Big game tonight. Third meeting of the season between the Hornets and Rockets. They beat us in Houston in November, and we got them back in New Orleans in late December.
The Rockets are just ahead of us in the standings with their 43-25 record. They're 16-17 on the road this season, and their only three losses in March have come against the Jazz, Lakers and Spurs.
The Rockets are of course without Tracy McGrady for the rest of the season. On our side, Peja Stojakovic will be unavailable again tonight with that back injury.
Game tips at 7 Central.
Linkage:
- Ryan's game preview
- Lagniappe: Lots of MVP talk, more CP3 vs. Deron Williams, and some other stuff.
- Rival bloggers: Houston Chronicle | Rockets Buzz | The Dream Shake
(Many thanks to Dariusz for the banner and the above image.)
27 articulate comments post your own
ticktock6
03/16/09 05:45 PM
A riddle for you all:
What's 7'6" and has flu like symptoms?
hornetshype.com #1
StefanC
03/16/09 06:11 PM
Yay (:
Oh & NBA.com said Peja hopes to play Monday. Thanks for the false hope.
#2
bigindian15
03/16/09 06:36 PM
Flu-like symptoms? Wow...
http://basketbawful.blogspot.com/2007/02/word-of-day-flu-like-symptoms.html
Go Yao!
#3
Niall Doherty
03/16/09 07:03 PM
Good news for us that Yao's out. This just changed from a "must win" game to a "must win, should win" game.
www.ndoherty.com #4
Andrea
03/16/09 07:07 PM
Yay! And I can actually watch the game tonight! Double yay!
Definitely a "should win" for us now. I still think Houston will take us down to the wire if they're able to lock in. As usual, expect the Rockets to have a 10-2 or something run as soon as CP steps out of bounds.
#5
mW
03/16/09 07:37 PM
Decent start. What I like is good movement on both ends of the floor and plenty of hustle. Looks Byron got them ready.
www.hornetshype.com #6
Andrea
03/16/09 07:42 PM
Mo!!!!!!!!
Quick 9-3 spurt by the Spaceships to start the 2nd. What else is new?
#7
Niall Doherty
03/16/09 07:43 PM
And then we struggle at the start of Q2 again. That unit looked promising too.
www.ndoherty.com #8
mW
03/16/09 08:05 PM
Luckily, we have that CP guy...
www.hornetshype.com #9
Niall Doherty
03/16/09 08:12 PM
Man, that was an intense quarter. Love seeing our guys getting on the floor like that, and CP was just unreal. Feels like this one's gonna be a battle to the death. I'd expect a T or two in the second half.
www.ndoherty.com #10
Andrea
03/16/09 08:21 PM
3 point lead at the half...Things could be worse. Who else is going to contribute besides CP and Rasual? JuJu needs to stop with the weak stuff and take it strong to the rim. Even though we were solid, if CP3 is the only one doing major scoring and Artest starts to get it going, we'll be out of this one quick.
#11
mW
03/16/09 08:24 PM
mutumbo is like 80 but apparently is still a beast at the rim...
www.hornetshype.com #12
Andrea
03/16/09 08:28 PM
8-0 spurt to start the 3rd. It's exactly what we needed.
#13
Caleb462
03/16/09 08:47 PM
That got ugly quick.
neworleansbasketball.blogspot.com #14
mW
03/16/09 08:52 PM
Yup. Need a good start to the fourth. The crowd is there, ready to explode.
www.hornetshype.com #15
Niall Doherty
03/16/09 09:08 PM
With all these layups we're giving up, you'd think we were the team missing our starting center.
www.ndoherty.com #16
Dejan16
03/16/09 09:22 PM
peja come back.
#17
Roc217
03/16/09 09:23 PM
Effin BS!!
This team makes me sick sometimes
#18
Andrea
03/16/09 09:26 PM
Great opportunity to move up in the standings by beating a division opp. and everyone other than CP comes out and lays an egg..San Antonio lost tonight which makes this loss harder to take
No T-Mac, No Yao, just Ron Artest, Scola, and a bunch of role players. Why do we have trouble with the games we're supposed to (on paper) win?
#19
Roc217
03/16/09 09:29 PM
THey think they can sleep walk through games and turn it on when they want. They still haven't learned anything from earlier in the season. You can claim peja being gone is the reason, I say BS! They've won without him before. They looked lethargic. The mistakes made over and over again are just mind boggling. Do they have a bball IQ! Damn. THey make me sick.
#20
YoungFella
03/16/09 09:30 PM
This is as bleak as it's looked in a while.
Posey was useless on Artest, Tyson's gimpy again, West was in a foul mood, CP3 was frustrated, Julian is out of control.
The only good news is hopefully the ridiculous CP3 for MVP stuff will stop now. He's not the MVP. Kobe showed how it is done last week v's this same Rockets team.
#21
YoungFella
03/16/09 09:31 PM
"he signed and retired on us bro.
u never wanna give a fat contract to a 31-32 YO
they'll just mail it in"
my friend on Pose
#22
Andrea
03/16/09 10:12 PM
If you can't beat a team without their 2 best players and their 3rd struggling for 2 and 1/4 quarters on your HOME floor in a critical game with the postseason looming and you're struggling to get home court, who can you beat?
I was happy when I heard Yao was out initially, but the more I thought about it, I started thinking that we were gonna half-ass it the majority of the game, try to turn it on when we feel it's time, and the Rockets would steal a game at our place and that's exactl what happened. We have another game up at their place for which Yao will almost certainly be healthy (never know with him). If we can't beat them here without him, we can't beat them there with him. Another season series possibly down the tubes.
Other than Chris, we just lack the focus and that "hate to lose" mentality that the elite teams have. It's one game at a time from here on out. Another team without their best player (Minnesota) comes to the Hive on Wednesday. Let's see the result of that one.
#23
Mark
03/16/09 10:21 PM
For the past few games, we've had an 'a win's a win' mentality, but I suppose that's reared its (f)ugly head on us. We've been denouncing our recent struggles against far inferior teams because we've won, but I'm now inclined to say our struggles are legitimate and warranted. There's something amiss with our team and unless something drastic happens, I'd be worried about the first round.
We gave up THIRTY-ONE shots from the charity stripe? But oh hey, look: 19-19 FTs, if that's any condolence.
www.dogpile.com/ #24
mW
03/16/09 10:26 PM
Never fret, kids. The Olympic committee just called and the East Germans, I mean Rockets, have all tested positive for steroids and will forfeit this game.
www.hornetshype.com #25
Andrea
03/16/09 10:27 PM
At this point, I'm not even thinking about the playoffs. Hurts too much to do so. There's no team that I'm confident we could beat in the postseason except Dallas and we won't get them in the 1st round. We're not scaring anyone. Other than Dallas, I'm pretty sure everybody else would love to play us in the 1st round.
#26
YoungFella
03/16/09 10:53 PM
We'd beat Portland too.
#27