Hornets Hype

In which I make some predictions for the game, almost none of which are basketball related. (I told you I have a talent.)

• How many beers will ticktock6 consume at the season ticketholder Beer Garden before her fingers fall off from the cold? Well, folks, we’re asking the tough questions tonight. I’m going to go with 3.
• Will D West’s bench-sitting outfit involve colors besides black or gray? Are you new?
• Will the Back Row Believes sign get on the jumbotron, despite being the awesomest sign in the New Orleans Arena? No. Those people hate on the back row like nobody’s business.
• Will Super Hugo drop kick the basketball into ANY SECTION BESIDES 101? Hell no. This is a serious number based on actual statistical analysis of all home games this season.
• Will Birdman dress? No.
• How many CP-TC alley oops tonight? My guess is six.

41-19 looks pretty. Put that up again.

41-19.

Ready for some more of that?

41-19.

Cold.

There are some… who may find this excessive.

I’m not saying I’m one of them, necessarily. I’m just saying there are some.

(via ESPN the Mag)

Plus, the impending end to the Punk Ass Attendance Clause sooner than we think? In an interview on ABC26, Shinn said he and Ron Forman hoped to hammer out a new deal with the state in the next 10 weeks. Relevant thread here.

Oh wow. How much fun was that game? How much more Julian Wright can we get? Correct answer: there is never too much Julian Wright!

Hornets 116, Hawks 101.

How did I love that game? Let me count the ways.

But first. Birdman sighting on the bench. Accompanied by Bonzi (he remembered to wear clothes!) and D West (even when supposedly dressed up, he’s wearing what looks suspiciously like his usual black shirt and sweats. Were they… dare I say it… dress sweats?)

• Ryan Bowen gets the start… and two nifty steals. And HUGE RANDOM WHITE GUY DUNKS.
• We didn’t think we shot 15 3-pointers and tied a franchise record. I mean, we knew the Hornets made a bunch, but I think it’s not that they took any more than usual… they just lit them up. I did notice we didn’t have a whole lot of those “ILL ADVISED THREE- WHY WHY WHY?” moments.
• The other night the Knicks had the gall to bust out a fake Chandler. Tonight we’ve got the poor man’s West.
• Fourth Quarter. Stupid DanceCam. But wait! They’re dragging out a ladder. There’s apparently something wrong with the net, and it takes a huuuuuuge timeout to fix it. This means… extended DanceCam!
• Hilarity is about to ensue.
• Hilton Armstrong, seemingly chill with his recent benching, keeps popping off the bench and dancing around. I keep wondering aloud when they’re going to start going there with the camera. Because come on. It’s fun just begging to happen. GO THERE, arena people.
• Dude in a suit and tie up in one of the boxes dancing. I think he’s totally a plant, because haven’t we seen that guy before?
• Finally they go to the bench, where Hilton, Julian, and CP are sitting in a row. JuJu is persuaded to get up and “Jump On It.” He dances. The crowd goes crazy. The players fall over laughing.
• The woeful Hawks were even good sports about the silliness, though at this point they’re behind 99-82. At one point, they put the Kiss Cam on Josh Childress and Tyson Chandler. Tyson is sort of standing there smiling up at it and shaking his head, and Childress sees the camera, sticks his tongue out, and lunges toward him. AWESOME.
• The Hornets’ players who are waiting at the scorers’ table to go on the floor, tired of playing with the camera, start shooting the ball around in a circle with each other. Pargo’s dribbling around his legs and over the back and doing all sorts of crazy shit. Mike James spins the ball on his finger for a good long time, and Tyson passes to a little kid courtside, and the kid passes back.
• Julian Wright dunk + Sportscenter = Meant to Be.
• Tyson Chandler: 16 rebounds, 11 of which are offensive. Do you think Atlanta is sitting there tonight thinking they’re missing, let’s see… souls?
• WTF, LeBron. Why you gotta crap all over CP3′s MVP fun like that?
• CrowdWatch: 12, 430. Attendance was crap. But who cares? They missed out.
• I just wrote an NBA recap that included approximately 2% actual basketball! Everyone’s got a talent.

Why you may ask? This team is 24-34, barely able to stay afloat in the Leastern Conference. Is it possible ROY Al Horford? No.  Is it trade deadline acquisition Mike Bibby? No.  It is because of the season ticket image.  Notice, to the side of this post an image of said ticket, featuring Byron Scott.  This season Byron has signalled the apocalypse like nearly no other, with the Hornets going 1-2 in games when he is on the ticket.  Only Mo-Pete signals similar doom (also 1-2).  

For those season ticket holders out there, at this point, we’re rooting for D-West to be on the ticket, to which the Hornets are an unstoppable 4-0. No one would compalin if Peja was on the ticket, when we’re 3-1. Not to be too far outdone, the Bees are 5-2 if CP is on the ticket and 5-3 if Tyson is on the ticket. And what may be most symbolic of this year, when all five of the starters are on the ticket, we are undefeated at 1-0.

These are all things that may concern whoever comes up with what to put on the tickets come playoff time. But in the meantime, watch out for those Hawks.

Well, it’s official. The NBA and the National Basketball Players Association today granted the request of Chris Andersen to be reinstated as an NBA player. According to Nola.com, Hornets General Manager Jeff Bower said: “We will now begin the process of getting him back on the court and back in a Hornets uniform as quickly as possible.” Which means provided that Anderson passes a physical, he’s going to be a Hornet again. But by all accounts, Anderson has kept in good shape, so the odds look good.

This is exactly what the Hornets were hoping for when the rest of the conference starting running at big men. Despite not playing in two years, he knows Coach Scott’s system, fits in it well, and the Coach loves him. He’s like someone with Bowen’s hustle, West’s moxie, and Armstrong’s physical build. He’s eight to ten years younger than guys like P.J. Brown or Shaq, while more agile and talented that others bigs we’ve seen moving around the league lately like Diop, Collins (Jason), Magloire, Mbenga, Ratliff, Thomas (Kurt), Brezec, or Johnson (Linton).

The HYPE is huge for this one!!!

Mike W: Look how ridiculous this looks.

Ticktock6: What?

Mike W: I can’t figure out what this giant thing is on his shoulder. I swear to god, it’s gotten bigger since he got it.

Ticktock6: Oh, I thought it was just a band aid.

Mike W: Me too! But I swear, it has grown! I mean, what is it? At first I thought it was, like, an injury. Or maybe it’s covering a really inappropriate tattoo or something. Is it a tumor? Why is it so huge? Does he have a magic rock taped to his shoulder? For good luck?

Ticktock6: (dies)

Mike W: Well, it must work, because he’s the best player on their team.

Ticktock 6: MAGIC ROCK AHAHAHAHAHA!

Mike W: Did you just see that Jeffries guy? Is that guy homeless? No, seriously. Why is this guy’s hair all lopsided and scraggly? He looks all emaciated. Do you know how much money this guy saves, making millions of dollars and living on the streets? If we lose to these freaks with their homeless dude, their midget, and their magic rock… I’m going to cry.

A curse on DS — errk — magic balls small rims, tinted windows dark frowns in dark cars buses or planes are apples coming?? — ggrkhh — blowing on fingers, steam rising from quarterly data fourth after affect times 2.75 — zzzaaas — malfunction — blog error….

Conseq lossez to Whizz — peep — does not compute — voodoo data stream corrupted /// rite error spell error hype error ::: does not compute!?!

REBOOTING BLOG

……But thanks!

With an attendance goal to meet, the Hornets’ MVP is turning out to be the fans.

Here we have a rare sighting of a positive Hornets attendance article in the wild. This elusive specimen was glimpsed on the front page (not the front page of Sports, the Front Page front page) of the Times Picayune, marking it as an article of a doubly rare species. It had to be photographed quickly before it disappeared, never to be seen again by scientists for many, many years.

Historic.

HypeMeter: Possibly at an all-time high.

Hornets win 110-98.

Deron Williams wasn’t a factor until later in the game, but then, what Jazz player was? The Hornets scored 38 points in the first quarter. They went on a 23-0 run. (“Wow, I don’t know how I feel about them busting out the GnR so early,” said Mike of the arena staff. “What if they need it later?” Prophetic words.)

Utah’s unnerving comeback in the 3rd and 4th had us on edge. The lead, which was as high as 27 points, shrank to ten and then to six. I was standing on my seat when Peja scored that three pointer. Until that moment, the Hornets were failing to convince me that this one was a 100% win. I found out the only problem when you’re already standing on your seat for the play of the game is, where do you go from there? I was practically climbing up the glass. It was glorious. Did anyone watch it on TV? Did it sound as loud? I loved Mo Pete on the side of the court waving his towel at the crowd to get louder.

That? That was home court advantage. You knew the Hornets were never going to look back.

Phil Jackson apparently said that it’s the mark of a good team when you hit 40 wins without having more than 20 losses. The Hornets are 39-18.

Let’s talk about Chris Paul. 24 points, 16 assists, and 5 steals. The last player, according to ESPN, to have a line like that was… oh wait, Chris Paul. Before that it was Kevin Johnson in 1993. The crazy thing is CP had a quieter last half of the game. He ran up most of those numbers in the first quarter alone. We’re tossing around the idea of switching out our “BACK ROW BELIEVES” sign for some kind of Chris Paul Steal Counter, because it’s his potentially record-breaking stat. With numbers that you flip to count his steals in each game. The thing is, we’d have to count them ourselves, because they never put that number up on the board. Last night was encouraging: I also had CP3 at five steals. We can count! Oh, and we went to Gordon Biersch after the game to see the postgame radio show, and Joe Block went crazy over Mike’s MVP shirt.

CrowdWatch: 17,445 and another sellout. That’s three out of the last four games. The legend grows.

T.P. Watchdog: Fine, I guess you can talk about the Saints’ signings. But if you ever even touch baseball, you are barred from my porch. We just attempted to sit through ESPN’s replay of the highlights from last night, and it was excruciating. No one cares about preseason baseball. There are like 200 freakin’ games already. NO ONE CARES ABOUT PRESEASON BASEBALL. I believe this is a fact. I know no one who cares about it. I have never heard of anyone who cares about it. I’m not convinced it even exists… OK, now see, you got me off topic. I’m liking the presence of at least two Hornets articles per day recently. But I do think last night’s game deserved a top blurb on the front page. T.P. Watchdog… keeping the media responsible & buzz-friendly since 2007.