Hornets Hype

… is much better.

To recap. What I said yesterday:

“And here I was having fantasies of CP3 jumping on Peja in color under a headline.”

Naturally I am going to claim full credit for this. You know it. Even though the claim has absolutely no basis in reality. But it’s cool. The Times Picayune doesn’t have to thank me for designing today’s sports page for them. This one’s a freebie. It’s on me.

Consider it my gift to them.

Aren’t working properly at the moment. So if you left one, don’t be offended that I put you in the spam pile. Because I didn’t. Fixing it now…

Edit: FIXED. Unfortunately, Wordpress ate all the comments that were received in the last 12-ish hours. Crap. My apologies! If you want to try it again, go for it.

Okay, with news of the Shaq to Phoenix and Pao to L.A. trades, it’s clear that everyone is restocking talent in the West. For one, I am not a proponent of a big trade by the Hornets. The only players I’d be willing to part with are underperformers Rasual Butler and Hilton Armstrong. I think they’re both great people, but to be on the best team, you have to perform at the highest level, something neither has done. Another consideration is their respective salaries. Is either a bargain right now? The problem is that neither has high trade value.

So what to do? Just ride it out? Personally, I would like to see the Hornets bring in Chris “Birdman” Anderson if he is reinstated by the NBA. And by all accounts (see this great article for current info), he has been an exemplary person since his ban from the league and likely deserves reinstatement. Word is Byron Scott loved him when he was here and is interested in bringing him in. Also, the Hornets have saved an extra roster spot all season, in case they wanted to bring another player in. Could they have been eyeing Birdman all along? The fact is, he is a high energy big man, who was successful in Scott’s system. The Hornets have first crack at him, since he received the ban while under contract to them, and he could be that special someone that gets the team over the edge and makes them champions.

Times Picayune, we need to talk.

As in, we need to have a serious conversation about what is or is not acceptable when you are the hometown paper covering a premier Western Conference team. I get that there are 82 games, and probably every time the Hornets have a huge win the real rabid fans are going, “OH MY GOD that was the biggest game EVER!” Like the previous Suns win? Possibly the biggest game ever. The Spurs win? Undoubtedly the biggest game ever. So I understand that you kind of need to take that kind of attitude with a grain of salt. And being a professional media source, you can’t be freaking out over every big game that happens throughout the course of an 82-game season.

However.

In the past week, the New Orleans Hornets have been seriously slumping, casting some slim shadows of doubt over their overachievingly amazing play thus far in 2008. In January the Hornets were blowing other teams out to the tune of 14-20 points per game. In the last three games, they’ve been blown out. The defense took a break, Chris Paul had one of his worst games ever, and David West struggled after being named to his first All Star Game. It was their longest losing streak of the season. And the last game of their road trip was at Phoenix, the team that recently leapfrogged back ahead of the Hornets for the top spot in the West. It was conceivable, albeit horrifying, that the Hornets could go 0-3 on the trip.

But they didn’t.

Instead the Hornets duked it out with the Suns through two OTs, in a thrilling offensive battle of two top teams and two top point guards, and managed to get the ball to Peja, who made the perfect buzzer-beating shot and got instantly piled on by Chris Paul and all his teammates. And really, all the doubts sort of disappear, don’t they? Because if you can hang tough in that game, you deserve to be where you are. If you’re going to break a 3-game losing streak, is there a better way to do it? And man, this game topped all the highlight shows, and rightly so. It was referred to by several people as the most exciting game of the regular season thus far. (NBA.com: “Hornets Burn Suns in Instant Classic”) Even if you aren’t a Hornets fan, what was not to love about that game?

But did the game end early enough to make the paper? That is the question. And the answer is yes. Oh yes. But as I held the TP sports section distastefully by the corner, similar to the manner in which one might hold a dead rat by the tail, “What,” I said, “is this?” (Click on photo at above left to enlarge if you can’t read what the big story was this morning. Click. I dare you.)

Really only one word comes to mind, and that word is “WTF.” (Which is not technically a word, it’s an acronym, but shut up, I’m rolling.)

Come the fuck on, Times Picayune. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you probably had the fascinating breaking sports news of Tulane and LSU’s freshmen (for NEXT YEAR) already prepared. And look, you saved space on the front page for the Hornets game. Pretty skinny column, though. Almost as if… you expected them to lose. And were only going to grudgingly bestow upon those second-rate losers their allotted one inch of space and no more, dammit. And here I was having fantasies of CP3 jumping on Peja in color under a headline.

But, you say, maybe it was too late and they couldn’t get a picture. Okay, maybe. That’s a valid point. If it were not for the fact that here’s the back (see left). If it was football, you better believe they would have saved the space, late game be damned. How are the Hornets to be expected to grow a fan base without quality coverage by the local media? How can the Hornets be taken seriously by the national media when the local media doesn’t take them seriously?

Maybe the TP lacks experience in covering an 82 game season. It shows. Let me make an analogy. In soccer or hockey, it’s possible that you’ll only have 1-4 scoring plays per game. Therefore each time either team scores, it’s a big deal. In basketball, you’re going to run up and down the court and make (if you’re the Hornets in winning mode) roughly 40-50 scoring plays per game. Do you cover each and every one? Of course not. It doesn’t make sense. So what do you cover?

The plays that swing the momentum.

It’s the same with an 82 game season. Some games are more important than others. If you’re going to cover one of these sports, and cover it in a meaningful way, you’ve got to get your head around the idea of momentum. You’ve got to know that this was as huge a game as it was. You’ve got to recognize them when they come. If you’re going to skimp on coverage of a game, for God’s sake, make it the one where the Hornets bitchslap the Heat or the Grizzlies or the Clippers.

Not a game like this.

I urge Hornets fans to write in, go to nola.com and leave a comment, whatever. The coverage has gotten marginally better, but clearly there’s a long way to go. Demand better coverage.

A marquis matchup and we get Tulane football. In February. Jesus. I’m dying here.

I know the Hornets’ attendance woes are not the Times Picayune’s problem, and it’s unfair either to lay blame at their feet or to suggest that they have a responsibility to hype a product that isn’t theirs. But imagine Peja Stojakovic in color. Imagine large bold letters. Imagine a side article about Chris Paul vs. Steve Nash.

And underneath all this, in a box, imagine: “Next Game: Saturday 7 PM vs. Memphis. Call Ticketmaster for tickets.”

Imagine the world you want to see.

There was just this point where I felt it, but I didn’t say anything because I didn’t want to jinx it. Sometime in the 4th quarter I just thought, “There is no way they lose this game.” Phoenix tied it up, and tied it up, and tied it up. The Hornets had lost three in a row. But not this one.

Chris Paul had 42 points, 9 assists, 8 steals and 1 turnover.

If there is any highlight show on TV not talking about that game tonight, they will be on my personal Shit List FOR LIFE. (As I was typing, it was the #1 play of the night on ESPN. If it was not, I was prepared to storm the building. And I mean fly personally to New York or wherever and storm the building. I am not even joking.)

Chris Paul. Peja. Double OT. 132-130 over Phoenix.

This is the top, baby. I can say no more.

Well, I guess the upside to getting no televised games and less hype from the media than other teams is that ESPN doesn’t seem to have noticed the heinousness of the three game losing streak. No one’s really talking about it, which shouldn’t come as a staggering surprise, given how long it took people to talk about the Hornets when they were winning (ah, back in the older sweeter days of last week).

They still gave us an A+ on the season this morning. The Lakers and the Blazers were the only other teams given top marks in the West.

It’s a good thing there is gin and tonic, and Battlestar Galactica Season One on DVD… because watching humanity get annihilated by killer robots = my mental state after that game. And the one before it. And the one before it.

I would add the Hornets defense to my Shit List, but that is not what this blog is about.

We took the good word to the streets for the parades this weekend. Did you?

Actually, there was a fair amount of Hornets gear out and about. Nice job NEW ORLEANS! We got some shout-outs from other fans who were similarly decked out. And the last float in Bacchus had a giant Reggie Bush and a giant CP3 on the front! Unfortunately I had forgotten my camera at that point and was unable to get a picture. Too bad the Hornets are out of town this week and couldn’t ride on any of the floats. That would have been a great way to get some local visibility… on the flip side, though, I doubt being in town this week would have done any wonders for our home attendance.

Hornets have dropped two straight for the first time since… geez, I don’t even know, here I was thinking they were unstoppable. They have a tough couple of opponents coming up in the Jazz and Suns. Let’s hope they can get their defense back on board…

Oh, and I almost forgot– we caught the big Tyson billboard on the way to the airport the other day! Sweet!

• Not unsurprisingly, the Hornets drop from #1 to #3 in both Hollinger and Stein’s power rankings today.
• Memo to the Pistons: thanks for that.
• Everyone’s loving the Lakers this week.