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This morning the New Orleans Hornets worked out Luke Babbitt of Nevada. Unlike the team's previous workouts, this one was held exclusively for Babbitt and did not include any other prospects. When the media arrived on scene, Luke was dripping in sweat and obviously exhausted. He had already completed shooting drills, cone drills, sprints, and even matched up with new coach Monty Williams a couple of times.

Going into the workout the scouting reports all concurred that defensively he could be a liability. After watching him go through a single cone drill and two sprints to finish up what had obviously been a long workout, a few things came to mind. His lateral agility on the lone cone drill wasn't anything to marvel at, but at the same time wasn't atrocious. His sprints, certainly not on par with the Hornets lightning fast guards, appeared adequate. He won't be the first guy on the break, but running the floor shouldn't be a problem.

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The Hornets ended the Summer League on Sunday with a triple overtime loss to the Denver Nuggets, wrapping up with a 1-4 record.  The team fielded by the Hornets was eerily similar to what the Hornets rolled out in the 2008-2009 regular season.  The team was built around a clever, low-mistake point guard who can score efficiently off the pick and roll(Collison), an undersized power forward who loves to shoot long jumpers(Tolliver), a wing player capable of coming off screens and burying shots from any distance(Thornton), and (unfortunately) a talented injured center (D-League MVP Courtney Sims) who was replaced by a mixed cast of big men who were totally outmatched by their opponents.

Now, I use stats in this post, but the Summer League is a tiny sample size against inferior competition, so take them with a grain of salt.  The highlights:

Marcus Thornton

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The Hornets lost to the Clippers last night in summer league 88-86.  The Clippers Sophomore Deandre Jordan and #1 overall pick Blake Griffin dominated in the paint, combining for 37 points, 21 rebounds and 8 assists as the Clippers outrebounded the Hornets 44-29.  None of the Hornets bigs provided much resistance at all, and their problems were compounded by the Clippers Eric Gordon, who took the ball freely to the hole, scoring and getting fouled regularly.

The Hornets could have really used Courtney Sims and the rebounding prowess he showed in the D-league.  Since their wasn't anything that good I could say about any of the Hornets bigs, whether it was Tolliver, Barron, Nevill or Cusworth(who was probably the best) I'll focus on what the Hornets did that was good, which occurred in the backcourt.

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First off, summer league games mean next to nothing.  Many players who shine in the summer league end up doing nothing in the NBA.

However, while summer league games mean very little, the rosters that individual teams send can frequently tell you something about the team.

The roster the Hornets are sending to Vegas for the July 10th Summer League tells us two things:

1. The Hornets spent some effort after the draft trying to gather big men who had a potential NBA future for their team.
2. The experiment of trying Julian Wright as a backup point guard may not be at an end.

Other than Julian Wright and the draftees, the "big" names on the summer league roster are all potential Centers and Power forwards:

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