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Ah, them Hornets. Completely and utterly incapable of playing a boring game of basketball these days. Tonight's one-point victory in Portland was their ninth win by five points or less... this month! To boot, they've only lost four games in January, at most by 7 points, and two of those losses were in OT.

Ain't no garbage time around here. 98-97 the final score tonight. Here's your boxscore.

The Rookies

As amazing as Chris Paul was tonight, I have to mention the rookies first. With the trade of Devin Brown earlier today, Marcus Thornton got his first NBA start and came through like a champ. He started red hot, dropping 9 points before the Blazers could even figure out who he was. He'd finish with 19 points on 8-of-12 shooting in 39 minutes of action, and was on the floor with fellow-rook Darren Collison as the Hornets somehow halted Portland's momentum and clawed their way back from a late 9-point deficit.

Collison played just 18 minutes total, but he came through in the clutch with two huge jumpers. He showed great poise and patience in the fourth quarter, never panicking when he had the ball in his hands late in the shot clock, just making heady plays repeatedly.

As for defense, Thornton struggled quite a bit trying to stick with the likes of Steve Blake and Rudy Fernandez, especially off the ball. He needs to keep working on fighting around those picks, and preferably no with an elbow (though I find it hard to believe Marcus had malicious intent in that clash with Rudy).

But speaking of defense, it must be noted that it was Collison and Thornton who teamed up to do a nice job contesting that last shot by Jerryd Bayless. Gotta love those rookies getting it done in crunch time.

Chris Paul

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As New Orleans basks in the unprecedented glow of the Saints being Superbowl-bound, the Hornets are some 2000 miles Northwest and about to do battle with the Portland Trail Blazers. Game tips at 9 p.m. Central.

The Blazers are 27-18 overall, but just 6-5 in January. They're 16-7 at home this season and coming off an East-coast road trip that saw them go 2-2. They edged the Pistons on Saturday without leading scorer Brandon Roy; Martell Webster and LaMarcus Aldridge picking up the slack by scoring a combined 49 points. Point guard Andre Miller has been on a tear, averaging 19.5 points and 7.5 assists since the new year.

Portland has had some much-publicized injury woes this season. They may get Nicolas Batum back tonight, but according to The Oregonian they'll still be without Brandon Roy (right hamstring), centers Greg Oden (left knee) and Joel Przybilla (right knee) and forward Travis Outlaw (left foot), while Jerryd Bayless (left ankle) will be a game-time decision.

The Hornets are coming off a hard-fought overtime loss to the Nuggets in Denver on Saturday. David West sat that one out with an ankle sprain he suffered Friday in Minnesota, and he's listed as questionable for tonight's game.

This will be the second meeting of the season between these teams. They last met back on November 13th in New Orleans, which was Jeff Bower's first game as head coach of the Hornets. The Blazers won, 86-78, as the Hornets lost Chris Paul to an ankle injury in the third quarter.

Numbers:

Pace: Blazers 89.8 (30th), Hornets 94.1 (21st)
Offensive Efficiency: Blazers 107.9 (6th), Hornets 104.4 (15th)
Defensive Efficiency: Blazers 103.8 (15th), Hornets 105.7 (19th)

Linkage:

• Earlier on the blog: Measuring How the Hornets Create and Finish Shots
• Rival bloggers: Blaze of Love | Blazer's Edge | Bust a Bucket | Portland Roundball Society (THN)
  

(Many thanks to Dariusz for today's banner featuring Antonio Daniels. Be sure to check out more of Dariusz's designs in our Wallpapers vault.)

UPDATE:

Breaking News: Hornets trade Devin Brown to Bulls for Aaron Gray.

Basketball is a deceptively simple game.  On offense, five guys work together to generate a good shot for a player who can knock it down.  On defense, five guys work together to try and make the opposing team take bad shots, and miss them.  Simple, right?

The concept may be simple, but for a long time, there have been few publically available statistical stats that could help people like me more easily understand the details behind those simple ideas.  Sure, I had FG%, and eFG%, and TS%, but other than three-pointers I  didn't really have any readily available statistical information to evaluate the types of shots the team was getting - or their success with those types of shots.  Were they at the rim?  Were they 20 footers?  No clue, unless I charted the game myself.

Happily, that has changed over the past couple years, as play-by-plays and the resulting available stats have progressed to the point that we now know the types of shots teams and players are taking, how successful they are from specific places on the floor, and how they compare to the other teams in the league.  My personal favorite site is now Hoopdata.com,(in fact, when I was first directed there, I had a bit of a statgasm) which has a wonderful set of sortable data.   I have probably spent hours pouring over their numbers now, and I wanted to talk about one derived stat that stood out to me:  XeFG%.

XeFG% is the Expected effective Field Goal percentage for a team.  It takes the types of shots they get - I.E. number of shots taken at the rim, from closer than 10 feet, from 10-15 feet, from 16-23 feet, and from downtown - and then takes the league average for shots of those types, and derives what the team should be expected to produce on those shots. Now, before your eyes glaze over, these numbers are useful.  They give us two bits of information:

• How good the team's offense is at generating high percentage shots
• How good the team is at converting the shots they get.

The same sort of information is available for opponent percentages per team, so you can judge just how good your team is on the other end of the floor too.  To illustrate, we'll start with the Hornets. (of course)  Then I'll go on to some other interesting teams like Charlotte, Portland, and OKC.

Offense

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Game One After Byron. The Hornets will take on the Portland Trail Blazers at New Orleans Arena tonight, game tipping just after 7 p.m. Central.

New Hornets head coach Jeff Bower will roll with the same starting lineup we saw Wednesday in Phoenix, and has said that the emphasis going forward will be on pushing and moving the ball on offense, while playing stronger defense (source). I'm interested to see how much energy and effort the players deliver, as those two things had been severely lacking this season with Byron Scott at the helm.

The Blazers are 6-3 on the season and come in riding a 4-game win streak, which sounds impressive until you see their last three opponents were Minnesota, Memphis and Minnesota again. Still, Portland is a dangerous, well-coached team with a lot of weapons and no major injuries to report.

This one isn't on local or national TV, so League Pass or in-person is the only way to watch it. Next best thing is tuning into Gerry V and Sean Kelley calling it on 106.7 FM.

I'll be chatting it up and answering questions at ESPN's Daily Dime Live chat. Join me there if you can.

Linkage:

• Ryan's thoughts on the coaching change
• Lagniappe: Lots of video interviews and other bits and pieces regarding the coaching change
  
• Rival bloggers: Blaze of Love | Blazer's Edge | Bust a Bucket

(Many thanks to Dariusz for the banner.)

Real quick and dirty:

With the Jazz losing to the Lakers last night, those two teams are set as the 1-8 match-up in the West.

There's no way we can play the Spurs, as a commenter on the Big Easy Buzz Blog explains:

Basically the only way the Spurs can move up high enough to play the Hornets is to beat us [tonight] and have Houston and Portland lose, which would mean Dallas would win, moving ahead of us, knocking us down to the 7th... seed.

So, the only possible opponents for the Hornets in Round 1 are the Nuggets, Rockets and Blazers.

Tonight's (relevant) games:

• Rockets @ Mavericks
• Hornets @ Spurs
• Nuggets @ Blazers

We will play the Nuggets if...

• The Mavericks win, and the Hornets lose. (Nuggets will be 2 seed, Hornets will be 7 seed.)
• The Blazers win and the Rockets win. (Nuggets will be 3 seed, Hornets will be 6 seed.)

We will play the Rockets if...

• The Rockets win and the Nuggets win. (Rockets will be 3 seed, Hornets will be 6 seed.)
  
• The Hornets win and the Nuggets win. (Rockets will be 3 seed, Hornets will be 6 seed.)

We will play the Blazers if...

• The Blazers win, the Mavericks win and the Hornets win. (Blazers will be 3 seed, Hornets will be 6 seed.)

Please note that I had to rush through all those scenarios and so it's very possible I may have made a mistake or missed something. If anyone has time to go through and double-check the possibilities, I'd very much appreciate corrections via the comments.

Some resources:

• Big Easy Buzz Blog: Seeding possibilities (from yesterday)
• RealGM: Playoff seeding scenarios (also from yesterday)
• ESPN.com: Full NBA standings
• NBA.com: Playoff tiebreakers (scroll down)