Tonight we'll see the first meeting of the season between New Orleans and division rivals Memphis, game tipping at 7 Central.
The Grizz have been turning a lot of heads lately, knocking off top teams, winning 12 of their last 15 games and now sitting a game ahead of the Hornets in the standings with a 22-18 record. All five starters have been having career seasons, Zach Randolph leading the way with averages of 20.7 points and 11.5 rebounds.
This will be game 41 of the regular season for the Hornets. They played poorly against the visiting Spurs on Monday, falling into an early hole and eventually losing 90-97. San Antonio dominated the boards in that one, and shot an incredible 38 free throws. The Hornets will be hoping to correct those issues in a hurry since the Grizzlies currently lead the league in rebound rate and are third in free-throw attempts per game.
Some numbers:
Pace: Grizzlies 96.5 (8th), Hornets 94.1 (21st)
Offensive Efficiency: Grizzlies 106.6 (9th), Hornets 103.9 (16th)
Defensive Efficiency: Grizzlies 107.6 (25th), Hornets 105.4 (20th)
Linkage:
- Earlier on the blog: Trading for the Future
- Hornets.com: New Honeybees site
- Lagniappe: Thornton irrepressible, Nash over CP and much more
- Rival blogger: 3 Shades of Blue
(Many thanks to Dariusz for today's banner featuring Darren Collison. Be sure to check out more of Dariusz's designs in our Wallpapers vault.)
11 super-fantastic comments post your own
ticktock6
01/20/10 05:46 PM
This is probably a weird forum for this, sorry, but... I have my two regular seats in the top row of the lower bowl that I am looking to GIVE AWAY for tonight's game. If anyone's interested, please email ticktock6@gmail.com before 6:15.
Niall, if you want to delete this, feel free. I just thought it was worth a shot, since everyone I've checked with already has tickets.
To get back on topic, Geax Hornets! It's important to play well in division games against teams with almost exactly your record, so I will be interested to see how they measure up!
hornetshype.com #1
Niall Doherty
01/20/10 06:36 PM
No worries, ticktock. Heard you got hooked up with a nice upgrade ;-)
www.ndoherty.com #2
Niall Doherty
01/20/10 06:43 PM
Oh, forgot to mention: I'll be chatting over at ESPN's Daily Dime Live during the game. Hope to see you there.
http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/dailydime?page=dime-100120
www.ndoherty.com #3
JChangNZ
01/20/10 06:56 PM
Some good news from the TP.
"Backup center Sean Marks is expected to miss his 15th consecutive game with a strained muscle in his lower left leg, but he has been participating in three-on-three scrimmages at practice. Bower said he wants to see Marks participate in a couple of more scrimmages before he is cleared to return."
#4
Julia
01/20/10 07:46 PM
oak+4...c'mon!!!
#5
Taquito
01/20/10 07:48 PM
Not feeling too positive about this, DWest is going to have to step up, Randolph has been a beast lately with his rebounding/scoring
#6
MaxALM
01/20/10 09:04 PM
so we "solved" our first quarter problems and up 10 at the half. then we start the 2nd half getting outscored 14-2. What a joke. Unbelievable. Great job, hornets.
#7
trottsta
01/20/10 09:55 PM
I just want to point out CP's clutch performance with 5 mins to go in the 4th
4:18 Paul makes pull up shot
3:49 Paul assists Peja's 3 pointer
3:29 Paul assists Thornton's layup
2:57 Paul makes pull up shot
2:35 Paul makes layup (Assisted by Peja)
1:21 Paul assists West's layup
0:48 Paul makes step back jump shot
0:17 Paul hits two free throws
That's 10 points on 4 shots and 3 assists... I love that guy
www.myspace.com/hardstyle_champion #8
Mark
01/20/10 10:17 PM
MaxALM: Exactly what I was thinking. There's no point in succeeding in the first quarter (and second) only to relinquish a HUGE third quarter to the opponent.
Unnecessarily close win today. Still very much unconvinced by this team, but at least we're not the 06-07 Celtics or 02-03 Cavaliers who purposefully (and blatantly) tanked games to get a higher percentage at the number one pick. Those idiots.
www.dogpile.com/ #9
QueenBee
01/20/10 10:43 PM
@Mark-I wonder about that sometimes. Sometimes it almost looks like the Hornets are jockeying for draft position. They know they probably won't win the lottery but it oftentimes look like they're sometimes trying to throw games. Because sometimes they look like they just toss up shots just to be tossing them up and sometimes they just look like they don't give a you know what. I'm probably wrong though but I don't like the body language I see out there lots of times.
@trottsta-That's some good stuff. Thanks for supplying that.
That game was crazy! Just about all Hornets games have been crazy though so that's nothing new. I'm just glad they got this win because I knew this was no longer the Memphis team that we had been seeing over the past seasons. Also, we're not the team we were over the past recent seasons. I'm also glad they got this win because they are headed back to the road. They had been talking and talking about not starting off slow and tonight they finally started like they had more energy. I just wish they could've kept it up or at least picked it up a bit to begin the 2nd half because Memphis came out on FIRE and the Hornets were looking like they didn't know what to do. I'm glad the Hornets prevailed. GEAUX HORNETS!!
#10
Mark
01/21/10 11:02 AM
Queen: I think it was the Spurs game that 247 made a comment that our starters just began the game just not thinking we could win, so we kind of gave up from the get-go: which is what I believe you see with our team at times.
It's absolutely difficult to come out with that intensity game-to-game-to-game in this league (especially with an absolutely STACKED Western conference), and I know we're all human to an extent, but I'd like to see that fire from our team. Like last season, I'm fine with a loss as long as we look like we're hustling.
www.dogpile.com/ #11