Hornets Hype

If this blog posts any more stuff about Marcus Thornton you’re going to get me a restraining order.

But.

I had to:

Is this when you know you've made it?

Of course, I didn’t read the article because it’s Insider only. But we all know the article is not important!! (But if you want to know what they said about him & Collison, Hornets 247 has an excerpt…)

A bunch of us were brainstorming NBA player comparisons for Marcus Thornton on Twitter after the Suns game. His game is sort of hard to pin down, because he has more speed (including that lightning-fast release… seriously, watch him next time) than a straight-up three point specialist is usually working with. He’s stockier and plays tougher around the basket than most of the usual “little guys” you could compare him to.  But he doesn’t have the crazy athleticism of some of the other inside scorers. Neither is he a point guard or a multi-tasker who’s going to fill up much of the stat sheet besides points, threes, some rebounds, and one or two steals. “Pure scorer” is probably the best description for him, since he’s shown an instinctive ability to get his hands on the ball and get points from anywhere on the floor. Comparisons get more difficult when you consider his role– which is, currently, coming off the bench as a 6th man who, since the All Star Break, is responsible for 75% of the Hornets bench points. (Seriously. CST dropped this stat last night.) He plays the role of Manu Ginobili and Jason Terry, but his game is different. Some of the comparisons I’ve been hearing either don’t fit or are too old school for me to really agree with or disagree with.

Who else in the NBA plays or played like Thornton? Here are some of the ideas we (@snavetrebor, @LSUhornet17) came up with, plus a few other names I’ve seen thrown around. If you have a comparison you think is spot-on, let me know in the comments and I’ll add it! Oh, yeah, and if you think it’s a combination of two of the players on the list, you are allowed to select up to two. And if you picked “Someone completely different” you better leave a comment and say who, or else… well, you’re no fun.

In the meantime, take it to the hoop, Buckets. Maybe you’re just playing like you.

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This time the kids go to LSU to check out Marcus Thornton’s old stomping grounds. I think my personal highlight is when the 6-year-old kid runs up to the tiger fence and yells, “Hey kitty kitty!” and both rookies run away. Or when Buckets makes a little tiger noise. You decide for me.

As always, we thank the Hornets for dragging their rookies out and recording this stuff for our entertainment. In case you missed the previous installment, in which Darren and Marcus visit a California Pizza Kitchen UCLA, it’s here.

Kelly Dwyer on Ball Don’t Lie:

These guys are really, truly, giving great effort. Jeff Bower has been the coach of the Hornets for about four months, and he’s had Chris Paul(notes) on hand for less than half that time, and yet he’s had this team playing .500 ball in the West. It’s a phenomenal accomplishment, because more than any other team with any other player, the ball really rolls right off the table once you take Paul away. Bruce Sutter-styled dropoff, my man.

But the Hornets worked their way back. These two rookies are unflappable, Darren Collison(notes) might be a bit excitable, but Marcus Thornton(notes) is as cool as … geez, don’t touch that! That’s freezing. Damn.

When are we going to start considering this kid for the Sixth Man Award?

And speaking of dropoff, after Collison, on the Hornet bench? Darius Songaila(notes), and Aaron Gray(notes). Every opposing announcing duo laughs at Gray when he comes off the bench. Seriously. Every one.

The Hornets are always there, though. So much respect for this team. Give ‘em a watch if you can.

I’m really glad someone else (besides our little band of Hornets fans) sees this. I know we’ve lost, what, eight out of the last ten, and it’s hard to get used to the losing. But damned if I’m not having so much more fun watching this team lose than watching last year’s group of disappointed vets. I’m now truly at the point where Thornton and Collison are worth the price of admission, and don’t look now but David West has actually done a pretty good job leading this team lately.

Marcus Buckets gettin more buckets

6th Man of the Year, though? I’m happy someone brought this up, although just like the rookie honors, I think we can blame Byron Scott for blowing Thornton’s chances early. From every indication, from LSU to summer league (led all rookies in scoring) to preseason (outplayed Devin Brown and Morris Peterson yet unfairly was the guy starting the year in a suit), he could have been doing this all along for the Hornets given the opportunity. However. For your consideration:

Buckets Post-All Star Break

30 minutes
21.5 points
4.2 rebounds
47.2% shooting … FROM THREE
48.5% overall
1.5 assists, 1.5 TOs, 1.1 steals
All off the bench

I think I speak for us all when I say, “Eeep.”

D West: For the love of god, if you lose Anthony Morrow one more time I am going to come over there and kick your ass. I’ma slap you in the face like Dirk.

Pose: But–

D West: Shut up, Pose. Man, what is up with you this month? You give away and-1s like they’re candy. Defensive stopper my ass. And what happened to your three?

Pose: I just hit a three. It was a big one.

D West:  You have made 6 field goals in the last ten games.

Pose: That can’t be true. Total?

D West: Total. Let us not forget how you only played 10 minutes against Memphis and managed to rack up five fouls and lose the game in the last 7 seconds.

Pose: Aren’t you guys over that? It was last week.

D West: No one is over that. Back me up here, Darius.

Songaila: No one is over that.

D West: Marcus?

Marcus: Were yall talking? ‘Cause all this talking is getting in the way of me scoring.

Did a little gameday Q&A action. Check it out here.

And then check out the game on ESPN. The Hornets kind of need this one.

Hee hee, look at Darren Collison bringing the Krispy Kremes! But I’m confused though: they didn’t talk about the 6 hours of prep Gil McGregor and Bob Licht put in to bring us all those great puns…

In person, this looked like he was hugging him around the waist. It was heart-warming and stuff.

Besides this picture.

• Aaron “BIG NASTY” Gray and his random yet masterful D-ing up of Dwight Howard in the Hornets win over the Magic on Friday
• The Hornets giving away a prize a day this month, which you’re eligible for if you renew your season tickets (oh all right, fine, the reason this is on this list is because I won something…)
• Marcus Thornton’s game-icing three on Friday. Everyone had already risen to their feet before he took the shot. It was a moment! It was fun!
• D West’s 40-10 game. Mr. West is in the building! (for people who don’t come to home games, this is the sound clip that plays after every D West bucket… this is its first season. At first I didn’t like it but it’s sort of grown on me. His prior clip was “Wake up, Mr. West-est-est!” Good thing we have Kanye around to provide D West with all his nice beats.)
• Darren Collison’s last 5 games: 24.2 pts/7.6 ast in 43 minutes (43! Oof… CP! Come back!)
• Marcus Thornton’s last 5 games: 22.6 pts/4.8 reb/shooting 49% from the field (seriously) and 43% from three in 32 minutes. Can we please please please put more emphasis on per minutes stats instead of points per game? The Buckets Monster is crazy good at what he does (get buckets) and his stats still look like crap from all those games early in the year when he got 5 minutes of garbage time. Boo.
• Crazy comebacks! This team doesn’t die.
• Myself and mW went to a Hornets season ticketholder dinner on Thursday and Jeff Bower told us that CP is “one to three weeks” away from returning. He’s shooting and riding the bike right now and progressing well in his therapy. Chris Paul himself, when interviewed by ESPN last night, said he doesn’t plan to come back until he’s “110%, because of the style of ball I play.” Let’s hope he’s smart about this!
• THE MARDI GRAS BABY IS GONE! It wasn’t at the game Friday.
• Last night I had a totally weird dream that was probably the result of playing Mass Effect 2 all afternoon and then watching basketball: I dreamed that, while scanning a planet, we unlocked an upgrade that would turn Darren Collison into Chris Paul. Now I’m all fascinated by what kind of an upgrade that would be… “Sticky Gloves — your Shepard holds onto the ball better for 30% less turnovers.” “Prothean Visor– plus 15% to court vision.” “Mental Quickness Implant– you are now a veteran, working the refs in a craftier manner for a 10% free throw bonus to your entire team.” Oh, the possibilities! (Wow, I need to stop gaming… just kidding, no I don’t…)

My non-favorite thing about this week/weekend was the losing. Boo losing. It ruins everyone’s fun. Let’s not do it anymore.

We are all just occupying it from time to time.

Marcus Thornton gets Buckets. And that is why it is his name.

By the end of a scrappily-fought road loss to the Cavs, Lil Buckets owned two Hornets franchise records and tied the rookie scoring mark with 37 points. According to the official Hornets blog, he set the record for points in a quarter (23) and points off the bench (37). I think he had the first 19 or so of those second quarter points in like six minutes. Damn, I had a great time watching him, but I could not say I was surprised. I’ve believed something like this was coming since training camp. You can’t teach a pure instinct for scoring, you can’t break it down and you can’t quantify it. But it’s what this kid has. Is he streaky? Sure. Is he undersized? Whatever. Ask Chris Paul and the five Cavs on the floor who couldn’t stop Buckets tonight how that’s going.

At one point, someone on Twitter mentioned that they weren’t watching the game, just looking at the boxscore, and asked how Thornton was scoring. I just sort of laughed. Because “how was he not scoring?” was more the question. Threes, mid-range jumpers, getting to the rim, and-1s, free throws, steals, fast breaks. I don’t think he had a dunk, but at 37 points, who even cares? His team didn’t come away with the win, but he outscored LeBron James by 17 in his own building.

It’s not exactly a big secret that Buckets has become my favorite Hornet. There’s just one way to sum up how much I love his game, and it is to say this: he is the only Hornets player who can make me feel great after a loss. Period. Ever. You’re sitting here like, “Chris Paul is out, we probably aren’t going to make the playoffs, what’s the point?” And then here comes Marcus Thornton, the local kid out of the second round, ballin like he doesn’t know what fear is.

Oh, and I almost forgot.

I said if Thornton dropped 30, we could drop the “Lil” from the “Lil Buckets” nickname. I said it, and I shall not go back on it. Those were big boy points tonight. They deserve a big boy name. Congratulations, Marcus “Buckets” Thornton.

Is this too blunt?

I just don’t.

Recently a lot of Hornets fans and other people around the internet seem to have an opinion about Chris Paul’s knee surgery. Or, specifically, Chris Paul’s knee surgery coupled with Darren Collison’s solid play in his absence, and what this could mean for the future of the franchise. This discussion usually occurs with melodramatic hyperbole, ie: “Chris Paul is never going to be the same again!”

We’ve actually heard this before, last season, when the Hornets tried to trade Tyson Chandler at the deadline and the trade was rescinded because he failed his physical in Oklahoma City. The internet was rife with speculation and presumption: “The Hornets must know something we don’t.” “Anyway we all know Tyson Chandler will never play at that level again.” “His career is over, it’s good we got rid of him.” And then the worst thing that could have happened in the world happened: Tyson Chandler actually has missed 22 games in Charlotte due to the same two injuries in the same foot. From the reaction from some quarters of the Hornets internet, you’d think this had spontaneously given people medical degrees. Because THEY WERE RIGHT.

Let me tell you a story. A couple weeks ago, I was reading a blog, and some sanctimonious douche in the comment thread took it upon himself to critique the grammar of the original poster, rather than respond to the content of the post. I read the comment and was left baffled and slightly embarrassed for the person. See, I majored in English, specifically writing, and I’ve taught English in the past. What the person had spent two paragraphs laying out– in pretentious and condescending language, of course– was not an actual grammatical term. It just wasn’t a real thing. The person clearly thought it was a real thing… but it just wasn’t.

And the thing is, grammar is the kind of thing you can look up on a wiki. You can’t look up how to operate on people’s body parts with FRICKIN LASER BEAMS on a wiki. This is all a long-winded way of saying that the point you may think you are making, when you expound on something about which you have no expertise, you might not really be making at all. You may even– I know, gasp!– be saying things that an actual medical professional is sitting in her chair giggling at on coffee break.

So when you offer comments such as “CHRIS PAUL IS NEVER GOING TO BE THE SAME AGAIN AFTER THIS SURGERY EVERYONE KNOWS IT THE HORNETS ARE JUST HIDING IT TRADE HIM NOW,” my first question is, Are you in the medical field? My second question is, Are you a doctor? My third question is, Are you an orthopedic surgeon? My fourth question is, Are you one of the top orthopedic surgeons in sports medicine in the United States? My fifth question is, Have you been sent back in time from the future using Skynet technology? If the answer to none of those questions is yes, you can be quite comfortable in assuming that I don’t care about your medical opinion.

I might be persuaded to make an exception, if you can convince me you have in fact had surgery on your own meniscus at least 2+ years ago, and would like to offer your personal experience with the level of pain, recovery time, etc. But I would still take it with a huge grain of salt, because there is a wide range of difference in how people recover from injuries and surgeries, and (no offense to your health insurance) the level of therapy and care an NBA player receives is probably higher than the level you got. Grant Hill almost died in 2003, yet is still in the NBA at age 37. Dejuan Blair has no freakin’ ACLs. It is pointless to sit and judge what an injury will or will not do to a player until the surgery is over, rehab is completed, and he’s been back playing for about 6 months to a year.

So, you may want to try and tell me these things, things like “Darren Collison is going to be a starting caliber point guard so the Hornets need to trade Chris Paul RIGHT NOW while his value is high.” But I will just refer you to the title of this post, which, in case you forgot, is “I Don’t Care About Your Pretend Medical Opinion.” The reason I titled it that… is because I don’t care. I’m not against free speech. I’m not against you having an opinion that is different from mine. I’m just letting you know that, on this topic at least, it is quite impossible for you to make me care about it, unless your answers to questions 2 through 5, as listed above, are yes. (And on #5, it really is going to depend on if you’re a terminator or not, because I am not sure I trust anything terminators say, no offense.) So you should not waste your time.

Just for gits and shiggles, here are some other things I don’t care about, so you can not bother talking to me about them either:

• reality TV
• major league baseball
• Tracy McGrady

Thank you for your time and have a good day.