Hornets Hype

We’re glad to have you with us.

Monty Williams, the new Hornets Head Coach

Fun fact: I believe the Hornets now have the youngest head coach in the league, since Williams is slightly younger than the Heat’s Erik Spoelstra.

I’m so over Tom Thibodeaux it’s not even funny. So how come he can’t get over himself? Then we’d all be on the same page here. I’m so over him I took his X away. Yes! I did. You wanna play us, you don’t get no nice Louisiana X from me no more, ya heard?

Seriously. So we make an offer. Then we don’t. Then we do. Then he meets with Chicago in the dead of night. Then he doesn’t. Then he does. Then Jeff Bower gives the man a deadline (which has passed as of today) and leans toward pulling the contract offer and offering the job to Portland assistant Monty Williams.

This is fine with me. That’s the thing about hiring assistants. You don’t really know what you’re getting. But if we don’t know what we’re getting with Williams, let’s not forget we don’t know what we’re getting with Thibodeau either. Neither has been a head coach before. We could strike it rich or strike out. It’s rolling the dice on someone. We were all over Thibodeau because of the defensive scheme he implemented with the Celtics. It would have been nice, especially for a team that played little to no defense this year. But Gregg Popovich apparently saw something in Monty Williams, and that’s not nothing.

I’m glad some national media members have picked up on the drama and seem to be indicating through their tweets (@chrismannixsi and @wojyahoonba particularly) that Jeff Bower’s peers around the league think this is utter B.S. I admit to getting a tad defensive, and really it’s hard not to, because we’re always the bad guy. “The Hornets Arena is empty!” when there are 16,000 people in it. “The Hornets are ruining Chris Paul’s career!” “The Hornets traded for a guy with a bigger contract because they’re CHEAP.” (I’ve never figured that last one out.) It’s nice to see some people saying, “Yo. Stop. This is a dude who’s interviewed for a bazillion head coaching jobs and never been offered one. And now that he’s suddenly popular and in the news, he jerks Bower around.”

This isn’t the Hornets fault. They got their coaching search started early. Why aren’t we blaming Chicago and New Jersey for being the ones who haven’t gotten their shit together to start interviews yet? The longer this gets drawn out, the more the Hornets lose the advantage of having started a long search before everyone but the Sixers. Bower has to be pissed about that. And Thibodeau has to realize that if the Hornets wanted to wait for every candidate to talk to Atlanta and Chicago and New Jersey and Cleveland and their grandmother first, they would have waited till July to start the damn search.

And no, I don’t buy the “It’s the middle of the Finals! It’s sooo mean to set a deadline!” argument. The man went on an interview with his team deep in the playoffs. It was reasonable to expect that that interview might result in a job offer. It’s not like he went to the freakin’ Krispy Kreme and oh look, surprise, there was Jeff Bower offering him donuts and a head coaching job the day before the Finals! He interviewed. This is not about being deep in the playoffs. It’s about wanting to talk to 2 or 3 other teams first. Let’s not pretend it’s not about anything but that.

And see, here’s the thing. The longer this goes on, the more like suckers he makes Bower and Weber and Chouest and whoever look. We are entering a new ownership era and we’re going to have more expiring money to play with this year than we’ve had since, oh, before I started following this team. You need to start this off strong. And more importantly, you need someone who wants to be here. MW was saying that this morning, and he’s right. New Orleans is a unique city. It’s not for everyone, but it’s definitely not for people who don’t want to be here. Choose to come here, do a genuine good job, get Chris Paul on your side, and it will love you. But to put it bluntly, if you’d rather be in New Jersey, we don’t want you here.

Shit or get off the pot, Mr. Thibodeau. We got other things to do.

To Jeff Bower & Co. Pull the offer today. Call Monty Williams. Please.

Except to say I am inordinately entertained by this picture from last night’s Celtics/Magic Game 2:

Vince Carter was Kung Fu Fighting!

I am pretty sure this is from the end of the game when Pierce fouled out, but it didn’t look anything like that on TV. I don’t want to tell you how many moments of staring it took me to realize that that object was a shoe. It would just be embarrassing for me.

In other news yesterday, the Hornets unsurprisingly got the 11th pick in the draft lottery. Go, #11, whoever you may be!

This has been today’s pointless playoff picture. You may go about your business. Move along.

Hornets.com posted another rookie video. You know I love these. This one features Darren Collison, as he goes about his daily rookie duties at a Westbank Krispy Kreme. The highlights:

• CP gets on his case if the donuts aren’t hot
• “Marcus, he’s the main one that be eating the donuts and he’s supposed to be on my side” (HA!)
• On days they fly out, they have to get Popeyes for David West, who eats six biscuits by himself

Huge sigh of relief.

I was pretty sure the “impasse” in the talks that supposedly happened in the last two weeks was just a bit of gamesmanship and bargaining strategy from Shinn, since it was pretty clear there weren’t ever any other investors involved besides Chouest, but you can never be sure. If the sale talks dragged on any longer, it was going to start affecting the coach search, draft, and free agency. I’m definitely glad it’s getting done.

The Times Picayune is saying the official announcement of the transfer of ownership will happen Wednesday Thursday afternoon. We know Chouest is a Louisiana native, who bought his one quarter share in the team in 2007 with the goal of keeping basketball in New Orleans. We know he’s the owner of Edison Chouest Offshore, which manufactures marine vessels for the oil industry. Since the company is privately held, no source is clear on exactly how much he’s worth, but it’s certainly more than George Shinn. If he is indeed a billionaire, as rumored, this would put him in the top half of the list of the NBA’s richest owners**. But beyond that, Chouest is something of a mystery man, preferring to remain Shinn’s silent partner. He has only granted one interview, to my knowledge, and that was at the announcement of the purchase of his 25% stake in the team. We don’t know his ideas about the direction of the team. We don’t know how he feels about going over the luxury tax to ensure that Chris Paul stays in New Orleans. And we don’t know the possible future effects of the recent oil rig disaster on his business.

What we do know is that two of this blog’s least favorite things,  1) stupid error-riddled articles about the Hornets being cheap and 2) stupid error-riddled articles about the Hornets moving to another city, are probably about to be gone. Permanently. It’s like going to your high school reunion and seeing that the people who made fun of you got fat and work in retail now. Are we allowed to steal free agents out from under other teams’ noses and then laugh in their faces, or at least their local beat writers’ faces, now that we’re super super rich? Please say yes.

This is a good day for Hornets fans.

** Quoth the TP: “Many sources in the New Orleans area have indicated that Chouest’s financial resources are vast, easily in the 10-figure range.” The NBA apparently has eight other billionaire owners.

Darren Collison, who finished 4th in voting for Rookie of the Year, made the All-Rookie first team, and Marcus Thornton made the 2nd team. I’m super psyched that the coaches who were voting seem to have gone the best player route, as opposed to the “we need to fill all 5 positions!” route. The beneficiary of this was Lil Dimes, who ended up on the first team where he belonged, along with the other three star rookie point guards. And be assured, I WAS about to kick ass, take names, and flip into vigilante justice attack mode if Thornton got left off the teams, as I was afraid he might be.

But.

While a lot of people are gonna be like, “Second Team is great for a second rounder who got picked at #43, is an undersized 2 guard, and was in a suit to start the year!” I am extremely wary of going down that path. None of those things are Marcus’ fault. None of those things were ever fair to begin with. None of them are indicative of his real talent level. They are indicative of a lot of things some very wrong people thought about him several months ago. I agree 100% with everything Ryan Schwan wrote in this post today on Buckets’ advanced stats and talent.

It was what it was, but none of it was ever fair. Marcus Thornton will do well to remember that. And use it.

This is a gratuitous photograph of Lil Buckets and Lil Dimes eating crawfish. Or rather, of Buckets sucking away on his crawfish like a Louisiana native while Dimes gives his crawfish a very focused "what is this small red creature and how do I take it apart?" look.

I don’t feel super pumped about last night’s blowout win over the T-Wolves to close out the Hornets’ home schedule, but I don’t feel bad about it either. They didn’t lose. They didn’t play down to a terrible team. They didn’t blow a lead. They managed to pull themselves together enough to do the right thing for the fans.

Where are we going? Where have we been?

Byron Scott is gone. Rasual Butler, Tyson Chandler, Devin Brown, and Hilton Armstrong are gone. The Hornets overcame a terrible start to give us a scrappy, fun January and February, only to lose the franchise player to what pretty much ended up being a season-ending injury. (Oh, if it weren’t for that one errant pass and that one unfortunately positioned cameraman! What might have been!) Once they realized they were missing the playoffs, you could see the fire sort of go out of them, as we watched the inevitable slide toward the end of the season.

George Shinn is reportedly in the midst of selling the team to (local! richer!) minority partner Gary Chouest. This may mean big front office changes are on the way, heading into the offseason. This may mean the end, finally, of those pesky rumors we read every five minutes about how cheap the team is and how they’re going to move. We might have seen the last of Jeff Bower, as both coach and GM. The Hornets had one of the best drafts in the NBA in 2009. I discovered a new favorite player. We’ll most likely have the 11th pick in June.  Lots of stuff went down this season. It will continue to go down as we head into the draft and the summer.

I have not given my opinion on this blog about the upcoming sale of the team, but anyone who’s read Hornets Hype long enough can guess what it is easily enough. From the beginning, we’ve been about exactly two things: 1) Watching this team rise, under the leadership of the basketball magician Chris Paul, and 2) Keeping the team in New Orleans. Period. And I just don’t see how Shinn selling the team is anything but great news, when it comes to those two things we  care about the most. Chouest is local.  He’s got deeper pockets than Shinn; he’s got money coming from other places and therefore more resources. He doesn’t just want a basketball team– he wants a basketball team in New Orleans.

Looking back on the season, I realize I had more fun watching this year than I did in 2008-09, even though the team won 14 less games. So I can’t really say it was all a waste. It wouldn’t be true. Last night before tipoff, the rookies took the court to address the crowd (Lil Buckets is not the best public speaker– he not only looked 10 times more nervous than he’s ever looked while playing, but he hilariously started off his speech with, “Yeaaahh, so I know we didn’t have a real good season, but… “). I can’t think of anything more fitting– more than any other players on the team, this was their season. Watching Marcus Thornton go from wearing a suit to being a 20 PPG starter was worth the price of admission. Add in Collison’s masterful turn in substituting for the injured Chris Paul, and these two were the reason to watch. And you know what? I’m also going to shout out David West here, who, in case you didn’t notice, turned it on in the last two months of the season and particularly outdid himself in terms of assists, passing better this spring than he has in his entire career.

On a personal note, the Hype is doing the house-buying thing, so that’s why I haven’t been around much in the last couple weeks. Of course, the Hornets haven’t been around much in the last couple weeks either… It is what it is. We’ll probably have something to say about the playoffs. We’ll definitely have stuff to say about the draft. We’ll be around.

I don’t know. I just feel very strongly that all is not lost. I feel like big things are around the corner.

We’ll be here, waiting.

Hornets play of the year?

I’m sure you’ve all seen it but I’m posting it anyway, because yeah. How could I not? This one is all over the internet today.

Last night we were lucky enough to be able to attend the Hornets annual Top Hats and High Tops gala to benefit the George Shinn Foundation. We had never been before, and we had a lot of fun. It was at the Roosevelt Hotel. Didn’t take too many pics, or really stalk the players, but here’s a short recap, bullet-style.

• Emeka Okafor pulled up and handed his car to the valet just as we arrived. It was a black Benz. Surprise, surprise (if you’ve ever gone to the airport to greet the team after a road trip, you know that this is THE official NBA player car or something).
• Everyone was there, even Sean Marks, Ike Diogu, and Peja. Marks had his arm in one of those huge immobilizing casts that looks like a box. Ike looked fine, but Peja had a bit of a limp. I would not expect him back on the floor just yet.
• Julian Wright sang a John Legend song on stage. He was pretty good!
• Emeka’s date bid on his signed Mardi Gras jersey and photo at the silent auction. And I am pretty sure I saw them walking out with it at the end of the evening too. LOL!
• I didn’t really stare at any of the players’ wives/girlfriends/dates, so don’t even ask for details on them or what they wore.
• We got a player at our table, and they pulled names out of hats to see who. It turned out to be Aaron Gray. He and his date were super nice and put up with everyone at the table talking nonstop about Twitter. Aaron (as George Shinn gives a speech about his cancer): Are you all twittering right now? … We were. We are all horrible people. Haha.
• Aaron Gray ate two dinner plates.
• The event was 1920s themed. Turns out that’s what the ’20s photoshoot the Hornets players did last month was for. They had big, sepia versions of all the players on the wall and in the silent auction.
• One of the coolest silent auction items was the entire team’s signed shoes. It took up like a whole table. I’m not sure what you would do with it.
• I only saw James Posey from afar. Sigh. For those of you who remember, last year Posey was in a bad shooting slump, and the day after I took a picture with him at an appearance, he came out and went off like crazy from three. I took credit, and the joke was, any Hornet who touches me will have a great game the next night. Unfortunately, I forgot about this until late in the evening. The only players who touched Lucky Ticktock6 were Marcus Thornton, Darren Collison, and David West, and let’s face it, they were all going to have good games anyway. Wasted opportunity…
• My goal for the evening was a pic with Buckets. I ended up getting both rookies, because they were sitting beside each other talking when I walked up, and I didn’t want to leave Lil Dimes out. I did not explain to Thornton that I am responsible for him getting stuck with being called “Lil Buckets.” (Niall at Hornets 247 recently told me it says Lil Buckets on his sheet that the Hornets hand around to the media.) Maybe another time…
• The ladies love Peja. I don’t get it. Haha.
• Chris Paul was wearing a velvet blazer and gray and white (I think) Dunks. And glasses. Stylin.

Our table (except mW, who's taking the picture)with Aaron Gray. His date is sitting. I'm on the right. He was popular with the ladies, as you can see.

And… wait for it… wait for it… the highlight of my night:

ROOKIE SANDWICH!!

I thought I had pretty much poured out my soul this week on the topic of female NBA fans. And then someone pointed me in the direction of the “Body Shots” contest the Memphis Grizzlies official site was running this week in advance of the NBA Dance Bracket. I’m really glad they did. Let me tell you what this “contest” is. It’s this:

[More]