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This comes from Bill Simmons post from a while ago, "The trade value list: No. 40 to No. 1" a quick excerpt:

Intrigued, I asked Will Carroll (the injury expert for Baseball Prospectus and Basketball Prospectus) for his thoughts. Will pointed me toward a piece he wrote about meniscus removal a few years ago. The key section: "One reason teams are so quick to allow this surgery is that the players come back so quickly, usually in a matter of weeks. But … surgeons don't repair the meniscus in most cases; they just take it out, either in part or in whole depending on the size of the tearing. That leaves the athlete with no shock. Eventually, with the remaining meniscus overstressed and aging, they end up with the bones grinding together. Yes, that's as bad as it sounds in a game of running and jumping."

Now I am sure CP would have consulted his doctor about short and long term effects of this type of surgery. However my mind can't help but wonder the contextual standpoint that Chris was in when it came to decision time.

The Hornets were 25-21 and right in the 8th spot in the western conference playoff race. I am sure that Chris truly wanted to get back as quick as possible in order to help the team towards the finish line. I know many people will think, "Hang on a second, Chris wouldn't jeopardise his long term health for just one season!"

I wouldn't be so sure. Chris is a driven man. He will do whatever it takes to win every single game and to be a contender every year. Despite what reality us Hornets fans know, Chris may now be thinking about the next 2-3 years and whether he truly believes he can bring a title to the Crescent City.

I realize that this late in the season, when the hornets desperately need to make a playoff push, so this entry may be poorly timed. However, I have gotten so sick of hearing of hearing that the team is in irreversible financial doom that I decided to compile some of my ideas from the comments sections into a post about the future of the hornets cap.

Player Option / Early Termination Option / Team Option / Qualifying Offer / Non-guaranteed

* No Longer With Team

Marcus Thornton

Draft night came, and I eagerly anticipated who we would select with our first (and only selection in the draft. Really I was hoping for a banger like Dujuan Blair, only because I saw the man, absolutely abuse the 2nd overall draft pick a few months earlier and I had a little crush since.

Then the shocking came, New Orleans trade for an LSU product called Marcus Thornton a *gasp*  foot 4 inch shooting guard that can just flat out shoot. Now call me dumb, stupid, obnoxious, the first thoughts that came to mind were 'Oh no, how any times have I seen this. I will give him 1 year and then he will be playing in Europe'

My scapegoat is the fact that Byron Scott was our coach, and well yeah we all know what he was like with rookies, Brandon Bass anyone?

Now training camp came around, and not too much hype was surrounding our 2 new acquisitions it was all about Emeka Okafor and how he refused to train 'until he's body was right' 

Skip to the Chris Paul injury, now I can honestly say from the bottom of my heart Marcus was growing on me before he all of a sudden broke out. I liked the way he relentlessly attacks the basket without regard, sure he could do a better job of making some of those layups but this will come with time I thought. And his cold blooded shooting? Wow, just wow.

I vented my 'man-love' on ESPN's Daily Dime, often chatting to Niall and Joe about my man crush, and was met with laughter and encouragement. Seriously I think I was scaring some people, but you know when you love a player you just do. 

That was until Lil Bucket aka Lebron James is my bunny for the day. Decided to absolutely explode against Cleveland, I was again watching the match online, mind you at a lecture with my lecturer ready to explode, I jumped for joy when he hit his 30^th point and got kicked out of my lecture theatre.

It was again against Dallas that Joe and I was pleading with the rest of ‘Dime Nation’ that this kid was absolutely special, and not to sleep on him. Again we were met with skepticism and laughed waiting for that pivotal 3^rd quarter. Even going as far as saying he was going to hit the next 10 points for us, we even gave 3:1 odds.

What do you know? Buckets hits his stride, picks off 6 straight points and then assists Collison on an open jumper. Yes, Joe and I look like Nostradamus, well kind of. Marcus hits 9 of the next 11 New Orleans points and puts as back into the game.

Yes, I know its probably not a healthy obsession. But you know what I haven’t been this excited in a while. Australia isn’t a great place for basketball and when you walk around with a New Orleans jersey with the number 5, and THORTON on the back many people don’t have a clue who the player is, or what team I follow. But I’ll keep repping New Orleans in Melbourne, because ain’t nothing like the atmosphere at the Hive.

Just remember, Chris Paul, Marcus Thornton, and Darren Collison? Trade the backcourt of the future? Some people are REAL crazy. Imagine the havoc Marcus and Darren are going to create when teams are forced to fold on Chris’ drives?

And with that thought I might just come back to New Orleans for a month ….or two.

One of the Hornet's biggest moves of the off-season was swapping Tyson Chandler for Emeka Okafor. Looking at their respective playing times, the winner of the deal is a no-brainer: Okafor has started every game for us, while Chandler has spent significant parts of the season injured.

But because half the fun of being a sports fan is second guessing everything, let's enter the Spec-u-la-tron 3000, and imagine our choice is between Okafor and a completely healthy fully fit Tyson Chandler. Would we still be happy with the choice we made?

Chandler's role in the Hornets was well known when we traded him. He was an above average defender, had the pick-and-roll down to a science with Chris Paul, but was limited offensively to dunks and alley-oops. Okafor didn't have the same presence as an interior defender, but anything we lost in defence, we hoped to gain in offence.

And Okafor probably does have a wider offensive arsenal than Chandler, but as the season has progressed, Okafor hasn't really become the cornerstone of our offence that we might have expected. It seems for every night he scores 17-20 points, there are two nights when he scores 4-8. His defensive combination with David West is prone to break down, and he didn't the same chemistry with Paul on the pick and roll as Chandler did.

At the start of the season, we also expected we would need the scoring from Okafor. However the development of Thornton and Collison as legitimate scoring threats means that we haven't needed as much scoring from our centre position, and the Hornets simply don't appear to be using him as a primary scorer at the moment.

Makes me wonder whether a fully-fit Chandler would be a better fit for the 2009/10 Hornets than Okafor, if we need defense more than scoring from the position.

Hello, here again with another analysis. After the Bucks game, I started reading comments about how people miss TC. And I remember distinctly, a certain someone implying that TC has a bigger impact on the team than CP3. Now Here are the things I was able to compile...

Tyson Chandler split stats(W - L profile)

CP3 split stats(W - L profile)

David West stats(W - L profile)

Split Stats(W-L)

So what do you see from these split stats? First thing that stands out is that the hornets, since 0607 until 0809, are a 0.500 team when CP3 is out. Also, notice that Dwest is actually the most important of the 3(WHAT?!). Kidding. But he does mean so much to the team, an underappreciated player..

Now with the TC issue, what counterargument do I have for what the certain someone was suggesting?

We all know that CP3's replacement during 0607 and 0708 was Pargo and he sits right around 13~14 PER and Daniels of 0809 was around ~15 PER. so it is kind of conceivable why the team was able to hold it together while CP3 was out. What about Tyson? Tyson's replacement, when injured, was some of the worst replacements in our team.. Talk about this.. Hilton FREAKING Armstrong, Melvin FREAKING Ely, Cedric "Who the Hell?" Simmons, Marc "I'm too Old for this" Jackson(well not really he was serviceable) and Sean "Kiwi" Marks.

What I did was in the games TC was out( in all 3 years), i calculated the per game and per minute stats of his replacements(in total). Now, it maybe a crude analysis, and an incomplete one at that, but it does shed some light to how awful our replacements we're...

just to compare here are TC's per game stats:

now for the per Minute Stats for TC replacements

now for the per Minute Stats of TC:

As you can see, there is a huge drop off from TC and his replacements. Don't even get me started on their PER(which by the way are) so if Tyson really had a huge impact, our record would have been really lower. the reason the team is .500 ball when CP is out because he has a somewhat competent replacement, TC on the other hand has BASKETBAWFUL replacements.

I know that that certain someone will say "stats are not important watch game bla bla bla" well im sorry, but stats and excel is fun :D anyway, i leave you all to comment and present your own ideas.