miserable 15-for-40 shooting effort by New Orleans.

  The one that will particularly haunt them is a wide-open triple in the corner by Jannero Pargo with 1:07 left that could have tied the game at 83. Instead he front-rimmed it, Tim Duncan got the rebound, and San Antonio scored on a Tony Parker jumper at the other end. The Hornets never threatened again.

  "When I got that rebound and saw JP ahead of me I was like man, lights out," Chris Paul said.

More thoughts on that miss from CP in the Baton Rouge Advocate…

• "It looked good," Paul said of Pargo's jumper. "If we had that play 10 times I'd give him the ball every time. If he wasn't for him we wouldn't have had a chance at that point."

And words from Pargo on the same thing, courtesy of Joseph Schiefelbein in the Baton Rouge Advocate…

• "Good look. I wish I had that look over again," Pargo said. "CP hit me right in the right spot. I had two guys running at me, but I had enough time to get the shot off. I felt good about it. I just left it a little bit too short… Great look. Great look. I wish I had the chance over again… But I can't do anything about it now."

• "Frustrating," Pargo said. "We really felt we had a great shot at winning the championship. We came up short against the defending champions."

Actually, a do-over might not help much, since Pargo had missed his previous thirteen shots from that side of the floor. Henry Abbott tells it over at TrueHoop…

• Remember when Jannero Pargo missed the big 3-pointer from the left corner that would have tied it? The key word there may be "left." According to NBA.com's Hot Spots, over the last five games, Pargo was 7-15 from all areas on the right of the floor, and 0-13 from the left.

Of course, after Pargo missed that shot, Tony Parker came down and sank a dagger J to put the Spurs up 5 with 50 seconds left. Mike Monroe tells us how that play came to pass…

• Parker was actually the second option on the play, but he ended up with the ball, and Popovich was fine with that.

  "I ran 'wedge roll' for Manu," Popovich said, "because I wanted him to get to the free-throw line, or get the ball to Tony because he's got some real big guts. He'll miss five shots in a row, but at the end of a game, he'll take a shot and make it. He's done it before.

  "He came off that pick and just knocked it down. That took it from three (points) to five. I told the team: Biggest shot of the game."

From Mike Finger in the Express-News…

• When Finley and Horry hit their shots, it was as if those were precisely the moments the Spurs had in mind when they decided the pair could help them win championships. As for the Hornets?

  "The only guy over there who has a ring is (Jannero) Pargo, and he was trying to do it all," Horry said of New Orleans' backup point guard. "You can't do that."

Let's back it up for just a minute, to that article from Schiefelbein in The Advocate. A couple more good quotes in there…

• Center Tyson Chandler, always so upbeat, was red-eyed in the locker room afterward.

  "You just grow to respect the guy sitting next to you," Chandler said. "I've never myself been a part of a team like this, where every guy wants it as bad as the other guy, and every guy is willing to put in the work.

  "When it comes to an end, it's just tough to accept. It's over. That guy may not be here next year, and that's hard to swallow."

• "You play all year long," Stojakovic said. "You practice. A lot of things go through your mind, and everything ends in one game. It's very tough. But we can only be proud of ourselves."

Jim Eichenhofer wraps it up over at The Official…

• With a chance to advance to the conference finals for the first time in the team's 20-year history, New Orleans played perhaps its poorest offensive game of the postseason. The Hornets were respectable at the defensive end against the defending champions, but a major offensive letdown resulted in a 40.2 percent night from the field. Give San Antonio credit for doing a great job of limiting New Orleans' transition game and forcing the Hornets to work for every basket — the first time that happened in the four series games played in the Big Easy. But if the Hornets choose to watch the film of this game, they will rue the stream of open shots they missed — looks that seemed to find the bottom of the net for the vast majority of the 2007-08 season.

  "We felt we played solid enough defensively," said David West, who went 8-for-19 and scored a team-high 20 points. "We just hit a bad spurt where we couldn't make any baskets."

From John Schuhmann over at NBA.com…

• Chalk one up to experience. Or chalk it up to a Spurs system that's meant to win playoff games. San Antonio doesn't win pretty. They made just four shots in the final quarter tonight, but that's all they needed.

Over at Pounding the Rock, Matthew Powell also chalks this one up to experience…

• The Spurs experience wasn't evident in the quality of their play, but it was obvious in how they played. The Big Three combined to shoot 18-53 with nine turnovers, but they played energetic and determined basketball all night. They never looked worried or doubtful. Was it arrogance? No, it was knowing the danger and futility of doubt.

  The Hornets, meanwhile, seemed to linger on the fringes of the game, like they expected their youth, exuberance, and the fact that 99% of NBA fans were rooting for them to be enough.

From Peter Finney in the Times-Picayune…

• "The answer for us was defense," Spurs Coach Gregg Popovich said. "We changed defenses more tonight to keep them off balance. And I think it helped us."

  "San Antonio is a class act," said Hornets Coach Byron Scott, who watched his team become one of the biggest surprises of the season. "That's why we aspire to be like them. Tonight some of our good shots just wouldn't fall. Tonight we gave a good team too many second chances."

  After closing out with 18 points and 14 assists, Chris Paul said he'll miss seeing "all those yellow shirts and white shirts in the stands. From now on, our sights will be on one thing: winning a championship."

  "We just didn't have an answer tonight," said David West, who started strong and finished with 20 points. "We got beat to too many rebounds and loose balls. But you've got to hand it to the Spurs. You've got to give them credit."

From Jeff McDonald in the Express-News…

• Spurs coach Gregg Popovich was the first to the postgame interview room Monday night. He walked to his customary seat in front of the microphone, in front of the ubiquitous blue NBA backdrop.

  Then, perhaps for the first time all night, he exhaled.

  "I'm sure glad that's over," Popovich said finally.

Also in the Express-News, Buck Harvey dedicates the series win to the Spurs head coach…

• This one goes to Gregg Popovich.

  This one goes to the guy who complained about the refs for the first time last week. Who hacked every poor foul shooter who came within reach the last month. And who made the New Orleans media wonder if there is such a thing as a smart question.

  This one goes to someone who doesn't believe in mathematical silliness (really, only 13.2 percent of teams have ever won Game 7 on the road?). This one goes to the coach of the series who continues to eliminate coaches of the year. This one goes to Phil Jackson's spiritual opposite.

  This one?

  He beat the Hornets because they played at his pace, because he got the ball in the right places — and because he switched defenses as no one does.

X's and O's has the usual video breakdown to accompany their Game 7 recap, noting that the Spurs handling of the Hornets' double teams was key. Here's the intro from that blog post…

• It was a different kind of Game 7 tonight between the Spurs and the Hornets. There was a nervous feeling from the start of it and instead of a confident Hornets team playing as if they were the better team (at least more talented), they played tentative and were afraid of taking the big shots until their backs were pinned against the wall. The Hornets played not to lose as opposed to playing to win.

Bits and pieces from John Reid in the Times-Picayune…

• Paul had made or assisted on 53.4 percent of his team's field goals during the playoffs, the highest percentage for any player in NBA history through the first nine postseason games of his career.

  When he fouled out with 20 seconds remaining, the crowd gave Paul a standing ovation.

• The Hornets achieved their 13th consecutive sellout Monday with an announced crowd of 18,235, their 20th of the season. Saints Coach Sean Payton, quarterback Drew Brees and cornerback Mike McKenzie all sat in the same row near the Hornets' bench. Also among the crowd was rapper Bow Wow, who attended his second Hornets' playoff game at the Arena, and singer-producer Brian McKnight.

  Actor Forrest Whitaker sat in a courtside seat next to Hornets majority owner George Shinn, who thanked the fans for their support after the game.

  "I couldn't be any more happier for our team," Shinn said. "Unfortunately, it didn't work our way tonight, but we had a great season."

• For the fourth time in the series, small forward Peja Stojakovic did not score in double figures. He could not avoid another bad start, missing nine of his first 12 attempts. Stojakovic had three consecutive games of not scoring in double figures before scoring 13 points last Thursday.

  Stojakovic made three of 11 shots Monday night for seven points.

• Before Monday's game, white T-shirts were placed on every seat at the Arena.

  In Games 1 and 5, the Hornets issued gold T-shirts to every fan.

  "We switched because there was no gold T-shirts left in the country, so we switched to another color," said Matt Biggers, the Hornets' vice president of marketing. "We were considering doing it anyway."

J.E. Skeets ain't happy about that last bullet…

• Bah! You were considering doing it anyway? Well, that's why the Hornets lost then! Rule #472 of NBA Playoff basketball: Don't ever mess with lucky laundry. Ever. Everyone knows that.

Also from Ball Don't Lie, here's a few thoughts from Kelly Dwyer…

• Stojakovic's run of good health this season seems more like a fluke than a sign of things to come, and the Hornets would be wise to dump him and the three years and 40 million bucks he has left on his contract for pennies on the dollar. It might mean the Hornets take a step back and lose a few more games this year, but it would likely be a penny-foolish and pound-wise move that would pay off eventually.

• You can't argue with Pargo's production, points count, and he did bring them back. But he also made it so Peja, West, and even Chris Paul were a little cold down the stretch, mainly because they barely touched the ball with Pargo dominating it so much. I'm not going to blame the guy that brought New Orleans back for the loss; but had New Orleans made its run based on team ball with Paul handling things, that four-point deficit with three minutes to go would have probably turned into a Hornet victory, rather than a nine-point loss.
• And thanks to the Hornets. To this objective observer, they were easily this league's biggest breath of fresh air in 2007-08…

  This is a squad that we assumed would win half its games, a mark they should feel proud of, and instead we're talking about New Orleans on May 20th, after a Game 7 loss to the defending champs, and treating it as a disappointment. That's a bit of a step up. And it was pretty sweet to watch.

Bradley Handwerger has conflicting quotes from Pargo and Peterson over at WWLTV.com…

• "We were a little jittery," Hornets sixth man Jannero Pargo said. "They came out and were making shots. They made 12 3-pointers tonight. We made four. That's a lot of points right there.

  "Just experience. They've been here before. They were just taking their time and knocking down shots. We haven't been here before, were a little jittery and a little short on our shots."

  Yet, Morris Peterson refused to use that as an excuse.

  "We can make an excuse about the experience factor and things like that, but at the end of the day, we went out and played basketball," Peterson said. "We had a chance to win. That's how we're going to look at it."

In a separate article, Handwerger writes about rebounding making a big difference in Game 7…

• The Spurs outrebounded the Hornets 51-42 and in so doing, eliminated New Orleans from the NBA playoffs with a 91-82 win. San Antonio became the third team to win on the road in the conference semifinals round of the postseason.

  "All series long, the team that dominated the boards won the games," Scott said. "Tonight, they outworked us. They ran down loose rebounds. If you give a team like that second and third opportunities, they're going to score."

A couple bullets from the game notes over at the Hornets Courtside Live Blog…

• In the 11 match-ups between the Hornets and Spurs this season, including regular and post-season games, the team that has won the battle of the board has come out on top… the Spurs have won six of the 11 games between the two teams.

• Robert Horry played in his ninth Game 7 appearance in tonight's game, ranking him second in NBA playoff history… Bill Russell holds the record for Game 7's played with 10.

John Hollinger writes about the Hornets bench woes in the Spurs series…

• Even on this night, the Hornets got shockingly little from the subs. While Pargo snapped out of a series-long shooting slump with his late burst, only two other Hornets got off the pine, and they combined for just one point. Overall, the bench was 6-for-19 from the floor with just one assist.

  "Terrible" was Pargo's description of the bench play in the series, and he included himself in that comment. "We didn't come to play at all. Six games, we didn't show up. That's something we've got to get better at next year."

• Melvin Ely supplanted Hilton Armstrong as the backup center after the Dallas series, but he only made four baskets the entire series and had 11 rebounds in 80 minutes.
• "Maybe if our bench had played better… " Scott allowed when discussing keys to the series after the defeat, and he's right.

At The Hive wraps it up. Here's a slice…

• For all his late-game shots, General Pargo registered a team worst -10. Which to me, makes total sense. He came in, he chucked, he made a few, then chucked some more while Paul, West, and Peja all looked on without a word. Julian Wright did not play. Let me repeat that again. Julian Wright did not play. With Mo-Pete and Predrag a combined 5-18 from the floor, Julian Wright did not play. Ugh.

James Varney has a bunch of notes in the Times-Picayune, including one about the welcome Robert Horry received last night…

• As it happens, the crowd rained relatively little disgust toward Horry when he started the second period. But with 6:07 remaining, the crowd gave Hornets forward Morris Peterson a big hand when he sent Horry sprawling near the Spurs' bench as the two chased a loose rebound. And when Horry got whistled for a foul on the Hornets' subsequent possession, the crowd gave it to him in no uncertain fashion.

Some quotes courtesy of Glenn Guilbeau in the Shreveport Times…

• "Obviously, we didn't have our best stuff, but I'm very proud of this team and this organization," Scott said. "I told them I'm very proud of the way they played all season long. You don't go from not making the playoffs to winning the championship in one year. It doesn't work that way. I also told them I want them to remember how they feel right now. We're going to have some scar tissue that we'll have to learn from."

• "The city of New Orleans, the people, they made this season unbelievably special for us," said Paul, who was called "Our MVP," on a video during a game break. "We're really upset that we lost, but I think the thing that hurts the most is, it's summer now. We don't get to hear our fans going nuts and stuff. We've got to wait a few months before we can hear all that again, and that hurts so bad."

Kids, earmuffs please. Hornets Hype ain't happy…

• Fuck the Spurs. I'm sorry. I know already how most of the Hornets blogosphere will react to this, let alone the rest of the country. But I don't care. It's my blog. I was there. And this is my opinion. My take. Two games in a row were decided by refs, when the Hornets were up 3-2. You say the Hornets lost it, but when they couldn't get a call on their OWN HOME FLOOR, you've got to be fucking kidding me.

Some excerpts from David Gladow over at NOLA.com…

• Worthy of praise was the two teams' composure. After Robert Horry's late-game foul on David West in Game 6, plenty of people speculated that this thing could become a blood bath. But there were no ugly brawls in this one. Not even close. For all the talk of bruised feelings, these teams were remarkably restrained and even respectful of one another. Much ado about nothing? When it came to the subject of Horry-gate, absolutely. The Spurs simply came out and won the game with execution.

  Honestly, that's the sort of thing you can't help but respect.

• Bravo to the fans for a tremendous showing tonight. They came out LOUD and amped things up considerably throughout the night. Best of all? They didn't wait for the good things to start happening first. They initiated positive change by being intense and cheering the team on … many times before the team did anything to warrant such approval.

  I've been in louder arenas and have had my ear drums shattered at other venues, but the fact remains that after a rocky start, the fans did a wonderful job of embracing the team this year. Now, after months of empty seats and lackluster support, finally now, this team is YOUR team. Continue to embrace this team, New Orleans, as it's the best thing going in town right now.

Via TrueHoop: Interesting stuff from David Friedman over at 20 Second Timeout. He figures the scorekeepers are very generous when crediting players with assists, and cites Paul's 14 dimes last night, only 9 of which Friedman claims were legitimate. Here's his description of an "assist" by CP in the first quarter…

• This one is so bad it is ridiculous: West received the ball from Paul at the right free throw line extended at the 4:40 mark. West pump faked Oberto off of his feet, took four dribbles, made a spin move into the paint, came to a jump stop, did an up and under move and then shot a jump hook. Seven seconds, four dribbles and multiple fakes happened between Paul's pass and West's shot! If Paul deserves an assist, then I think that West's point guard at Xavier should get one, too–he had about as much to do with West making this shot as Paul did.

Chris Colston writes about the Hornets' "growing pains" in USA Today…

• "We've developed something special," Scott said. "Obviously we still have to add some pieces to the puzzle. But I like the direction we're going."

• "The experiences we're getting now, we want to take advantage of it moving forward," general manager Jeff Bower said. "This is the first time going through this as a group."

  For a team that lost 43 games last season, this year must be considered a success — and a springboard to the team's goal of winning a title.

  "The one thing I want them to remember when they start working out is to remember how they feel right now," Scott said. "You have to go through some things before you can really understand how good it's going to feel when you get to the next level."

48 Minutes of Hell, always classy…

• I want to congratulate the New Orleans Hornets. They played a fierce and fearless series and, by not underestimating the Spurs in anyway, gave us the greatest compliment of all. I look forward to seeing this team progress in the upcoming years, and if Paul doesn't have a ring or two on his finger one of these days, I'll be shocked.

The headline of Teddy Kider's article in today's T-P says it all: "Buzz Kill." Indeed. Here's Byron Scott's words from that article…

• "The bottom line is this: We got to a Game 7 against the defending champions," Scott said. "That's a pretty good thing to say."

Over at NOLA.com, David Schexnaydre Jr. has a message for the Hornets…

• Thank you.

  Thank you for everything.

  Thank you for the magical season you just allowed us to be a part of. Thank you for refusing to believe what the experts said about you and holding yourselves to your own higher standards. Thank you for turning your critics and doubters into believers with your exciting, energetic, and unselfish brand of basketball. Thank you for exceeding expectations and never being satisfied.

  Thank you for embracing our city when our city didn't appear to be embracing you. Thank you playing hard and never wavering, whether your crowd was 18,000 or 8,000. Thank you for doing the right things, not only on the court but off of it. Thank you for being great basketball players, but even better people.

Let's get to the quick hitters…

• Happy birthday to Julian Wright, who turns 21 today. Go get yourself drunk, young man. Looking forward to your explosion next season.

• Vincent Thomas of SLAM magazine was man-crushing on Chris Paul ahead of yesterday's game.
• Video: The New Orleans Hornets are masters of the elements.
• Via Hornets Hype: The HR boards has Peja on a stick… in London.

Alright, I'm done. 34 consecutive days of these news wraps, yet it seems like only yesterday we were consumed by the madness of the playoffs. Might have been tough to keep these going through the Conference Finals, but it sure would have been fun trying.

Next time, baby.

And that's the season. The Hornets fall to the Spurs, 91-82 after fighting back to within three from 15 down at the start of the fourth.

Two things did us in tonight. Rebounding and a three point barrage. The rebounding, though a pronounced problem earlier in the game, got better in the second half. The Spur's three point shooting, however, never cooled.

At several points this season I pointed out the Hornets lost when their three point shooting was poor, and the opponents was great. Tonight, the Spurs hit 12-28, a mark of 42.9%. The Hornets shot 4-17, for 23.5%. Their shooters off the bench – Finley, Horry and Udoka were huge, raining 6 of 11 threes from deep. As usual, the Hornets bench produced little until Pargo had a hot aggressive streak taking the ball to the basket at the end of the game.

In the end, we fought hard, and just fell short at the end, leaving me simply exhausted. And I wasn't even on the treadmill for this game.

A few things I saw – though this will probably not be a full recap.

• Tyson Chandler did a phenomenal job on Duncan defensively. On the posessions where he played Tim straight up, he worked him hard, and Duncan almost never got a clean look. Wish we had softened the doubles on him and stayed home on the perimeter.

• Manu was amazing in the first half, and terrible in the second. In fact, that run that brought us back in was allowed by fast, early shots by Ginobili and the aforementioned defense on Duncan.
• The Hornets missed a ton of easy shots. Paul and West together bricked two easy lay-ins each, and Bonzi . . . well . . . let's not talk about Bonzi right now.
• I'm actually a little surprised West had 20 in the game. I guess when I think about it, he started off well. The second half, he was really poor. His five drives, three on Oberto, two on Duncan all dribbled over the rim and out.
• Oberto, Thomas, Udoka and Duncan were simply brutal on the glass. As soon as a shot went up, they'd form a little wall around the rim, and Tyson could only get to the ball by jumping over it and back-tapping it. On offense, multiple times Duncan or Thomas would just sneak in and take the ball away from the Hornets. Painful.

Okay, I'm done. I'll be back sometime soon to talk about the future. For now, I'll go mourn the present.

This is it. Game 7. One team will advance, the other will go home. 

On one side we have the visiting Spurs: A wily veteran team who've been there before and will resist the youth movement to get there again. Or are they just broken heroes on a last-chance power drive? And then we have the Hornets, a team that's cost me countless hours and emotions in the past six months. Are these guys for real? Can they stay strong, topple the defending champs and advance to the Conference Finals for the first time in franchise history. Or will we have to suffer disappointment, and wait another year for this funky bunch to take the next step?

It all unfolds tonight. 

Stuff to know…

Game Time: 7:30pm Central.

TV: TNT nationwide.

Radio: This one's being broadcast on a whole bunch of radio stations. More info here.

Linkage:

• Ryan Schwan: I heart the Hornets
• Our latest news wrap
  
• Spurs blogs: 48 Minutes of Hell | Pounding the Rock | Project Spurs | Spurs Dynasty

Should be a memorable night at the Arena. It will either be the end of one helluva season, or the best time of my life. I'm betting on the latter.

Let's go, Hornets. 

It's almost here. Hornets-Spurs. Game 7. Tonight at 7:30 Central. Ryan just delivered a fine post ahead of the madness. So go read that first. Then come back to this one and see what the internets been saying about the 100th Game 7 in NBA history.

To tip, Jim Eichnehofer was at Hornets practice yesterday, witnessing 47-year-old Byron Scott trying to dunk and Jannero Pargo clowning around…

• Jannero Pargo had the entire team erupting in laughter, when his attempt at a 180 slam went haywire. When the 6-foot-1 reserve guard caught a self-pass off the floor and spun toward the basket, he couldn't get enough elevation to dunk, causing him to be stonewalled by the front of the rim. His momentum carried him backward, so as he tried to catch his balance, the result was a cartoonish stumble onto the floor. Several Hornets were so amused by Pargo's spill — he was uninjured — that they ran across the New Orleans Arena hardwood while laughing uncontrollably.

  After dusting himself off and grinning about his pratfall, Pargo engaged rookie Julian Wright in a one-on-one halfcourt game. Nothing unusual about that — except both players were only allowed to shoot left-handed. Not sure who ended up winning, but the vet was leading the rook 5-2 at last report.

  No, the Hornets aren't treating Game 7 like it's an apocalyptic moment, even though it's accurate to say this is the most important game in the team's 20-year history.

There's also a Q&A with Coach Scott at the above link. Here's one such question, and one such answer…

• Q: David West sat out much of Saturday's practice. How did he look today?

  Scott: David looked good. We tried to monitor him. He wanted to do a little bit more than he did today, but we just didn’t feel it was worth it. He did everything (every other Hornets player did) in practice, but we just shut him down with about 10 or 15 minutes left.

Ever the crafty voyeur, Alejandro de los Rios has video of those dunk attempts by Byron and Jannero over at the Best of New Orleans Blog…

• Before filming this shot, Scott, Pargo and Chris Paul were dunking on an 8-foot rim set up at mid-court. Also, players were generally chatty, doing trick shots and playing left-handed 1-on-1. But Bonzi Wells pointed out that, while they're loose, they're still focused.

  "Coach makes sure we stay focused on the task at hand," he said, while Byron joked around and attempted some dunks. "He's kind of playful right now but he's been all business for the most part."

Mike Finger of the San Antonio Express-News was also at Hornets practice yesterday. Here's a few bits and pieces from his latest article…

• One day after closing their entire practice for the first time during the Western Conference semifinals, the Hornets invited the media inside New Orleans Arena to watch the last 20 minutes of Sunday's workout. That included a full-court scrimmage, half of which featured West, who left Game 6 after re-injuring his lower back backing into a Robert Horry screen.

  On Sunday, West wasn't exactly exerting himself running up and down the floor, and didn't get involved in much of the physical play under the basket. But he showed glimpses of his All-Star form, including a play in which he grabbed an offensive rebound, spun to the baseline and banked a nifty left-handed hook through the net.

  "I'm right at 100 (percent)," West said. "These past couple days have been good. I got almost all of the soreness out of there."

• "Walking around the city, everybody's talking about how much they want to win and how nervous they are," Paul said. "But I'm not nervous, to tell you the truth. I have the ultimate confidence."

Chris doesn't sound scared, does he? Same deal with Mo Pete and D West. These quotes courtesy of John DeShazier in the Times-Picayune…

• "We're just playing basketball," guard Morris Peterson said. "I don't think it's rocket science. It's Game 7, at home against the best team in the world. It should be fun."

  "This is it," David West added. "For us, as a basketball unit, we don't want the season to end. We've got to play the best basketball game we've played this season.

  "To get the defending champs out, we know we've got to put together the game of our young careers."

Also in the Times-Picayune, here's a few pieces from Teddy Kider's latest…

• Even if the Hornets lose, the 2007-08 season will be considered the most successful in franchise history. The team has transformed itself from a relatively obscure squad with attendance issues to a championship contender with no problems packing its arena.

  Tonight's game is the most important in franchise history because of what else it could mean. The Hornets are one win away from advancing to their first conference finals, and the team they must conquer is the defending champion, perhaps the most dominant NBA franchise of the past 10 years.

  "This is what it's all about," Scott said Sunday. "This is the ultimate. You want to have a Game 7, and you want to have it in your home building against the defending champions. So this is the ultimate challenge for us, and I think we have a lot of guys on this team that enjoy that type of challenge. So it's going to be fun."

• "My biggest thing is just to go out and not think about [my back]," West said. "As long as there's no soreness and things like that, I'm not even going to worry about it. I'm just going to go out there and play, try to help this team advance."
• "You could put this game in the middle of the desert somewhere," Paul said. "It's all about just who wins tomorrow. The previous six games really don't matter too much."

Tyson Chandler is confident that the homecourt advantage will see the Hornets through. This quote from a Bradley Handwerger article over at WWLTV.com…

• "The advantage that we have is we're playing at home," Tyson Chandler said. "We've been playing great at home all year and I feel like the guys are loose and are going to come out with some great energy."

Willis Reed, former Hornets VP of Basketball Ops and no stranger to Game 7 heroics, will stay home in Ruston to watch the game tonight, but he believes the Hornets will prevail…

• "At this point, I don't think we should try to do anything to change the routine or nothing," Reed said. "I think that they got good leadership, and I think that Coach Scott prepared them to play in big games. I think it's just a matter of letting them do what they have to go do. And I believe they will."

David Thorpe has the usual breakdown ahead of Game 7 that deserves a full read. Here's Thorpe's conclusion…

• In the end, as hard as it is to think that this Spurs team will not even make the conference finals, it's even harder to envision New Orleans playing a bad home game. Crushing the Spurs at home for three straight times gives them tremendous confidence, much needed in a pressure packed game. Still, the Spurs are so resourceful, and they have a few guys on the bench who can make important plays at pivotal times. This game should not be a blowout, and might well exceed 48 minutes. I'm flipping my coin now, and it comes up …

  PREDICTION: Hornets win Game 7

In the Express-News, Jeff McDonald tries to figure out the Hornets homecourt advantage…

• Maybe it is an adverse reaction to all the seafood gumbo, or a paralyzing aversion to one shade of gold in particular. Or maybe it is the reverse of the Denver effect, something about the rigors of playing basketball below sea level.

  The Spurs couldn't begin to explain the cause of their sudden struggles in New Orleans.

  "No idea," point guard Tony Parker said, "especially with this team and all the years of winning championships."

Buck Harvey wants a statue, eventually…

• If they ever build a statue of Tim Duncan outside of the AT&T Center, they should take their time.

  They should draw up some concepts, sculpt a few ideas and then step back to look for cracks. There should be a few.

  Then they should build more statues, turning the worst into rubble as they go along, until they get it right.

  Duncan should be honored the way he played.

Chris Colston of USA Today writes about the Hornets winning over the fans in New Orleans, and includes a quote from Gregg Popovich…

• "They have some guys on the team that a lot of people didn't fight for," says San Antonio coach Gregg Popovich. "A lot of people thought Peja was maybe done, with his back problems and all that kind of thing. He wasn't regarded as highly. And I don't think people were dying to get Peterson. Pargo had been kind of journeyman here and there. But they felt those guys fit their system."

Remember last week when Phil Jackson called the Spurs a better team than the Hornets? Well, he may be rethinking that statement. Here's a few more recent quotes from the Lakers coach, and one from Luke Walton…

• "On the one hand, you've got a team that has all of the experience in the world," Jackson said. "They've been through a lot of heavy battles over the last three years with that group of guys that they are real comfortable with. … They're the oldest team in the league. That weighs a lot (in their favor) …"

  "The other side of it is you've got a very young team full of confidence and very capable and very athletic. It has a combination of driving and shooting capabilities. And David West is a great post-up player, too. But you've got those capabilities on this team that still believes they can be the best in the league. They are believers in what they can do."

  So what does it all mean?

  "You've got two teams that are both very confident, very proficient," Jackson said.

• The inexperienced, young Hornets or veteran Spurs?

  "Inexperienced? They're in a Game 7 with the world champs right now with home-court advantage," Luke Walton interjected. "Obviously the Spurs are still the team to beat. But you can't say you'd rather play New Orleans. They've been doing it all year. They blew out Dallas, which is a great team, and now they're in a Game 7 with the champs. So there's no way I'll say we have a better chance against one or the other team."

Over at FanHouse, Brett Edwards thinks experience will make all the difference tonight…

• An example of experience being the deciding factor on the road in a series occurred in 2002, when the two-time defending champion Lakers had to go to Sacramento and play the Kings in Game 7 of the Western Conference Finals. The less-experienced Kings looked like the better team most of the series, and might have wrapped it up earlier if not for some of Robert Horry's heroics in Game 4. With Game 7 in the Kings' building, it looked like they had a pretty good shot of ending the Lakers' quest for their third straight title. But as Rasheed Wallace would say, a, um, certain body part got tighter and tighter, and the team couldn't make shots or free throws when it mattered.

  I think we're going to see another sad group of upstarts, hands glumly on their hips, falling just short again tonight.

Not really about the basketball but I found this interesting: Over at BlackAthlete.net, a dude named Gregory Moore rips into the Times-Picayune's coverage of the Spurs-Hornets series, and especially David Gladow's Top 10 Spurs 'questionable' plays article that was posted on NOLA.com on Friday…

• To say that this article is good journalism under any sense of the standards for even blogging is absurd and the Times Picayune staff should be embarrassed that this even got to be posted.

  Many a journalist has been fired for shoddy workmanship and this is a definite case.

(Scroll to the bottom of Moore's article to see where he's from. You will not be shocked.)

Speaking of that Top 10 list, Mike Monroe of the Express-News asked Bruce Bowen how he felt about six of his plays being included…

• Bowen was not surprised.

  "What are you going to do?" he said. "What are you going to do?"

  Asked if his being featured as the Spurs' No. 1 basketball evildoer might take some of the heat off Robert Horry, still being vilified in Louisiana for his foul on David West in Game 6, Bowen rose to Horry's defense.

  "Seeing that some folks feel, even in this city, that Rob's play was not legit," he said, "it's really a shame when you hear that some folks here think that. Seeing the time that he's been here, and then seeing that just bothers me."

Also from that las link, we learn that Tyson Chandler had a busy weekend…

• With three days off between games, some Hornets and Spurs had to search for ways to deal with boredom. But not New Orleans center Tyson Chandler.

  He spent the past couple of days taking care of his young daughter and has had little chance to catch his breath.

  "She kept her energy up," Chandler said. "I think she might be tougher to chase around than Tim Duncan — no disrespect to Tim Duncan."

Quotes from the AP game preview…

• "You've just got to be very focused, knowing that you can't blink, that you can't let the other team get on a run, get confident on a run," said Ginobili, who made six 3-pointers in Game 6. "It's going to be a really tense game with a lot of adrenaline. Fans are going to be going nuts. So it's going to be a very fun game to play."

• "We'll see if we thrive on pressure after Monday's game. We still don't know," Ginobili said. "It's a great test for both teams. A lot of pressure, as I said before, and we're going to try to be the ones that respond to that pressure the best way."
• "I don't want today to be our last practice," Scott said Sunday. "I don't want tomorrow to be our last shootaround. I just felt I needed to let them know and hopefully they feel the same way."

48 Minutes of Hell delivers a look back at the first six games of this "schizophrenic" series, and offers some thoughts for Game 7…

• Obviously the guy to keep your eye on is West. I don't even know if West is going to play (giving the importance of the game, I bet you he gives it a shot), but if he can't remain calm out there, it could lead to unnecessary personal fouls, or even technical fouls, while possibly infecting the rest of the team with a certain unsteadiness. This game will be physical, and unlike games 1 through 6, I think it will be close. The Hornets needs to make sure that fouls late in the fourth, even if they are questionable calls, do not cause them to lose focus.

Another one from FanHouse: Matt Moore lists seven things to keep an eye on tonight, and gets you hyped in the process…

• Enjoy this one. This has been the best series in the playoffs by far, and may be the best for the rest of the way as well. Two brilliant point guards, two All-Star power forwards, veteran shooters, rookie Julian Wright, journeyman Ime Duoka, the best coach in the NBA versus the NBA Coach of the Year, drama, the city of New Orleans as a backdrop, and Peja heads on a stick. It's Game 7, there's no next game for one team. Win or go home. This is why we watch.

I believe it was 9 out of 10 cats over at ESPN that predicted the Spurs to win this series. Ahead of tonight's deciding game, 4 out of 6 ESPN analysts are now picking the Hornets to win. Let's quote John Hollinger, who was the only guy who believed in the Hornets from the start…

• Game 7 probably will be closer than the past three games in Nawlins, but the Hornets will still win.

  Though San Antonio's experience is an advantage, the other historical factors — home-team dominance in Game 7, road teams' inability to win a series after losing the first two, etc. — all favor the Hornets, and they've won going away in five of their six postseason home games.

Quick hitters. Millions of them…

• Over at Bleacher Report, we've got a rebuttal to that article on Friday that claimed the Hornets had the seventh-worst fans in sports.

• Jeff McDonald's three keys to a Spurs victory: Show up for all four quarters, limit David West, and win the bench.
• The Hornets and Spurs both finished with 56 wins in the regular season, but we got homecourt thanks to tie-breakers. In today's Express-news, there's a look back at seven regular season games that the Spurs let slip away. Winning any one of those games would have made a big difference in the playoffs.
• From the Sheveport Times: Seven things to watch for in Game 7.
• If you were at Game 5 in New Orleans last week, you surely remember that 8-year-old girl who blasted out a powerful rendition of the national anthem before the tip, earning massive applause from the crowd. Well her name is Tione Johnson, and Darren Simon's got her story in today's T-P.
• As per NBA.com, officiating tonight's game will by Steve Javie, Dick Bavetta and Scott Foster. Lots of mixed reactions to that crew over at Hornets Report. Personally, I believe it will be the players and coaches who will decide the outcome of tonight's game, not the refs.
• 13 signs Robert Horry is dancing with the devil.
• Apparently tickets for tonight's game are going for as much as $4000.
• Game 7 thoughts from Hardwood Paroxysm.
• Someone tell me if this is any good, because I don't have time to read it: 81 reasons for Lakers fans to root for the Hornets.
• After 28 consecutive days of playoff basketball, why did the NBA not schedule any playoff games for last Saturday? Because of the ladies.
• Hornets Hype with another inspiring video. They've won prizes for that stuff before you know.

And finally, with thanks to Bill Woten, author of the book Game 7: Inside the NBA's Ultimate Showdown, we've got a whole bunch of stats and notes about the Spurs and Hornets in Game 7's. Very cool stuff. You can even find answers in there to a couple of the trivia questions we posted earlier. Because we're nice, we'll give you the stat sheet in two formats: GIF | DOC. If you're not sure of the difference, the first link is your best bet.

Thanks again to Mr. Woten for all that. Go check out his site and buy multiple copies of his book.

Back later with a game day thread. 

I like to think I'm pretty good at what I do.  My posts are usually a mix of stats and analysis, and judging by the reaction and number of returning users we've been getting of late, they've obviously been written well enough to get my point across.  Still – there is one thing I typically avoid:  talking about what the Hornets mean to me.

Normally, I'm fine with that.  I'm not particularly good at expressing that kind of sentiment, and with Ron and the wonderful pair ticktock and Wawer over at Hornets Hype(go see their new video), someone usually produces something suitably eloquent – or vulgar – that addresses any situation.  So I just leave it alone.

Today, however, I wanted to put something on record.  I've been following the Hornets since 2000-2001.  I saw the Hornets fall to Milwaukee that year in the second round.  The next year I saw Baron Davis drop two triple doubles in a row against Orlando and have a game-winning shot waved off despite him launching it long before the clock expired.  I watched them lose to New Jersey the following series, and then fall to Dwayne Wade and the Miami Heat in the first round the following year.  I watched every single game of the 18-win season.  I saw Paul's debut, West's amazing third season, Tyson's arrival, Peja's back injury, Paul's high-ankle sprain, and West's bad elbow.

Not once, in those 7 years, have I felt about a Hornets team the way I feel about this one.  In these playoffs, I've been unable to sleep for hours after tough defeats.  I've been amped up and unable to sleep until 1:30 am after big victories.  I've watched in disbelief the lopsided wins and losses of this series as it defies almost all ability to analyze it.  Despite having big deliverables at work, and a myriad of other distractions outside of work in my children and the season finale of some of my favorite shows,(Damn, Survivor was spectacular this season) I think about the Hornets all the damn time.  This three day layoff has been torture for me.  Last night, I tried reading a book twice, and realized I was turning pages and not actually absorbing anything because I was thinking about how the Hornets would slow Ginobili.

Being a fan of the Hornets this season was being caught in the Perfect Storm.  This team is fun to watch.  It has downright loveable players.  It has several electrifying talents, the dramatic backdrop of post-Katrina New Orleans, and already more franchise records than I can count - and I chose this season to start blogging about it, investing myself in the team even more than I have in any other year.  Ron invited me to join this site, and the great community you all help create.

It's been an incredible ride, and I don't want it to end tonight, no matter how good that may be for my mental health.

Geaux Hornets.  Put those Spurs in the ground.

If you're an old-school visitor to Hornets247, you might remember we used to throw out some trivia questions here on the regular. But then I was quizzed by police about my neighbor's missing undergarments and any kind of questioning has since proved extremely traumatic for me. But I'm nothing if not a pervert warrior, so I'll suck it up and give you guys some head-scratchers…

1. Only one player on the Hornets current roster has ever won a Game 7. Name him.

2. Who used the word "sensationalistic" in a proper sentence this weekend?
3. Robert Horry's hit on David West in Game 6 brought back memories of his hit on Steve Nash in last year's playoffs. True or false: both incidents happened on May 15.
4. Who owns the Hornets franchise record for most points in a playoff game?
5. How many Game 7's has Byron Scott played in?
6. What's the fascinating name of the fascinating rap album Tony Parker released in 2007?
7. List all the players left in the playoffs who once played for the Hornets (but don't anymore, if you get my drift).

That'll do it. Rack your brains or get googling. Answers on a postcard or in the comments. No prize for the winner or anything; it's just for fun.

A fine Sunday afternoon it be here in New Orleans. I should really go do some outside stuff today. Volleyball perhaps. Hmm… But ahead of all that madness, here's what's being said about the Spurs and Hornets on the internets today. Enjoy!

Actually, before we get to the linkage, let's get some information out there for anybody that doesn't already know…

• Game time for tomorrow's Game 7 between the Spurs and Hornets is set for 7:30p.m. Central.

• The Lakers have already advanced to the Western Conference Finals thanks to their road win in Utah last Friday. Regardless of who wins between the Spurs and Hornets tomorrow, Game 1 against the Lakers will be played on Wednesday at the Staples Center.
• I bought new underwear yesterday.

Glad we've got all that cleared up. Let's move on to some good news about David West. This from AP writer Brett Martel over at NBA.com…

• One day of rest proved enough for the Hornets' All-Star forward to get back on the court for Saturday's practice, working on his game-changing array of mid-range jumpers, fadeaways and post-up moves.

  That was a relief to teammates, who were understandably concerned when West was face-down on the court in San Antonio on Thursday night, his left arm bent awkwardly over his lower back, after a hard screen set from behind by Spurs veteran Robert Horry.

  "If you come to practice and one of your best players is hurt, and you see him out here getting some shots up, that's the sign of a warrior,'' Hornets guard Morris Peterson said. "That's a sign of somebody who is putting the team in front of himself. That's the kind of guy he is. It did feel good to see him out there. It gave guys more confidence that he's going to play Monday.''

Also from that article, there's words from Robert Horry and Gregg Popovich about the hit that sent West to the floor in Game 6…

• "It all stems from what happened with Steve Nash and that situation,'' Horry said. "But you know, I didn't know his back was hurt. I just thought he had tweaked something. … If he would have got up, this question would be moot right now. You wouldn't be asking me this question. But since his back is hurt — it was just a regular back pick, he fell down and it hurt his back.''

  Horry and Spurs coach Gregg Popovich both noted that Horry's foul on West was no harder a hit than Hornets center Tyson Chandler's backside pick on Spurs guard Tony Parker earlier in the series. In both cases, the hits likely would have been legal had Horry or Chandler stood still or fell back and absorbing the contact. Instead, they each leaned forward to ensure the opposing player took the brunt of the collision. Parker also went down hard, but was not injured on the play.

  "Very silly,'' Popovich said of the scrutiny given to Horry's foul on West. "It's nothing. Just like the back pick that Chandler put on Parker. … It was just a basketball play. I just think it's typical of where we live. This is our country. We're sensationalistic, we look for things, we have to have stories.''

  The Spurs' coach, known for his sarcasm, added: "We're maybe the dirtiest team in the NBA. We always have been. We've been known for that. … We wear black.''

More quotes from Horry in the San Antonio Express-News…

• "You've got some reporters out there saying it was cheap shot," Horry said. "Those people don't know anything about basketball. It was just a back-pick."

• "If I had tried to have some kind of malicious intent, I would have put a forearm in his back or something," Horry said.

In today's Times-Picayune, John Reid has more reactions from the Hornets camp…

• "I don't think they teach that," said Hornets backup center Melvin Ely, who played for the Spurs last season. "I think it was a play that happened at the wrong possible time for us. But some people call it smart playing, and some call it a dirty play.

  "It depends on how you look at it. That's basketball. I'm not going to lie to you; if I knew somebody's arm was hurting or their back was hurting or they had a sore hand, I would slap their hand, push them a little in the back."

• "I really couldn't see it like I wanted to," Peterson said. "I just saw the last minute of it. It wasn't a dirty play. If it was, that's something the NBA has got to take care of and not something we can worry about. It's going to take more than one hit to knock us down."

• West was not available for interviews Saturday, but after Thursday's game he said it was nice to have a few days to work out the pain to get ready for the biggest game in the Hornets' history.

  "He has another day of treatment today, plus he has game day," Scott said. "We feel pretty good that he would be ready, barring any crazy things or any setbacks."

In the Express-News, Mike Finger wonders if anyone really knows the severity of West's injury…

• In the first practice session since David West left Game 6 with a back injury, the team's workout was closed in its entirety. This was the first time this happened during this series. Usually, the media is allowed into the gym for the last few minutes of practice, but on Saturday, the court was already empty by the time the cameras and microphones were allowed inside.

  Possible conclusions: Either West is significantly healthier than the Hornets want the world to believe, or he's hurt significantly worse.

• Hornets officials originally announced Saturday morning that West would be coming out of the locker room to talk to the media, but a few minutes later, they said he had to attend to a family emergency. Tyson Chandler and Morris Peterson, the only two Hornets players to speak to the media Saturday, both said they are confident West will be on the floor Monday.

  "I told him, 'If they got to pull you out in a wheelchair to play, that's what we're gonna do. We need you,'" Peterson said. "I think he understands that."

Also from the above link, Byron Scott's thoughts on the officiating last Thursday…

• On the foul calls that went against the Hornets in the third quarter of Game 6, Scott said:

  "I thought it really affected our guys. I thought they started to feel that everybody, not only the crowd, but everybody else in there, was against us."

  He was particularly galled at a couple of charging calls against West and Chris Paul.

  "I didn't think those were really offensive fouls," Scott said. "I mean, you can call a foul on Tim Duncan on David every time he drives. He's got his hands on him. I guess it's home cooking. We'll see."

This next one definitely deserves a full read: Spurs Dynasty delivers a well-written post on the Spurs versus the world in Game 7…

• One play, an innocent enough looking offensive foul ordinarily, committed with 10:11 to go in a rout, drastically altered the way everyone thought about the previous 37:49 of Game Six and even more importantly, how they'll view Game Seven. What made this foul noteworthy when it otherwise wouldn't have been was who committed it, whose body part he committed it against, and what the stakes were.

  After all, there are literally thousands of hard fouls given during an NBA season.

  99% of the time, no one gives a shit.

A San Antonio woman in this video obviously didn't read that post from Spurs Dynasty, or the comments here at Hornets247 for that matter. Her thoughts on the Spurs…

• "They're an American team. Everybody loves them."

Sorry to break it to you lady, but, via BallHype, here's proof that America doesn't like the Spurs much at all… 

• In a recent SportsNation poll, ESPN asked America who they would rather see in the Western Conference Finals: the Hornets or the Spurs. 49 of the 50 states voted for the Hornets, leaving Texas — where the Spurs play — as the exception. And by the way, 47% of the Texans voted that they'd rather see the Hornets.

In the Newark Star-Legder, Dave D'Alessandro writes about New Orleans embracing the Hornets and giving them a solid homecourt advantage in the playoffs…

• They have gone 6-0 at New Orleans Arena, winning that six-pack by an average count of 106-89.

  "We caught fire, and the fans caught fire with us," West said last week. "I tell people that the whole story of New Orleans (since Katrina) is really about the people. They tell the story more than the structures.

  "They're up in spirit, they're optimistic, they're positive about the situation. And they certainly love basketball. Our building is a great place to play."

NBA and LSU legend Bob Pettit has similar words in a great story by Peter Finney in the Times-Picayune…

• "Right now, New Orleans is definitely a basketball city," said Pettit, who 50 years ago carried the St. Louis Hawks to an NBA championship, the same year Billy Cannon and company carried his alma mater to a college football championship.

  "It's great to see the city in this kind of frenzy, with basketball having its moment. The Hornets have the Arena rocking. And it's going to get rockier on Monday. The defending champs coming to town for a Game 7. Coming into a sea of gold. Can basketball life get any better?"

In the Express-News, Mike Monroe tells us that Popovich plans to start Oberto and Ginobili again in Game 7. There's also a story in there about birthday singing for Tony Parker, and a recollection of the last time the Spurs played a Game 7 on the road…

• The Spurs haven't played a Game 7 on the road since 1990, when their season ended with one of the most bizarre plays in team history: Point guard Rod Strickland's no-look pass to nobody.

  The game was tied, 103-103, in overtime and the Spurs in possession with about 30 seconds left when Strickland fired his ill-advised pass. The nearest Spurs player was Sean Elliott, but he had no chance to catch the pass. Instead, Portland's Jerome Kersey ran down the errant pass and threw the ball ahead to Clyde Drexler.

  Strickland then compounded his bone-headed play by committing a clear-path foul on Drexler. That gave the Blazers free throws and the ball. The result: a 108-105 Portland victory that gave them a spot in the Western Conference finals.

In a separate article, Monroe tells us that Kurt Thomas is the lone Spur to have won a Game 7 on the road, and notes the rarity of such a feat…

• Game 7 road victories are scarce, of course. Monday's will be the 100th in NBA playoff history. According to the Web site, nbagame7.com, the home team has won 79 of those. There have been 20 Game 7s in the Western Conference semifinals. The road team has won only four times.

Interesting conspiracy theory from a poster at the HR boards who thinks the NBA might be trying to give home teams better breaks in the playoffs…

• Maybe the NBA is tired of hearing people accept that "good teams turn it on the playoffs" and that "the regular season means nothing." [Hear that San Antonio?] What better way to come out and tell everyone how meaningful a regular season game is then to point to home teams winning just about every playoff game. If the NBA can convince teams/fans/MEDIA that homecourt advantage is so very important to winning a series, then everyone will pay more attention to the rush during the regular season for playoff seeding, thus making the NBA's regular season important.

I forgot this one yesterday: Via Hornets Asylum, here's Phil Jackson's thoughts on whether he'd rather his Lakers play the Spurs or the Hornets in the Conference Finals…

• "We know San Antonio is the best of the two teams. I think either team is a very difficult match up for us and we anticipate a real tough series."

Alright, pretty much done. Let's close it out like the cool kids we aspire to be…

• Buck Harvey dedicates his column to NBA officiating, calling it "the inherent flaw in this sport."

• 48 Minutes of Hell on the officiating in Game 6, following up on that joint effort with At The Hive a couple days ago.
• Shreveport native and former Loyola star Billy Thomas will be suited up (but most likely won't play) for the Cavs today as they face the Celtics in their own Game 7. There's a nice article on Thomas courtesy of Larry Wade in the Shreveport Times, and check out how little the Cavs are paying the dude. That wouldn't even buy poor Josh Howard a weekend's worth of weed.

This game was actually not in keeping with the rest of the series.  Yes, I know the final score looks the same, and yes, I know it seems like the Hornets had one big meltdown in the third and that cost us the game, but it's actually not an accurate representation of what happened.  Unlike the previous games, both sides had multiple series of errors through the first and second quarters.  The Hornets had two 7-posession sets that netted them nothing, and the Spurs had a six and an eight posession set that netted them two total points.  As I had mentioned earlier, that's unusual for the series – both teams were obviously really focused on the defensive end.

In the third, yes, the Hornets had a meltdown, but it wasn't when everyone thought it was.  That whole exchange where the Hornets were hit with five personals and a technical in the third?  It resulted in a whopping two points for the Spurs.  Two.  We were down 7 at the end of it.  The Meltdown occured with 4:43 to go: Peja miss, Duncan block, West miss, Paul miss, Pargo miss, West miss, Pargo miss, Udoka block, Paul miss.  Nine posessions.  No points.  Game.

I saw several writers – particularly San Antonio beat writers, who acted like Duncan had just shut West down on defense, putting on a clinic of fundamental defense.  Really?  Go watch the tape.  Duncan's incredible defense consisted of five plays where he was within five feet of David West.  The rest of the time, he gave West wide open shots.  West didn't hit them.  That's not stellar defense, that's gambling on West's injury and the inconstistent nature of the jumpshot.

One other thing about West.  Yes, he only shot 4-14.  Guess what?  That's better than he's shot in two other games in this series.  Game 2: 2-11.  Game 4: 4-15.  In between he's shot 39-67, or 58%.  Like I said before, his good games alternate with his bad games.  Game 7 will be interesting to watch.

Something I want to rip the pundits about.  As soon as I see the words "The young Hornets lost their composure", I stop reading, because the writer is just regurgitating incorrect facts.  Let me count the ways:

• The Hornets starting five averages 27.4 years of age.  The Lakers and Celtics average 28, Jazz 25, Cavaliers 27, and Magic 26.  The Pistons and Spurs average 31.  So the average age of all starters in the Conference Semi-Finals is 28.  Every member of this Hornets team is a veteran NBA player.
• Go pick a team in the playoffs.  Any team.  Hit them with 5 personals in a row, three of them offensive, and two on fast breaks that would have put the game in reach, and see how many of those teams don't get hit with a technical afterwards.  Does anyone think that the Lakers(Kobe, Gasol, Phil), Pistons(Everyone), Jazz(Sloan), Celtics(Garnett, Pierce, Doc), Magic(Turkoglu, Van Gundy), or Spurs(Pop, Duncan-glare) wouldn't get one?  I thought not.
• Why is it that when the Hornets are blown out it is because they "lost their composure"?  What's the excuse for the three 20-point losses the Spurs have suffered?  They were so composed they didn't play hard?  It has nothing to do with composure.  It has to do with stellar defense by both teams and nearly mistake-free offensive basketball.  When an analyst says a team lost a game because it lost its composure – they're just being lazy, and aren't taking the time to point out what a defense was doing to frustrate an offensive set.  A player getting thrown out?  That's losing composure.

And lastly, I haven't said anything about Horry's foul yet.  To me, it's a lot like Jason Kidd's foul on Pargo from the Dallas series.  Both Kidd and Horry determined they were going to deliver a message with a hard foul, But since the NBA is played at such a fast speed, both fouls ended up being delivered after each player went airborne – resulting in dangerous fouls that could and did lead to injury. 

It's like the difference between Murder 1 – Premeditated Murder and Manslaughter – Depraved Indifference.  Kidd and Horry didn't set out to injure anyone, they just delivered fouls that had the potential to injure someone and were indifferent to the danger that put the other player in. 

At least I'd like to think they were indifferent.  Both probably got satisfaction out of it.  The Spurs fans certainly did.

Typical: I have more time to do this stuff on the weekends but then there's not as much to link up. Screw you, world.

We'll start off with the Horry/West stuff again. Mike Monroe and Mike Finger team up in the San Antonio Express-News to tell us that the NBA has reviewed Horry's hit and deemed it routine. There's also some quotes in that story about West's struggles prior to getting hit, and Tyson Chandler's thoughts on the five quick fouls called on the Hornets in the third quarter…

• "I was a little tentative," West said. "I didn't want to overextend anything. But I just missed shots. Wide-open shots."

  West said the injury he suffered on the Horry screen wasn't serious, and that he will be ready to play in Game 7. His teammates said they expected nothing less.

  "D-West is a fighter," Paul said. "He's going to come back from this. Luckily, we have about a week before Game 7, so we can get some rest."

• "We really caught a tough break during the third quarter with some bad calls that didn't go our way," Hornets center Tyson Chandler said. "I feel that foul calls really stole the momentum of the third quarter and gave the Spurs an advantage."

The opening few paragraphs from Jeff Duncan in today's Times-Picayune…

• The Hornets expect David West to play in Game 7 of their Western Conference semifinals playoff series against San Antonio on Monday night at the New Orleans Arena, but how effective the All-Star forward will be remains unclear.

  A day after the Spurs' 99-80 drubbing of the Hornets in Game 6 in San Antonio, West received treatment on his injured back and will be "good to go" for the decisive game Monday night, Hornets spokesman Dennis Rogers said.

  The rest of the Hornets were given Friday off, as Coach Byron Scott canceled practice to allow his troops time to rest and heal. The team will return to practice this morning at the Arena.

Also has a good quote at that last link from Tyson Chandler, who expects a different result in Game 7…

• "It's going to be very different in New Orleans," Chandler said. "The Spurs are going to walk into a sea of yelling and gold Monday night."

(It should be noted that Hornets fans will actually be given white Fan Up t-shirts ahead of Monday's game. So it should be more like a sea of yelling and white.)

Also in the T-P, John DeShazier is expecting the Hornets to win Game 7 unless the likes of David Robinson or George Gervin suit up for the Spurs. Here's a snippet…

• [The Hornets] can lean on this: There's not much more for the Spurs to turn to, other than the hope that big-game experience will win out. And so far, that hasn't worked out so well.

  Popovich has used four different starting lineups in six games. True, the Spurs have played together for so long they know each other well enough for the effect to not be adverse. And all of the players involved have started before; it's not as if Popovich is asking a 10-day contract player to guard David West.

  But, too, it's just as obvious that the Hornets have forced all of the adjustments. Teams don't change just for the sake of change, if they're winning. What the Spurs had hoped would be good enough hasn't been — at least, not enough to give San Antonio a lead in the series.

  That fact still will stand after Monday night.

Over at ESPN.com, John Hollinger hands out some playoff awards. Chris Paul, David West and Robert Horry are among the winners. Here are some relevant excerpts…

• [Chris Paul has] turned it over on only 4.8 percent of his possessions in the playoffs. That, my friends, is insane — not even stand-still jump shooters can get their turnover rate that low, much less a guy asked to create something on nearly every trip. As a result, the Hornets have the lowest turnover rate of any playoff team.

• For the playoffs, [West is] averaging 21.3 points, 8.0 boards and 2.0 blocks while shooting 47.0 percent from the floor, and it's finally getting him some national recognition. While West made the All-Star team this year, he wasn't a well-known commodity a few weeks ago but his ability to mix midrange jumpers with low-post moves has made him a potent scoring threat. Should the Hornets win Monday and advance to their first conference finals, the recognition will only increase.
• New Orleans should call the league and beg it not to suspend Horry. The Spurs have been playing him mainly out of loyalty, and he's been absolutely killing them at both ends; in fact, about the only thing he's done well is intentionally foul Tyson Chandler at the end of quarters. Taking Horry off the court for Game 7 is the best favor the league could ever do for the Spurs.

  And while the Hornets seethe over Horry's shot on West, here's a question: Why on earth was West out there, down 21 in the fourth with a bad back that the Hornets desperately need to get better by Monday? Byron Scott was killed for pulling his starters early in Game 4 of the 2002 Finals; ironically, it now seems he might have erred by waiting too long.

Great article on Ime Udoka today by Jeff McDonald in the Express-News. Here's McDonald describing Udoka's involvement in a melee while playing in Africa for the Nigerian national team…

• At one point, the 6-foot-5 Udoka — in a move more Jackie Chan than Jerry West — had to flatten a guy.

  At some point, Udoka lost his shoes.

  "It was crazy," Udoka said. "It was not only players, but fans. There were chairs flying everywhere. I'm big — we were all big guys — but they outnumbered us."

Mike Monroe has quotes from Manu Ginobili as he tries to figure out the big third quarters and gets ready for Game 7 in New Orleans…

• "It's going to be a really tough one for us," he said, "but we're going to try to change this trend and play our best game in their building. We know we can do it. We've done it in the past. Every playoff run that we win, it was done on the road. We're going to try and give it everything we can.

  "Going to a seventh game always means that the two teams are really close. I think sometimes it's going to end up being decided by an offensive rebound, a turnover, a missed shot. At this point we know we are very close. We are two great teams. So, hopefully, it will end up being for us."

Fantastic job by At The Hive, as they team up with Spurs/NBA blog 48 Minutes of Hell to figure out if the officiating was fair in Game 6. That whole post is a must-read, so get your ass over there. Here's a few pieces…

• Both of us counted up the number of "gracious" foul calls each team received (i.e., questionable charge/blocks, touch fouls, etc.) and compared our tallies.

  At the end, I counted a mere three calls that went against the Spurs that shouldn't have, and just three that went against the Hornets that shouldn't have.

• Graydon noticed a few more poor calls than I did (10 total) and scored it 6-4 in favor of the Hornets.
• The final verdict: I think we both agree that this was a decently officiated game. The Spurs won Game 6 fair and square, thanks to some hot shooting and great defense on D. West.

Hornets Hype explains the difference between Spurs fans cheering for Horry after he hit David West in Game 6, and Hornets fans booing Bruce Bowen when he finally got up after being hit by Bonzi Wells in Game 1…

• Consider that when Bowen finally got up, he looked perfectly fine. He showed no later effect from the play. So some reporter asked Bowen about the incident after the game, and he had this to say: "I just want to be sure that the officials can see what's really going on." In other words, he faked it to make sure he got the call.

A random dude over at Bleacher Report says the New Orleans Hornets have the seventh-worst fans in all of sports…

• Ok, so maybe this isn't fair to put them here because of how down the whole area is still after what took place with Katrina but when you're team is challenging for an NBA title and can still only manage 26th in avg. Home attendance then there is a serious problem. Especially when the Saints sell out every home game across the street at the Super Dome. Maybe New Orleans isn't a basketball city, thats fine but when the NBA hands you a team because of poor attendance in the previous city you owe it to the league to show up to the games, not wait till the playoffs to jump on the bandwagon and wear your yellow t-shirts that they hand out and make it look like you have been there all season.

The infamous Jenni Carlson of The Oklahoman thinks OKC should have a "Hornets Day" to celebrate the team's success this season…

• Picture this: Byron Scott, Chris Paul, David West and Co. come to town with their hardware, maybe the trophy given to the Western Conference champion or even the one given to the NBA champ. They say a few words and sign autographs for an hour or so.

  But wait, there's more. Fans must buy a ticket to get in, and all the money raised will go to the victims of the Picher tornado. Heck, you could even split the proceeds between one in our state and one in Louisiana.

Lots of quick-hittey stuff to finish it out today…

• Via Hornets Asylum: Excellent stuff from David Galdow over at NOLA.com, as he assembles YouTube footage of ten "questionable" Spurs plays.

• Spurs fans like to talk on the internets.
• Paul Silas, the last head coach of the Charlotte Hornets and the first head coach of the New Orleans Hornets, is apparently in the running for the Suns head coaching gig. Silas, who was also LeBron's first head coach in Cleveland a few years back, put together a 208-155 record in his four and a half seasons in charge of the Hornets. He was at the helm back in 2001 when we fell to the Milwaukee Bucks in Game 7 in the second round of the playoffs.
• Tyson Chandler got Rickrolled. That is, someone added bad music to a bunch of his video highlights. Thanks to David for the heads up.
• Hornets Hype: making signs for Game 7.
• It's Tony Parker's 26th birthday today. Nothing like some birthday sex from a desperate housewife.
• Chris Paul finishes first in RealGM's player playoff rankings.
• Via BallHype: A photo showing that Bruce Bowen may have taken a shot at Peja Stojakovic in Game 6.

And that will do it. I might go get me some ice cream.

Game 6 is done, the Spurs held serve at home, and now we wait for Game 7 on Monday. Lots to get to today with Hornets-Spurs being the only game last night and everyone in the world wanting to weigh in on a certain incident that occurred in the fourth quarter. Buckle up. This might take a while…

So, Horry's hit on David West. Was it an intentional, dirty play? At first I didn't think so but now I'm not so sure anymore. But hey, judge for yourself. Thanks to Page 3, we've got a picture of the precise moment of impact…

And we've got moving pictures, too…

That animated pic was found over at the SpursTalk.com message board. A lot of the San An fans over there thought the hit was clean, but didn't appreciate the fans chanting Horry's name while West was on the ground in pain. Here's the thoughts of one poster over there…

• I just wanted to apologize to the Hornets fans on this board who have been respectful for the classless fans at the SBC center who chanted "Horry" when West went down.

  I love hard basketball, and hard fouls are fine. But when someone gets hurt, that's never something to cheer for. Not everyone in SA is like that, and it was embarrassing to me as someone who always points to the Spurs and my city as having a level of class I'm proud to be associated with. That sucked on the part of our fans.

Matt Moore echoes similar sentiments over at FanHouse…

• Last night, after Robert Horry's "completely clean, incidental, and admirably 'playoff-level'" whack to the injured back of David West, which sent the New Orleans star to the locker room and may affect his appearance in Game 7, a funny little sound started to come from the arena. Slowly it grew louder and louder.

  "Horry! Horry! Horry!"

  That's right. After a player delivered a forearm that knocked an opponent out of the game with what was obviously a pretty painful back injury, the San Antonio fans decided to chant Cheap Shot Bob's name.

  Now that's class.

At The Hive…

• I believe it was totally 100% intentional. I believe it was a malicious play. I don't care that Mark Jackson called it a "playoff foul." Answer me this- what reason did Horry have to push West in the back as he was backpedalling? One, West was totally out of position, stumbling backwards. Two, Horry had the inside offensive possession to the hoop. Three, there was no way he was setting a screen, because the guard had already gotten past his defender and Horry and West were a good distance from the play. Spurs fans have been calling the Hornets "classless." Tell your "7 time NBA Champion" to exhibit some class before ever speaking on the subject again. Horry knew about West's severe back pain. He knew West was totally out of the play defensively. After this game, I know that Robert Horry is a classless individual.

Basketbawful…

• Horry measured West and gave him a shot right in the lower back. Horry knew West's back was injured. Everybody knew West's back was injured. It was a textbook example of a cheap shot. Look, I've played a lot of basketball over the years, both organized and not-so-organized. Stuff like that doesn't happen by accident. It just doesn't. And if you think otherwise, then you're fooling yourself. Horry measured West and gave him a really hard — and clearly illegal, since it resulted in an offensive foul — shot into a part of West's body that was known to be injured. Did Horry intend to take West out of the game, or even incapacitate him for Game 7? Probably not. But that barely makes the act any less senseless. And whether he meant for it to happen or not, there's a pretty good likelihood that West will be far from 100 percent for Game 7. Which is a pretty good tradeoff for a simple offensive foul, isn't it? And for those of you who are inevitably going to defend Mr. Cheap Shot, go ahead and answer this question in your defense: How would you react if you were playing pickup basketball and somebody purposely took a shot at your injured back/knee/ankle/whatever? Would you laugh it off as just a good, hard basketball play? Or would you want to strangle the guy?

Hardwood Paroxysm…

• If it looks like a rat, smells like a rat, and sounds like a rat, then you don't need to make excuses about it acting like a tough hedgehog, or whatever else Mark Jackson wants to say. It's a rat. Call it that.

Buck Harvey tackles the subject in the San Antonio Express-News, comparing the incident to Horry's hit on Steve Nash a year ago…

• Tyson Chandler summed up the mood of the locker room when asked if Horry's blow had been intended for someone already with a bad back. Chandler admitted to not seeing the play, but Horry's presence confirmed the worst. "I wouldn't doubt it," Chandler said.

  They were angrier when the crowd chanted Horry's name about that time, with West on the ground and in pain, and the Hornets had every reason to be angry. Horry deserved to have his name chanted at some point, considering Thursday could have been his last game in San Antonio. But not then.

  For Horry, all of it added to his reputation. But just as it's unlikely to think he knew he could persuade a few Suns to walk off the bench and into suspensions, isn't it as implausible to believe he targeted West at his medical weakness and tried to injure him?

  No one will give him this benefit of the doubt. There's the connection, after all.

Jim Eichenhofer addresses the incident in the comments of his game recap over at Hornets.com…

• What in the world were the ESPN guys trying to say when they broke down what happened on that Horry/West play?

  I really like Jeff Van Gundy's commentary – partly because he makes random references to upstate New York, where he played college ball at "legendary" Nazareth College – but he responded to that Horry incident by saying that Horry "makes winning plays" and "does the little things."

  Huh? What do winning plays and the little things have to do with drilling someone from behind like that? Not to mention the fact that if you watch the play, there was no legitimate basketball reason to set a pick there. How many times does a defensive player get blindside picked in that area of the floor?

Mike Monroe gives us the reactions from West and Coach Scott…

• "I haven't seen it (film of the play)," West said. "I'll wait until I see it. I don't know if it was a blind screen or whatever, but I just took a good shot in the back."

  Said Hornets coach Byron Scott, "He took a good shot in the back. It's a good thing Game 7 is on Monday. It gives him a good chance to get well."

Also from that last link…

• Before Game 6 [Scott] visited the trophy case at the AT&T Center where the Spurs' four Larry O'Brien trophies are displayed.

  The Spurs, he said, are the team of the decade.

  "Since I've been here, that was the one team I looked at," he said, "the one organization that I looked and said, 'This is what we're trying to emulate and trying to get to.'

  "Every year you try to get closer and closer, obviously, and so, yeah, I admire what Pop has done with this team and the way Tim Duncan is, on and off the court, and the other pieces that they've brought in here to complement those guys and to develop a championship type team and that's what we're trying to do."

Back to the Horry hit, and Adrian Wojnarowski has fresh reactions over at Yahoo! Sports…

• "I'm not real OK with it," Scott told Yahoo! Sports. "But if I didn't know Robert on a personal level, I'd say that was a dirty shot. Yeah, if I didn't know him the way I know him, I'd say it was a cheap shot."

  Yes, he always liked Horry, but no one could convince Scott that West wasn’t a victim of a desperate shot by a desperate champion. The Hornets had been destroyed 99-80 in Game 6 on Thursday night, and still Scott and his players seethed over the blindsided screen Horry had leveled on West and his bad back.

  "I also think he understood what he was doing," Scott said.

• No one was angrier than Paul, who asked a Hornets official in the locker room: Did you hear that? As Paul walked down the corridors late Thursday, the crowd's voice promised to stay on his mind. "When David got hurt, you're going to chant for Robert Horry like he did a good thing?"
• "I'll just say he caught me with a good shot," West said.

  If Horry was trying to knock you out of Monday night, did it work?

  "No… no," West assured. "It wasn't that good of a shot."

From the game recap over at 48 Minutes of Hell…

• I don't know how to react to this game. Traditionally, if the Spurs were to blow a team out by 20 in a do-or-die game 6, I'd be ecstatic. I'd be praising our tenacity on the offensive glass. I'd brag about the hailstorm of 3-pointers that just poured on the Hornets. I'd make some dubious claims about "momentum." But this series has just been too schizophrenic to display that level of confidence. Yes, obviously I'm excited. Obviously I think, despite the lopsided victories every home team has recorded this series, that the Spurs can go into New Orleans and take game 7. But I sat there this evening watching this game with a look of passivity and bemusement, rather than exuberance, because, to be honest, I don't know what to expect. How could anyone? This series does not make sense.

Via Tom Planchet: Some dude by the name of Gregg Doyel from CBSCports.com blasts the Hornets Game 6 performance…

• It was the Hornets who swallowed their own tongue.

  New Orleans point guard Chris Paul, the playoff MVP entering Thursday night, played with a bizarre chip on his shoulder — mouthing off to various Spurs, forcing contact all over the court and then flopping like a boated fish. The officials caved in at first, protecting him like he was Michael Jordan or LeBron James, but by the third quarter, Paul was on his own.

Today's must-read comes from Henry Abbot over at TrueHoop, who had a lengthy article yesterday discussing Chris Paul's defense…

• Paul really never bothers Parker's shots. Even when he can close the massive gap, he's sometimes still so far from the ball that he doesn't even bother to put his arms up.

• He just doesn't get out there to bother shots, even against great shooters.

  The Spurs have obliged by missing a ton of wide open looks in many of their games. But the open three-pointers are there, and they are there in large part because of a combination of a clog-the-paint defensive philosophy, and Paul's lack of size.

  Here he surely hurts his team.

Elias says…

• [This is] the first series in NBA playoff history in which the home team has won each of the first six games by margins of 10-or-more points.

Great analysis as usual from X's and O's, as they break down the Spurs pick-and-roll traps last night (complete with video)…

• They hadn't really trapped Paul all series, and all of a sudden in the 3rd quarter in Game 6 they decide to trap Paul on the PNR and it got the Hornets out of sync. Paul passed out of the trap and his teammates were often dumbfounded as to what to do. The indecision of the other players really hurt the Hornets in that fateful 3rd quarter.

In the Express-News, Mike Monroe notes the significant contributions by Ime Udoka at both ends of the floor last night…

• Udoka's ability to hold Stojakovic in check in the second half allowed Bowen to spent more time defending Hornets point guard Chris Paul. Indeed, Udoka's ability to handle bigger forwards was the biggest reason the Spurs signed him as a free agent last summer.

  What nobody expected was that Udoka would become the Spurs' most consistent scorer off the bench in this series after Spurs coach Gregg Popovich put Manu Ginobili back in the starting lineup after Game 2.

In the Times-Picayune, John Reid gives us words from Byron Scott…

• "Tonight wasn't pretty," Coach Byron Scott said. "You have to give them a lot of credit. If I could figure it out how homecourt has helped so much, because the thing is if I could bottle it up and sell it to every team in the league."

John Schuhmann was live blogging again, and found the Hornets lineup to be a little strange at the start of the fourth quarter…

• Interesting decision from Byron Scott: After Chris Paul played all but three seconds of the first three quarters, he began the fourth on the bench, with Mike James on the floor. It was almost as if Scott was giving up when his team was down 15 with 12 minutes to go.

From Marc Stein's recap over at ESPN.com…

• With memories of West's 38-point, 14-rebound, five-block masterpiece in Game 5 still fresh, Spurs coach Gregg Popovich made a concession he had hoped to avoid by starting Fabricio Oberto over Kurt Thomas and installing Duncan as his primary West defender. The result: West never looked comfortable, even in the first two quarters, while Duncan amassed 20 points, 15 boards and a team-best six assists to highlight San Antonio's superior ball sharing and complement the nine triples pumped in by Ginobili (25 points) and Ime Udoka (13).

  Said Popovich: "Things went our way tonight, that's for sure."

In the Times-Picayune, Jeff Duncan also has reservations about Coach Scott…

• You've got to love Scott's cool demeanor, but it wouldn't have hurt him to take a "T" for the team during the third-quarter meltdown, when the Hornets were the victims of several questionable calls. His young team clearly lost its cool during that critical stretch, and Scott needed to do something — anything — to shake his players out of it.

Also in today's T-P, here's Dan McCarney's words regarding Tim Duncan's defensive job on David West…

• It was simple, fundamental defense that did the job. When West tried to isolate, Duncan moved his feet and kept West from driving to the basket. When West pulled up for a mid-range jumper, Duncan got a hand in his face.

  No highlight-reel blocks, no flashy steals. In other words, typical Duncan.

  "He played great," Spurs guard Tony Parker said. "We did a much better job guarding him, not giving him anything easy."

• "Timmy did a good job defensively," Popovich said. "David didn't shoot it very well tonight. Sometimes that happens. It was a combination of that and Timmy playing well."

Dime magazine on the ESPN coverage of Game 6…

• At one point Jeff Van Gundy said what most people in America seem to think: that Chris Paul is making Tyson Chandler's career. That's such a misconception that needs to be cleared up. Does Chandler get the vast majority of his 8 to 10 points every night via CP setting him up? Definitely, and you can give Paul all the credit in the world for that. But Tyson doesn't make his money by scoring, he makes it by rebounding and playing D. Chris Paul isn't helping Chandler grab 10-12 rebounds a night, nor is he playing any part in Chandler's stellar defense. It's like saying Isiah Thomas or Michael Jordan made Dennis Rodman, when those two weren't directly responsible for any of Worm's mastery on the glass or aggravating defense

In the Express-News, Mike Finger points out that these Spurs have bundles of Game 7 experience and these Hornets have none. He also writes about the foul calls in the third quarter…

• It was no surprise that on Thursday, when things started getting chippy and the season hung in the balance, it was the Spurs who looked like they'd been there before. West would say later that he thought the New Orleans Hornets "lost our cool," and he was including himself in that summation. After he was charged with three fouls in the span of a minute, he reacted like Gregg Popovich getting a delay-of-game warning.

  Popovich, for his part, was cooler on this night, and watching his team get a few calls probably helped. But even before the game, he appeared as relaxed as he had all series, and that was at least partly because he knew the pressure of an elimination game was something his team was almost certain to thrive on.

David Gladlow's thoughts at NOLA.com…

• Blame the refs all you want (and a series of awful calls in the third quarter DID seem to change the momentum of the game), but the game of basketball is won by shooting, passing, and defending, and the Hornets did none of the three particularly well in Game 6. The Hornets shot just .413 from the field, surrendered .494 shooting to the Spurs (including .524 from three-point range) and lost the assist battle in a big way, 28-13. You can't win doing that. Period.

David Schexnaydre Jr. also has game notes over at NOLA.com. Here's his take…

• While the loss didn't surprise me, there were a few things that did. I certainly didn't expect the see the worst 4 minute stretch of the season to start the 3rd quarter. I also didn't think I'd see David West let his emotions get the best of him. And while I knew that our players had a penchant for talking to the officials a bit too much, I didn't think I'd see them complaining to the point that I wouldn't have been surprised to see Dirk Nowitzki sitting behind the bench, smiling in admiration. If ever the Hornets youth and inexperience was ever relevent, it was last night.

Quotes from Duncan and Popovich, courtesy of Jeff McDonald…

• "We're happy to go back to their gym, and we think we’re a pretty good road team," Duncan said. "We're going to do our best to make a better game of it."

  Popovich, who won his 99th postseason game to match Red Auerbach for fourth on the NBA's all-time list, has known this kind of pressure before.

  On the golf course.

  "I can visibly see my hands shake when I'm trying to make a two-footer for a Budweiser," Popovich cracked.

Bits and pieces from Elizabeth White's article in the Shreveport Times…

• The aging defending champions and the injured Hornets now get three days of rest before playing Game 7.

  "I have confidence," Parker said. "We've won a lot of big games on the road."

  Despite the closeness of the series, Game 6, like the five before it, was won by double digits. It was also won, like those before it, in the third quarter, when the Spurs outscored the Hornets 20-12.

  "I don't know what to say," Paul said. "That third quarter was ugly."

• "Thank God we get to go back to New Orleans for Game 7," Paul said.

Chris Colston's article in USA Today reveals how the players are feeling about Game 7…

• Duncan pooh-poohed his team's playoff experience advantage.

  "I'm not giving any credit to it," he said. "We haven't won in their house. We've gotten blown out every time.

  "But we believe we're a good road team. We hope to make a game of it."

  Point guard Tony Parker agreed. "So far (our experience) hasn't helped us that much," he said. "The games have all been blowouts… If we can't keep it close, our experience can't help us. If we can keep it close, it will help us."

• "We'll definitely get some rest," Paul said. "But coming from our locker room, we wish the game was tomorrow.

  "We're not going to stress out the next three or four days. We'll watch the Lakers-Jazz game and just sit patiently and wait till Monday."

• "The fans know it's 3-3, and they'll be ready," Paul said. "The city will be ready. I'm excited. This is what the NBA is all about. Everybody will be tuned in."

John DeShazier looks ahead to Monday's deciding game…

• The Hornets already have made a name for themselves in this series, now deadlocked at three games each. They already have pushed San Antonio farther than most thought the Spurs could be pushed by a team that has less playoff experience as a unit than the Spurs had last season in their title run.

  But Monday night's game is an opportunity for the Hornets to etch their name even deeper in New Orleans basketball lore. The Hornets, who have advanced farther into the postseason than any NBA team in New Orleans, have an excellent chance to top what they've done. So far during the playoffs, they've been unbeatable at home.

Let's finish it out with the usual flurry…

• Video: Stephen A. Smith thinks the Hornets will win game 7.

• the Blowtorch: Inside the mind of Jannero Pargo.
• George Shinn celebrated his birthday on Monday by visiting some newborns and leaving gifts at a couple of hospitals in New Orleans. I felt a little bad for forgetting Georgie's big day, but then I remembered that he's never once called me on my birthday. Lousy BFF he turned out to be.
• BallHype: Video of the "questionable" foul calls that killed the Hornets in the third quarter.
• At The Hive poll: Was Horry's foul intentional?

• Hornets Hype: Horry on a stick and a bitching thread.
• Hat tip to TrueHoop and Ball Don't Lie for a bunch of these links today.

That'll do it. Let's all go outside and play.

Game 7 it is then.

As has been the story all series, the home team came away with the blow out victory tonight. After a great, competitive first half, the third quarter was again the difference as the Spurs outscored our Hornets 20-12 and built up a 15-point lead. Manu Ginobili dropped a couple of threes to open the fourth and pretty much seal the deal, but perhaps the biggest blow came a few seconds later when David West jumped into a blind pick by Robert Horry and re-aggravated that back injury. He collapsed to the floor in pain and had to be helped to the locker room. With the deciding Game 7 not until Monday, here's hoping he'll get the needed rest and be ready for the close out.

Diving into some notes…

• Final score was 99-80. Linkage: recap | box score

• Three main things cost us the game tonight. First was San Antonio's three-point shooting. They were 11-of-21 from deep, with Manu Ginobili connecting on 6-of-9. The majority of those makes were wide open looks, and that was mostly due to excessive double teams on Duncan. I thought we established in Game 5 that Tyson can do a pretty good job guarding Timmy one-on-one, but for whatever reason the Hornets didn't believe in that strategy tonight, and guys like Ginobili and Udoka took advantage of the extra space to line up and knock down the long bombs.
• Next, we had the fouls. I thought we started off the third quarter really well, playing excellent defense, forcing the Spurs into tough shots and coming up with some steals. We trailed by only five points after Chris Paul hit a runner at the 10:23 mark. Then, in less than two minutes, Chris picked up two fouls and West got three of his own and a technical. The officials got all those calls right save for the one where West was fighting through a pick on the defensive end.

  Anyways, those fouls pretty much killed our defensive intensity. I thought we showed good poise afterwards, with Paul gathering everyone together in a huddle and doing his best to postpone the collapse. But then the Spurs just kept hitting threes and we couldn't convert at the other end.

• The big reason why we couldn't score at the end of the third quarter were the high and aggressive traps on CP. That was the third key tonight. Well, not so much the traps, because Chris was able to pass the ball out of them pretty good. What killed us was our inability to hit the open shot out of those traps. David West just couldn't drop them, Jannero Pargo was still slumping, and I'm not sure what the hell Peja's excuse was because Bruce Bowen was busy guarding Paul for that stretch.
• I'm proud of the effort tonight though. The Spurs were hitting everything in that first half but our guys absorbed the punch and were within striking distance at the half. If not for those few dumb fouls we made, it could have been a much different ball game.
• Aside from those two offensive fouls, Chris was killing the Spurs out there. He was going all out for the win tonight, chasing after rebounds, attacking the basket, and setting up Tyson Chandler beautifully a number of times. I loved that we had him posting up whenever Tony Parker was guarding him. The Spurs had no choice but to send a double team at that, and Chris was able to make them pay with some nice passes out of there

  Chris finished with 21 points, 8 assists, 6 rebounds, 3 steals and 3 turnovers in 39 minutes. It was also nice to see him up off the bench and advising the reserves during a late timeout in the fourth quarter. Looked like he was already preparing for Game 7.

• West was definitely limited by that back injury tonight. It was as if the basketball gods were balancing out his immortal performance in Game 5. Gotta give Tim Duncan credit for the defensive job on West tonight though, too. Timmy didn't allow him much room to get the jumper off, then bodied up well on the drives. West ended up forcing quite a few shots, and finished just 4-of-14 from the field, scoring 10 points and grabbing 6 boards in 38 minutes.
• And about the hit from Horry that put West on the floor and ended his night's work: A lot of you were calling it a dirty play in the comments of the game day thread, but I really don't think it was intentional. In the replay, Horry looks to be already setting that pick before West jumps back up and into him. I wouldn't put such a trick past Horry — we all saw what he did to Steve Nash a year ago after all — but he'd have to be some kind of speedy diabolical genius to see that opportunity to hurt West and be able to act on it so fast and efficiently.
• Peja was looking good in the first half. He was using the picks really well and throwing some nice misdirection cuts at Bruce Bowen. He got freed up for some shots that way, but also wasn't shy about taking it right at Bowen when they were squared up one-on-one. All that led to 9 points for Peja in the game's first six minutes. He played 30 minutes beyond that, only managing two more points on free throws. I'm still not sure exactly what happened there, especially since Bowen spent a lot of time guarding CP tonight.
• The bench is killing us in this series. Pargo was 1-of-6 from the field tonight, his only bucket coming in garbage time. Lately he hasn't been making up for his shooting woes with much else either, although his efforts to draw two charges in the first quarter tonight were admirable. Pity the calls went the other way.

  As for Bonzi, his only contributions tonight were three missed shots and two fouls. For a guy who's pretty good at attacking the rim and not known for his jump shoot, he's been staying out of the paint and settling for way too many J's in this series. I expected much more from him given his reputation against the Spurs in the playoffs and his impending free agency.

• The Spurs kill us when we front Duncan in the post. All through the series, tonight being no exception, they'd run their other big (usually Oberto and his flowing locks) up to the free throw line, have him catch the pass from the wing and deliver it to Duncan at the rim with Chandler now on his back. It's impressive how fast they read that defense and exploit it.
• Tyson looked pretty good out there considering he had to be helped off the floor with that toe injury on Tuesday. He only finished with 6 rebounds (some of which can be attributed to the Spurs shooting a ridiculous percentage), but he did score 14 points, including a couple of awkward looking hook shots that looked significantly less ugly after they found the bottom of the net. Those 14 points were also the most Tyson has scored in these playoffs.
• At least now we know that the Hornets can lose even when Ryan isn't on recap duty.

Okay, so back to New Orleans we go for Game 7 on Monday, where our Hornets have dominated the Spurs in this series. Hopefully that trend will continue and we can keep the fun bus rolling into the Conference Finals.

Get well, D-West. We'll need you healthy to get this done.

Alright, so we've got Game 6 in San Antonio tonight. The Spurs need the win to stay alive and force a deciding Game 7 on Monday. Victory for the Hornets would put us in the Conference Finals for the first time in franchise history. Tyson Chandler and David West are apparently healthy enough to lace 'em up and give us good minutes, so hopefully we'll put an end to the road woes and advance to the happy times tonight.

Stuff to know…

Game Time: 8:00pm Central.

TV: ESPN nationwide.

Radio: KMEZ 102.9 FM in New Orleans and the super-fantastic WIBR 1300-AM in Baton Rouge.

Linkage:

• Ryan Schwan: Explaining the blowouts and what to watch for in Game 6
• Our latest news wrap
• What's more distracting than a cutout of Eva Longoria? How about this?
• Spurs blogs: 48 Minutes of Hell | Pounding the Rock | Project Spurs

I'm feeling strangely confident ahead of this one, and methinks I've finally figured out why. You see, pretty much nobody expects the Hornets to win tonight, just like nobody expected us to win the Southwest division, nobody expected David West to be an All-Star, nobody expected Chris Paul to be an MVP candidate, nobody expected Byron Scott to be Coach of the Year, and nobody expected the Hornets to knock off the Mavericks in the first round.

So expect the unexpected, and know that we got this.

[UPDATE] Or maybe we don't got this. Another blow out win for the home team, as the Hornets fall, 99-80. Game 7 is in New Orleans on Monday.

Linkage: recap | box score 

Game 6 goes down this evening in San Antonio, with the Spurs needing a win to avoid elimination at the hands of our Hornets. Here's the usual bunch of notes, quotes and anecdotes from around the web…

Let's start it off with updates on the injuries to Tyson Chandler and David West. Here's words from Tyson himself, who blogged his ass off on NBA.com yesterday…

• I'm feeling good. I had turf toe. I iced it, but it's gonna be alright. It was sore last night and it was hard for me to put pressure on it. But had it happened in the third quarter or even a couple of minutes earlier in the fourth, I would have been able to come back in. The pain started easing up, but at that point, we had a comfortable lead.

• It's really sore right now, but it will be fine for tomorrow. I went in and got treatment for it this morning.
• David's back was bothering him last night. He went in for treatment today too and got his back worked on. He's feeling better. He's a soldier. He's gonna gut it out. He did that last night and obviously, putting up 38, 14, five and five with a sore back … It's obvious he's focused and he's not gonna let anything stop him.

In the San Antonio Express-News, Mike Finger writes about Tyson's teammates ripping on him at practice yesterday…

• To his right, Peja Stojakovic was doing a brand-new Chandler impersonation, complete with loud moans and an exaggerated look of agony on his face. To his left, other members of the Hornets were laughing and carrying on about Chandler's catastrophic-looking fall the night before.

  "The way you were acting," Hornets assistant coach Darrell Walker said, "I thought you tore up your knee."

Also from Finger's article…

• Chandler said he could have come back to play in Game 5 if he was needed and said he expects to be ready for Game 6.

  David West, who suffered from back spasms on Tuesday, also should be ready to play tonight, Scott said.

  So with everyone healthy and set to go, Scott was asked if there was anything he could take from the game tapes from earlier in the series to use tonight.

  "Yeah," Scott said. "We can take the tape and throw it away."

Chandler sat out practice yesterday, but John Reid of the Times-Picayune tells us that David West was out there balling…

• West, whose injury appears less serious, participated in the workout that involved only shooting.

  "My back is still tight but it's loosening up," West said. "I will have to get more treatment once we get to San Antonio, and I'll get more treatment (this) morning, and it should be good then."

Moving on, here's quotes from Byron Scott and Chris Paul courtesy of Chris Colston in USA Today…

• "We're going to do what we do," Scott said. "If you start making drastic changes now, it sends out the wrong message. It's not what we're doing. It's how we're doing it."

• "We can't count on coming back (to New Orleans) and having home-court advantage," Paul said. "We need to close it out in Game 6."
• Said Scott: "The best opportunity for us is really (tonight). We've got to look at it that way. We've got a chance to close out the defending champions. Obviously we know it's going to be a very, very tough game to do that, especially in San Antonio."

Teddy Kider's got a bunch of notes in the Times-Picayune, with the lead in about Peja's contributions in Game 5…

• "You may look at the box score or something and say his production is limited, but with Peja out there on the floor, if they're staying glued to him, that's how David West gets 38 points," Hornets point guard Chris Paul said. "It's all about winning right now, so Peja's out there on the court. Whether he takes a lot of shots or misses or whatever, as long as he's out there, it creates mismatches."

  Stojakovic has also been a key figure on defense, where he recently has been guarding Spurs guard Manu Ginobili. And in Game 5 he had 11 rebounds, his highest total in this year's postseason.

  "We know how to win even when he's not scoring big points, but also he had 11 rebounds," Hornets Coach Byron Scott said. "He did a pretty good job on Ginobili as well. So his all-around game was pretty good last night."

Also at the above link is a brief piece about Jeff Bower finishing third in NBA Executive of the Year voting…

• Hornets General Manager Jeff Bower finished third in Sporting News' NBA Executive of the Year race. Danny Ainge of the Boston Celtics finished first with 18 of a possible 47 votes, while Mitch Kupchak of the Los Angeles Lakers received 14 votes and Bower 12.

After their team lost on Tuesday, the fans in San Antonio were pretty depressed. The following from Richard Oliver in the Express-News…

• The impact of it was felt in more than playoff brackets and headlines. Stung Spurs fans were left with an unfamiliar angst, balancing stubborn faith with lingering doubt.

  At Fatso's Sports Garden on Henderson Pass, server Luan Farino didn't have time to watch the game unfold on any of the facility's numerous television screens late Tuesday. But she knew exactly what was happening.

  "You could sense the somber mood the last few minutes," Farino said. "It kind of got really quiet. When it came down to the Spurs trying to catch up, hope was gone. People just started to leave."

Over at Fox Sports, Randy Hill lists a few ways the Spurs can survive tonight and force a Game 7. He also has thoughts on the battle between Duncan and Chandler in the series…

• Checking the results of the first five games of this series, it should be noted that Duncan has averaged 11 points per game in the three road defeats and 19 in the two home victories. To their credit, the Spurs did attempt to get Timmy involved during Game 5 in New Orleans, but his series-high 18 field-goal attempts resulted in only five makes and 10 points.

  The main reason for Duncan's struggles — and the Spurs' difficulty in getting their role players quality opportunities from 3-point range — is 7-foot-1 Hornets center Tyson Chandler. Chandler, the former No. 2 overall pick straight out of Dominguez High in Compton, has been able to guard Duncan with only occasional double-team assistance. That's pretty rare and fairly damning; without a second defender arriving in Tim's work space, the Hornets have no reason to rotate over and enable the Spurs to make the extra pass that leads to a wide-open three.

Over at Hornets.com, Jim Eichenhofer has key questions ahead of Game 6…

• I'm curious to see what effect Game 5 will have on the Hornets. I wonder if by responding the way they did Tuesday, they cleared a mental hurdle against the Spurs. Nearly everyone was again questioning the legitimacy of New Orleans after losses in Game 3 and 4, but the Hornets showed that there is little reason for them to be intimidated by the Spurs. I think the best approach tonight would for them to use this as a way to play more relaxed and not overreact to mistakes or if they get behind on the scoreboard early in Game 6.

At long last, Julian Wright updates his playoff blog over at Hornets.com…

• When we go back to San Antonio for game 6, we need to make sure we are more focused. I think they really worked at getting into our heads with some of their defensive tactics and different things they through at us. We have to make sure we don't get rattled by those things and need to expect them more than we did in games 3 and 4.

Jim Eichenhofer gives us Byron Scott's post-practice Q&A yesterday. Here's a slice…

• Q: Has it gotten frustrating for Peja Stojakovic, to not have been as productive over the past three games as he normally is?

  Scott: Well, it's always frustrating when you've got a (defender) hanging all over you, grabbing, holding and not allowing you to run or do what you're capable of doing. But (Bruce) Bowen does that to most of the guys he guards. Peja's been in this league a long time, and he understands that we're up 3-2, and that's the most important thing.

Hornets Hype be loving them some Mo Pete…

• Since B. Scott is a big proponent of going with the guys who are playing well, Mo-Pete has steadily got more and more time in the playoffs, and is almost always on the floor in crunch time. Always considered a good defender, Peterson has been outright vicious this series, locking down on Ginobili and aggressively rebounding.

In the Express-News, Mike Monroe tells us the NBA's ruling after reviewing the double delay of game call that got Gregg Popovich all worked up in Game 5…

• An NBA spokesperson said executive vice-president for basketball operations Stu Jackson confirmed that Popovich's interpretation of the rule about foul line access was correct, but that [referee Joey] Crawford was within his rights to make a judgment call that players from both teams had contributed to the delay of the game.

Pop did of course get a technical for arguing that call, and according to Manu Ginobili, the Spurs were a little too focused on the officiating for the rest of the game…

• "We talked too much," Ginobili said. "We've just got to let Pop do that. We know he's going to get a technical. He's going to get upset. He's going to talk to them. But it's his job. We've just got to be more focused on playing, not say a word, and keep fighting."

  Popovich agreed with his erstwhile sixth man about the players' occasional preoccupation with the referees, but put the focus on the Hornets' stellar defense and the onus on his team to respond more appropriately.

  "That game had to do with New Orleans' defense in the third quarter," Popovich said, while agreeing the Spurs wasted too much emotion on perceived injustice. "I know everybody wants to try and make it something different, or pick at this that. But they deserve credit for that. They did it very well."

That was nice and diplomatic of Pop, but as Buck Harvey notes in today's Express-News, that wasn't all the Spurs head coach had to say…

• Popovich did enough talking for all of them in New Orleans, and that's nothing new. He has worked the refs during games for a decade.

  But then came Wednesday. Composed and sarcastic-free in front of a media group, Popovich sounded as he never has.

  "You know, Timmy took 18 shots and shot one free throw," he said. "They (the Hornets) shot 13 free throws in the third quarter, and we shot zero. I thought we were at the rim as much as they were. So we have got to figure out how to get to the line."

Some Spurs fans aren't blaming the officiating for Tuesday's loss. They're blaming unlit candles…

• At Papa Jim's Botanica, prayer candles are sold to help you lose weight, to stop your man from fooling around, to get money, and even you help the Spurs win.

  Staff says they work.

  "Yesterday, we didn't turn on our candles, and we feel guilty for that,” Gomez said.

From Jeff McDonald in the Express-News…

• This represents somewhat unfamiliar terrain for the Spurs, who have faced 10 elimination games since Tim Duncan arrived in 1997. They are 4-6 in those games.

  Last year, on the way to a fourth NBA title, the Spurs never flirted with elimination. The last time the Spurs played a game that could have knocked them from the postseason was Game 7 of the 2006 Western Conference semifinals against Dallas, a game the Mavericks won in overtime.

  "The bottom line is the better team wins in a seven-game series," Spurs coach Gregg Popovich said. "I've always said that. Whoever wins this series, it will be because they are the better team."

Sheldon Mickles has words from Morris Peterson ahead of tonight's Game 6…

• "I think if we go in and play like it's a Game 7, we'll be all right," said Peterson. "We all know that we have a chance to do something real special.

  "Everyone in this locker room knows what we have to do (tonight). It's just a matter of responding to the challenge.

From the Project Spurs blog…

• Should Spurs fans feel confident going into game 6? F%*K NO!

Matt Moore has five things to keep an eye on over at FanHouse. Here's the last of those things…

• The Spurs aren't going to panic. Not for a second, not for a heartbeat, not for a half a moment. They're at home, they've proven they can not just defeat, but manhandle this team at home. They have Tim Duncan, Tony Parker, and Manu Ginobili. They have Robert Horry, they have Bruce Bowen, they have Greg Popovich. So I would expect a focused, determined Spurs team tonight. On the other side, I doubt the Hornets will come in with as much lofty headed swagger as last time. They've seen how dangerous the Spurs are at home, and they'll be ready to go full speed to go for the kill. This one might end up being one for the ages. Or it could be a Spurs blowout. They are at home after all, and it would appear that no other analysis is needed in these playoffs.

David Thorpe has the usual lengthy game preview over at ESPN, and he's expecting a Spurs win tonight…

• This season New Orleans has been terrific when the pressure's on to win, but will the Hornets sense the incredible opportunity they have in Game 6 to take advantage of the older and slower team after just one day of rest? CP3 may be the biggest competitor (other than Kobe) left in these playoffs, so my guess is yes, they'll be ready. But so will the Spurs.

Fuzzy bullets for the big finish…

• Ray Nagin had no idea the Hornets were in the playoffs.

• Video via the HR boards: The PTI guys argue about Spurs-Hornets.
• Hornets Asylum: a must-see photoshop job on Tim Duncan.
• Mucho thanks to John Schuhmann for sending along this Chris Paul video which matches up some of CP's moves with those of Tiny, Zeke and KJ. Good stuff.
• At The Hive: A closer look at the Spurs' performances in close-out games.

Alright, I'm done for now. Tip tonight is 8p.m. Central. Game is on ESPN. Back later with a game thread.