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.

Tyson Chandler and Tim Duncan - respect when it's all said and done

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.