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Two months into the season the media and basketball junkies worldwide are going to be talking about the New Orleans Hornets and Chris Paul as if they just crawled out of the swamp to become one of the better teams in the Western Conference. When that happens remember this post.

You see, the memory of NBA fans can be compared to a stoned elephant, or perhaps a goldfish swimming in Everclear. As soon as something new and flashy comes along or an completely fluke injury occurs to a star player they do a 180 on their stance, sometimes completely contradicting their previous sentiment.

Think about it for a second- Two years ago the Hornets were considered dark horse title contenders. ESPN experts had them as the second most likely team to win the NBA title. They weren't unrealistic though, and had the foresight to essentially predict what would wind up happening.

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With all the free agent signings going on around the league, Hornets fans feel a little left out. Considering the team went 37-45 last year and Chris Paul wants to win right away, the team needs to make big moves right away, right? Wrong.

People seem to be forgetting that the Hornets are going to be a pretty damn good team this year without doing much of anything this summer. Don't forget, after Byron Scott was fired the Hornets went 18-10 in the 28 games in which Chris Paul was healthy.

Let's briefly look what the problems were last year and what can be done to remedy them. Some of the problems just went away by themselves.

• Marcus Thornton and Darren Collison were stuck on the bench for much of the season. Given that the two of the team's top five players weren't seeing much time in favor of Devin Brown, one can assume that they actually would have been even better had the rookies been given more time to shine early in the seaseon. It wasn't until March that Thornton surpassed 30 minutes per game despite his excellent season. That won't be the case this year and for good reason.

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Below is the entire Hornets Summer League schedule for 2010. All of their games will be taking place in Las Vegas, Nevada. In the past few weeks I've managed to learn a few things about the team.

• Marcus Thornton (who I interview tomorrow) will be in Las Vegas
• Julian Wright (who was interviewed this weekend) will not be playing
• Presumably whoever is drafted will be on the team
• The Hornets are among the more active teams, playing 5 games in 9 days

Other than that, I don't know anything with any certainty. Fortunately that will soon change. This is probably an appropriate time to inform you all that I will be attending summer league for at least four games, hopefully with credentials. Interviews are being lined up and the coverage is going to be endless and in depth. Get ready for non stop Hornets action throughout the entire event.

Check out the entire Summer League Schedule

The Hornets schedule:

Friday July 9

COX Pavilion

7 PM – Golden State vs. New Orleans

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Recently I had the pleasure of speaking with New Orleans Hornets forward Julian Wright at a "Subway Junior Hornets Basketball Event". He was there to meet the young fans and give them a few tips on the game of basketball and life.

For those that don't know about the Junior Hornets, it's a group of around 700 5-12 year old fans who receive a bunch of cool Hornets stuff like a watch, water bottle, shirt, the basketball camp and a free 6" sub (mmm... Subway), as well as the opportunity to see and speak with Julian.

As for Wright, you know him best as our athletic small forward who has shown tons of potential ever since he was drafted with the 13th pick in 2007. It was that same year, at the age of 20, that he boasted a 15.48 PER, good for 24th among all small forwards.

In the summer that followed the team's best season in history, he found himself playing point guard in summer league. The position of backup point guard was at the time a huge concern, and Byron Scott attempted to solve the problem internally in what can only be reflected upon as a poor decision.

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So the other day I was poking around the Hornets season stats, and noticed just how amazing Thornton had been this season with his turnover rate. I dug a little longer and found out that he had the lowest rate of any qualified guard in the entire league.  Considering the amount of time he's moving and slashing, that's a pretty crazy stat. 

So . . . I pinged John Hollinger and asked him if he knew of any other players who had put up similar numbers while shooting as much as he did.  He directed me to Basketball-Reference.com's Player Season Finder, where he had found quite a  number of players who had posted similar numbers.(though only one rookie!)  That, of course, started me playing with the tool, and I  quickly put together Marcus' three best stats into a query that told me that there have only been four players in the history of the NBA who have put together seasons with 100 made threes, a Turnover Rate under 7.5%, and a Usage Rate over 25%:  Marcus Thornton, Antawn Jamison,  Michael Redd, and . . . Michael Jordan - and Thornton was the only one who did it in his rookie year!

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