So it’s hard to see right now. It’s really hard to see.
And yet if you asked me when I began this blog in January, I would have told you, “All I want? At least second round and the team stays in New Orleans.”
Guys, it’s going to happen. It’s happening all around you. Back in January, it was flat-out the only thing I cared about. Eighteen thousand people knew it last night. Eighteen thousand, in a building that only four months ago used to echo hollowly with the cheers of barely half that. Thank you, New Orleans.
And then I come home from the game and flip on the TV, only to hear Chris Paul saying, “It almost brought tears to my eyes, because the fans… I think that’s the thing about our team is that we’re really upset that we lost, but I think the thing that hurts the worst is the fact that it’s summer now. You go your separate ways. We don’t get an opportunity to come in before the game and see the thousands of gold t-shirts, the thousands of white t-shirts, and hear our fans going nuts. We gotta wait a few months to hear that again, and I think that’s the part that hurts so bad.”
You come back strong next year, CP, you hear me? Because you know what? We’ll miss you too.
Chris Paul will win a championship. Book it. The Hornets could very conceivably be in the Finals within the next 2-4 years.
But I won’t forget this team.
And I know that’s no consolation right now for a guy like CP3, who is 100% a competitor. Kobe Bryant may have a trophy that says he’s MVP, but he isn’t, and will never be, The Guy Who Saved Basketball in L.A. Whoever wins the title this year, they are not, and will never be, the Team That Saved Basketball in whatever city.
Believe that, and know that we won something here this season.
I didn’t mean to fall in love with basketball. I didn’t mean to start a blog. But here I am, and, even hungover on a Tuesday morning after staring blankly at a computer screen until 3 AM, I can’t say I’d take back any of it. It’s hard to know that you have everything you wanted, and still feel this way.
Am I going to be here next year? Well, I’m not sure I knew how much I was signing myself up for here. Because if “Higher and Higher” is going to be what I say about the team, then we’ve got to go higher too. I’ve got to figure out what I want to do with HornetsHype. There will probably be some changes and additions over the summer. In fact, for one thing, I can pretty much guarantee that this blog will not have a “Demands” section next season, though the S#*t List will stay. Let’s check them out:
- “More games on national TV.” No doubt the NBA knows what they have here now. Right now that sound you hear is them scrabbling to hitch themselves to Chris Paul like they hitched themselves to D-Wayne Wade. Check.
- “Actual articles about the team from the national media.” Man, we seem so far from the days of the negative and derisive attendance article, don’t we? And yet it’s just three months. Check.
- “Recognition of the Greatness That Is Chris Paul.” Check x10.
- “More Julian Wright.” Oh, no doubt. He stepped up big for the Hornets toward the end of the season, and I look forward to seeing him incorporated to a greater degree next year. Check.
- “Better coverage from the Times Picayune.” This is a huge one for us here at HornetsHype. They finally stepped it up, but T.P. Watchdog will continue to monitor the situation warily when football season starts. Check.
See? All I wanted.
It just really, really sucks right now. I don’t really have the heart to link up any articles, because I can’t deal with reading more than a couple of them. I’m done with the postgame video. Watching Tyson Chandler talking in the locker room, red-faced and avoiding the camera with his eyes, was more than enough heartbreak for me.
In the end, maybe it’s more about experience than we Hornets fans wanted to admit.
You live, you learn.
You take this morning. And you learn who you want to be.
So is anything done with Peja while he has relatively decent value? I know he became a fan favorite again and shocked us all with his healthfulness all season long. But his back is still a concern, and six years later he still comes up snake eyes in the biggest game of his respective franchise’s history.
I know it’s unpopular – but seriously, if this season was “best case scenario” for Peja, he’s not worth the money. And what if last season’s “worst case scenario” plays out? Having over $10 million in dead cap space for an aging player is the only potential obstacle to repeated Hornets title runs.
///ducks quickly
I would be cautious talking about trading Peja, who essentially had one bad series and was money the rest of the year. Hornets might not even have had home court in the supertight West without Peja making several key late gamewinners over the course of the season.
If I’m the Hornets I’m wondering what bench players with large contracts we can dump before discussing Peja.
It’s probably impossible to trade Peja – but it was still a bad signing. We were a franchise in limbo overpaying to get a “name player” to go play in Oklahoma City/New Orleans. In hindsight, it would be better to have had Ashton Kutcher plus a MLE, but them’s the cards we’ve been dealt.
Hopefully Pej can continue to stay healthy and can avoid multiple airballs in his next home game 7.
Well, Predrag has been under heavy scrutiny about his playoff performances over his career, and as we know, we, along with the press, are inclined to pigeonhole people based off strictly past performances. Granted, Peja earns ALOT of money, but I’m with ticktock. At least sign a backup shooter, hopefully a mobile one at that.
While I’m happy with JuJu, Nick Young might’ve supplemented our need for a backup shooter, although, again, I care less for college and don’t know if he was a set-shooter or a jump-shooter. But anyway, with a player like CP, players will WANT to come play for the teal. Brand Jordan had a few interviews in-house, and most players said they would want CP in a game of two-on-two out of all the Brand Jordan athletes. Hopefully this will transcend contractually.
While I’m glad the Hornets are *somewhat* in the spotlight now, aren’t you guys a little hesitant to release the team to the mainstream masses? I think the lack of recognition fueled our rabidness throughout the season… at least it did for me. It’ll be a little awkward to see people actually giving this team a little bit of credit, eh?
Mark,
I like to see the Hornets get cred. Some of the earlier coverage this season was ludicrous (either rude toward the city or dismissive of the team without the backing of stats or research). But I did kind of squirm at the CP love fest that occurred after Game 2 of this series. Like, “HEY! Step off CP. He’s ours. Y’all didn’t want anything to do with him earlier in the year when we were NEVER ON TV.”
I didn’t really see any Hornets games until around the All Star break when the media finally got their act together and showed them. But even still, because I’m not from the LA area and am in TX (ugh), I’m going to feel kind of weird when people look at me in my nifty Hornets apparel and think bandwagon. Yeah, and bandwagon fan of the team that won 18 games a few seasons ago. And I saw some guy the other month wearing a CP jersey and I felt EXACTLY the same way as your quotation you just mentioned: “HEY! HE’S OURS.” hahaha.
Granted, Reggie Miller (or whichever commentator pees a little bit when the Spurs do something they’ve been doing all season) needs to stop gushing over the Spurs. While I’m an advocate for relative anonymity for the teal by the general public, just being plain ignorant on commentating is utterly uncalled for. You can probably tell mW’s anger has rubbed off on me a bit
ticktock,
I think we got more than we reasonably could have hoped for. Considering what we started with at the beginning of the year, we came along way baby.
As painful as last night was (and Im still smarting), it wouldnt have hurt so bad if we hadnt made it so far. I’m happy with MY TEAM. I will continue to FAN UP.
See yall next season on opening night!
I have to tell you that although I have been avoiding watching/reading any coverage of the game last night because I just couldn’t bear it, it felt safe to come here and drown my sorrows with fellow hornets fans. Plus, even though I thought it would be impossible today, your posts made me laugh (as usual). I have been hooked on hornetshype since the end of the regular season, and have never posting anything until today. But I thought this would be a good time to thank you both so much for creating this site and giving us fans a safe haven, both in victory and defeat!!
GO HORNETS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Great post. your post made me appreciate the Hornets team 100x more than i do now. <3 I’m with the Hornets from the beginning next year.
And national coverage would be beautiful …More recognition for CP and the Hornets would be great.
hey the weather in NY corresponds with the mood…it’s disgustingly rainy in here. :p (kinda reflective of my own tears)
Thanks, Stacy!
Whatever I do with this site, I want to try to keep it less journalistic and more fan-based. We don’t always feel like we have to be rational or objective, and I think that’s OK because there are other sites that do that. As you may have noticed, we both kind of wear our hearts on our sleeves here.
And BTW, y’all have NO idea the Spurs stupidity I have suffered through in my comment moderation queue to give us a safe place to commiserate! (Note: if these were rational Spurs comments, they’d be welcomed. But… yeah not so much. I am talking about “so and so is gay” and capslock disease. Believe me. You’re glad I spared you.) Haha.
Come back next season!!
GEAUX HORNETS!!!! CONFERENCE CHAMPS 2009-2010!!! I’m looking forward to who we pick up between now and then. I’m glad we had a season like this one. This means we will probably have the Hornets for a while. Losing the Hornets was something that i was afraid of pre and post katrina days. 2,000 season tickets had been sold. Damn thats awesome. Keep hope alive and Hornets bee-ball will be a staple just like the saints.
Yeah I think we can be conference champs next year, 09…….crazy. See this is the part where we discuss the best moves for the team that will help them develop, if we were to trade peja while he did struggle against the spurs(who defended him like crazy….seriously they were up his butt the whole time) I don’t think it would help as much hinder, as he gets older he can help other hornets develop their three point shot and he still has maybe five seasons to go as a less aggressive type player. Frankly I’m glad he doesn’t drive so much, keeps him out there longer.
Now I have to say this and see if anyone likes this idea, I keep thinking should we get a young draft pick or pick someone around the average age range of the team(mid 20′s) so I was thinking what if they brought in rudy gay, that guy is getting better quick and if we could land him that would put us into a higher standing I believe(course that would make us first….instead of second) but what could we give for him would be the question. Also if we traded some of our…..less talented centers maybe we could get a really good one to back up chandler…….elton brand maybe…..pretty sure he’s a free agent this offseason, but it’s all talk who knows.
One more thing. I really don’t think we should trade or try to get rid of peja i think he helped our perimeter shooting out a ton. I don’t see anybody who can take his place beside jason kapono, Kyle Krover, or The Real Ray Allen. The spurs i hate to say had options that we could’nt answer. Bruce Bowen was like the glove (gary payton) on peja if we had another good perimeter option beside peja or pargo we would be playing the lakers thursday. Spurs triscuits killed us and we couldn’t answer. great season great 1st series playoffs. can’t wait till next year.
Um……yeah kapono may have won a shoot out with no defense and korver may be good off the bench….but they are no peja, and ray allen is on his way out…..much closer to retirement than peja is, I still say we make the trade for rudy gay, that would give us a three point shooting SF and a guy who can drive and shoot the three that could fill either the 2 guard or small forward…..and he plays for the grizzlies who will not win for a long time, and memphis makes crazy trades. So we’ll trade a towel boy for him(it is the same thing as kwame brown for pau gasol)
Didier, you’re looking at set shooters, which I guess fits the bill for Predrag, but I’d much rather take a perimeter jump shooter with a low 400s 3FG% rather than a set. If you noticed in the playoffs, there wasn’t much off-ball movement forcing mismatches spreading the floor, and I think that killed us greatly. Except for CP, everybody tries to create their own shot, which is fine, but as you know, the Spurs responded quite nicely.
I’m more of a personal advocate of picking up someone like Mike Miller (GREAT player… maybe we could trade Kwame Brown for him), Anthony Parker (I’d actually much prefer his sister, but…), or even a Danny Granger. Heck, even Mike Dunleavy (Predrag in a pinch).
I think most fans aren’t saying to trade Peja, I’m not a huge advocate either, but rather he’s expendable for his net worth. While the free market isn’t blooming with stars, I think we could still sign a capable player with lower statistics. This is important, especially with CP NEEDING a huge extension offer very soon.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=GMV5o0OUwLo
Check out Predrag at the 2:05 mark in Game 7 of the 2002 Western Conference Finals.
Were his airballs last night closer to going in than the 2002 shot?
I say yes. You cannot stop progress!
Hahaha.
2002 king/laker game changed the rules of shot clocks adding instant replay and the lighting backboard when it sounds. The Samaki Walker shot should not have counted at the half. The Kings got screwed. Horry shouldn’t have gotten his 4 or 5th what ever ring.
…Yeah Rudy Gay would be awesome young talented and hungry. If Memphis traded they would be like the hawks bunch of good rooks, but nobody like cp leading em. Maby pau’s brother would help em out, but who knows.
… That my first 2nd round playoff game 7 the hornets at N.O. never had that before cus they never had home court he he ha.
Monday was my first round 2 game 7 at New Orleans. Thats what I ment to type.
I’m fairly confident that it’s not the starting lineup that needs changes. Peja has been one of the pieces that made us great all year. Plus, you don’t so much as worry about age with shooters (look at Finley, Horry, or any other number of guys released by their former teams as “too old” to last much longer for their money). Plus, AtTheHive did a great analysis earlier this year about how Peja WAS worth the money.
I think it’s clear that it is the bench that needs upgrading. If we had gotten consistent production from Bonzi, Hilton/Ely, and Pargo, things might have been different.
Agreed agreed, but we relied on the Big Serbian far too heavily, which if coaching is going to continue current route, we NEED a player suitable for forcing mismatching or having a second dimension to their game (MIKE MILLER!!!). I personally didn’t see our players getting open against the Spurs in the perimeter far too often (credit Spurs), so this is all coming out my ass from one series.
But yes. Consistency from the bench would have been nice. Or rather, necessary.
We need a Bonzi to do the job Bonzi was supposed to do, but hopefully better. Are there any cheap free agents available? I know crazy people want Monta Ellis but the Hornets don’t have that kind of $$ to spend, plus we’d be mad small. Does Rasual Butler have any value anymore? $3 mil to sit on the bench is a money sink.
The only memory of Rasual Butler was from that BUZZ ’08 song, to be honest. But yeah, if Bonzi wants to play, he needs to be less erratic and nervous on court. Love the guy, but he just didn’t do this postseason.
Rasual Butler? Who? Where? Nice suit.
@ Mark, I totally agree with you. In that we need a different dimension to Peja. But don’t you think Julian could fill that gap? Also, I think Peja is actually a lot more multi-dimensional than he’s given credit for.
@ ticktock, that’s a tough one. Rasual Butler has the right skillset to be a great bench player, with a deadly shot, good athleticism, and excellent defense skills. Only for some reason, his shot fell off in the second half of the year. He is a good person, which matters for some teams. He’s making 3.6 and 3.9 mil the next few years though, and that’s an expensive backup. I guess the thing to do is A) look to find a team whose system he might fit, or B) a young team, who might value a veteran presence.