This screenshot (it’s from NBA 2K9– someone over on Hornets Report had their eyes open) seems to spoil the Hornets’ new uniforms, which are supposed to be unveiled next Wednesday afternoon. So we’ve got the fleur de bee on the sides of the shorts and on the back of the neck, as well as a bluer teal (I fully support this), and a bluer purple (matching the bluish purple that’s been showing up the second half of last season in all the official FDB stuff). I thought I’d hate the pinstripes, but this looks kinda cool. They alternate teal and purple. Can’t see much of the font from this shot, so I guess we’ll have to wait for the official jerseys. Also I’m not sure what exactly is going on with the side striping.It’s team… then blue in the middle and it widens… into a shape we can’t see because the jersey is being folded? Hmm…
I’m going to assume this is pretty close to what we’re going to see. I think I like: they’re nicely retro, and they’ve got the FDB, and vertical striping will just make Chris Paul look faster. I shall bestow my stamp of approval and go back to stirring my gumbo…
Bonus points to who can tell me what 2K got wrong about CP3 in this shot.
The next step on the road to total Hornets world domination has been achieved. And we are very, very pleased.
Last year the Hornets had only 2 nationally televised games on the schedule. Granted, they got an ABC game thrown in there late, when it became obvious in March that something exciting was going down in New Orleans. The end result of this was that the parts of the world that don’t have Bob and Gil on CST all “discovered” Chris Paul at the same time when Game One against Dallas went live on April 18th. So while a couple of games were added to the national schedule in the 2007-08 season, for the purposes of this post, we’ll state that there were two Hornets games on ESPN’s schedule at this point last year.
This year there are 13.
Thirteen! Whoo! Nine on ESPN, three on TNT, and one on ABC. We’ve also bagged two major holidays in Thanksgiving and Christmas. For greater breakdown of the pros and cons of the 2008-09 schedule, cruise on over to Big Easy Buzz. It’s important to note that this isn’t counting NBATV, which hasn’t come out with its schedule yet. So all the sports package folks not in the immediate area can probably look forward to greater Hornets goodness.
The Hornets are coming for you. Worldwide.
But the most important date? Saturday, November 1. 7:00 PM. Cleveland Cavaliers. New Orleans Arena. You want to be there.
Hoops Addict is doing a pretty cool Floor Burn Tournament. The first round is up right now and voting runs through August 11th. It’s basically about recognizing hustle players vs. stars who get hype all the time. Here’s the description:
Each night ESPN, NBA.com and YouTube are flooded with clips of players soaring through the air for rim rocking dunks, buzzer beating three-pointers and blocked shots that make your jaw drop in amazement. While those are all entertaining plays, teams who win championships need players who are willing to get a little dirty and do the little things needed to help their team win. As valuable and crucial as these players are to their respective teams success, these players rarely get the credit or respect that they deserve.
(Note: We wrote up a description for both Ryan Bowen, the Captain of Hustle, and Julian Wright, the Giraffe Calf, but the Hornets haven’t resigned Bowen (yet?) for next year, so therefore the Hornets are being represented by JuJu.) Said mW:
“The man is a physical freak; with a wingspan longer than you’d expect, explosive speed, and the intelligence to read opposing players and anticipate their moves, Ju-Ju has quickly become one of the Hornets’ best defenders, while simultaneously snagging steals left and right when he’s not hopping around for boards. He may not have dominated the stat sheet like other rookies last year, but he did a little of everything and was a total hustle player.”
Anyway, he’s up against Damien Wilkins from Seattle/OKC, so go vote for JuJu!
Edited to Add:
1) The Hornets’ schedule is supposedly going to be out tomorrow around noon.
2) If Jannero Pargo signs with the Spurs I will get violent.
It has been brought to my attention (thanks, Matt!) that the Hornets folks are sending out an e-mail asking fans to provide their input on 300-Level Concessions improvements that they want to see for 2008-09.
As some of you may know, one of the foundations upon which this blog/movement was built is the gradual removal of local favorite Abita Beer from all New Orleans Arena concessions. (No, seriously.) We have lamented the lack of Abita on several occasions.
So now I am totally co-opting their survey in order to further our own Abita agenda. Please please click the link and tell them it’s not the N.O.L.A. without the A.B.I.T.A. It will take like 30 seconds, I promise. Do not let this opportunity to help knock an item permanently off the $#*t List pass us by! (And you know, like, if you actually sit in the 300-level, to tell them other things like you want healthier food and chairs to sit in, which are also totally things I can get behind. Because we were up there for the All Star Game and I was thinking, “Man, this is the sad little stepchild of concourses.” And then I thought, “Oh, there’s Jamario Moon walking by!” and got completely distracted.)
Or, “See, this blog’s mission is not over because ESPN haters still exist!”
The other day, Chris Broussard listed the top Big Threes in the league. The Hornets came in at #5 with Chris Paul, David West, and Tyson Chandler. “These three have tremendous chemistry,” is how he leads off, citing CP’s general amazingness, D West’s versatility, and TC’s defense. The ordering of the rest of the list, though, is sort of wacky to my mind, not just because I’m a Hornets fan. And, since it’s been awhile since I pointed out why someone on ESPN was wrong (waahhh, the offseason is no fun), I’m going to point out my biggest issue with two of the “Big Threes” ranked ahead of the Hornets.
#1 Boston: Garnett, Pierce, Allen. OK, moving on.
#2 San Antonio: Duncan, Parker, Ginobili. Old, but good. They have great past success together, so I’ll agree.
#3 Los Angeles: Bryant, Gasol, Bynum. See, OK, I’m aware that he got the idea for this article from the fact that, with the Ron Artest trade, Houston now has a three and the NBA is currently stacked with Big Threes rather than great duos. But. This three has never played together. If I was making this list, I wouldn’t be putting “paper” threes in there. I mean, we could just have a paper season if you want to do it that way.
#4 Houston: Yao, Artest, McGrady. Big fat ditto. If you’re going to say chemistry is one of the main reasons NO is so good, how can you rank totally untested trios higher?
#5 New Orleans. Move us the hell up until these dudes above have proved they can play together.
#6 Phoenix: Nash, Stoudemire, O’Neal. Not buying it. Just on rep? Past individual success? Phoenix got worse in the second half of the season. No way should they be above…
#7 Detroit: Billups, Hamilton, Wallace. Right? How many successive deep playoff runs have they had together?
#8 Dallas: Nowitzki, Howard, Kidd. Broussard: “Man, I’m giving the old trios lots of credit.” Yeah. Ya are. And this is why you are wrong. In fact everyone but Dirk sucks. Did he watch our series?
OK, now that I’ve had my fun telling ESPN why they’re wrong– I feel refreshed, really– let’s step back for a sec and realized that I’m not really offended by this list. Why? Well, the Hornets don’t actually have a Big Three, do they? If that’s our Big Three, we’ve also got a nasty extra 16 points per game coming from Peja, who is definitely not the fourth offensive option. We could swap him and Tyson in that list and still have a pretty decent Big Three. So it’s pretty much the Lakers and us alone at the top of the Big Four list, huh? Bryant-Gasol-Bynum-Odom vs. Paul-West-Chandler-Stojakovic. Who else has as good a Big Four?
Fun year coming up in the West.
P.S. Totally off topic, but I have NBATV on and they have NBA Stories: Rookie Life on, and it’s rather funny. They filled someone’s entire car with popcorn. Interestingly enough, they had Kobe on and he was just raving about how lucky he was to have Byron Scott his rookie year telling him what to do. And there’s a clip of Byron directing little Kobe.
In which the Hornets have an(other) day of the offseason and Ticktock6, freshly returned to da 504 from foreign parts a.k.a. NYC, takes a look at some of the various search terms that bring folks to our fine site.
1. “how to shoot a free throw like peja” - Dude. If we knew, we’d all be making a cool $12 million a year.
2. “do new orleans hornets not wear the teal jerseys” - Ah. You must have caught a glimpse of the team’s slightly eye-searing gold third jerseys. The Hornets usually wear the teal, but in the playoffs each time they lost, they switched to the other road jersey to mix it up a little and perhaps for superstitious purposes. Hence: Dallas Game 3 = TEAL (L), Dallas Game 4 = GOLD (W), SA Game 3 = GOLD (L), SA Game 4 = TEAL (L), SA Game 6 = GOLD (L). I’ve heard the yet-to-be-revealed new jerseys will not include the gold.
3. “what will eat hornets?” Manu Ginobili’s bald spot?
4. “what color accessories to wear with teal?” Oooh! I am actually qualified to answer this question, being one of the few female NBA bloggers! I would go with silver or white.
5. “hornets that are black white and brown” Whoa, like real ones? Like multicolored stinging bugs? Man, get some pesticide. I guess our Hornets, too, could be described to be black, white, and brown. In, um, varying shades. And with teal over the top. Otherwise they’d be naked.
6. “Charlotte Hornets to Seattle” ….
…
… There are so many things wrong with this I don’t even know where to begin.
Whether or not you have issues with the slightly excessive 4-year contract (OK, OK, I’ll stop… hey, at least in 2 years we’ll have a hot ‘n’ spicy expiring contract to use as trade bait!), we can all rejoice in the fact that, after a maddeningly dull offseason, we have a new Hornet on the roster! The last time we saw Posey, he was chillin’ in the corner bombing 3’s for the Celts during the NBA finals. Ya know, if I was going to retire at age 36, I’d do it in New Orleans, but maybe that’s just me…
I would be remiss in my duties as Queen of Hornetblogging if I did not scour the internet for everything you need to know about Posey. (This is a blatant fabrication. As you will see, most of this post will consist of things you didn’t need to know. But it’s more fun that way….) Here you are:
Posey wore #41 for the Boston Celtics and the Memphis Grizzlies, and #42 for Miami. I’m going to guess that was because 41 wasn’t available, because he also wore 41 in college. And hey, we’ve got #41 free!
Posey went to Xavier, but was drafted in 1999. This means he didn’t overlap with David West, who graduated in ‘03. (Ha– I didn’t even have to do the math in my head on this, because I too went to college from 1999-2003.)
Now the Hornets have 3 guys on the roster who shared the same college coach, Skip Prosser: West, Posey, and Chris Paul.
Posey’s birthday is January 13th.
In 2005 he was involved in the massive wacky 5-team trade that also resulted in the Hornets getting Rasual Butler from Miami.
He wears a mouthguard striped in the team colors (see above– that’s Miami, and the Boston one was green/white, naturally)! Teal and purple… teal and yellow… teal and white… oh, the possibilities! What’s he going to pick?
So our Young Bees kinda sucked it up in Friday’s game. Let’s see if they can do a little beasting of their own on the Bobcats this afternoon. Game is at 3, so if you’ve got nothing better to do, you should check it out. Here’s the internet feed.
And I am not joking when I say nothing better to do. The screen is itty bitty, and it’s kind of hard to tell who’s who. If you look at the pics, the uniforms have names and logos and everything. But on the tiny 4×6 rectangle you get from the web feed, all I saw were numbers. And there are no commentators (although there is random 90’s rap!). The only way I figured out that the Hornets were the black team and not the white team was because I recognized Julian Wright’s unique bouncy run, then squinted and confirmed that he was wearing a 32.
P.S. Marc Stein of that 4-letter channel says that the Hornets are looking like the frontrunners to get Posey. Take that as you will.
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