Hornets Hype

Just a quick something I threw together. You can think of it as a love letter of sorts. To the Hornets, from the fans. 18,000 strong, baby!

From us to you. 21 hours.

You know what you gotta do.

… in size XXXL. Haha. For those of you who didn’t know yet, we’re getting a WHITE out on Monday, with everyone in attendance getting a white Fan Up! shirt.

T minus 2 days…

Because HornetsHype loves arts and crafts. And because no one fucks with David West on my watch. And now, for your Game 7 viewing pleasure, I present to you…

Side A…

And Side B…

Why 48? Why not? Mad linkage from last night’s game, with relevant excerpts.

In case you haven’t noticed, Yahoo’s really been killing it with the quality Hornets coverage lately. Go over and read the whole article. It’s great.

Somehow, you just know the Spurs will make one final desperate run to hold off the inevitable: That eventually these young Hornets are going to overtake them in the Western Conference. Maybe this year, maybe next, but it’s coming and these Spurs understand they can’t hold back Paul and West and Chandler forever…

As much as anything, the Spurs are holding onto dear life now. An old man with seven rings delivered David West to the deck on Thursday night, and this happened to be the start of Game 7 here: All hell breaking loose, all the way to a champ’s desperate last stand.

Hardwood Paroxysm: if it looks like a rat and smells like a rat…

Basketbawful: On CP3 and flopping, on the game in general.

Oh, and when I play pickup basketball, it’s funny how I never seem to get run over by guys who are almost 100 pounds (!!) lighter than I am (Duncan weighs in at 260 pounds; Paul is 175 soaking wet). Uh, it’s called the Law of Physics, people. Look it up. It’ll be in a big book called “Science.”

Freeze frame of the moment Robert Horry made contact with David West. (Found via TrueHoop)

ESPN gives playoff awards, featuring Chris Paul (MVP) & David West (Breakout Player).

Yes, he’s averaging 24.6 points and 11.0 assists per game in the postseason while shooting 50.7 percent from the floor, even though he’s played the past six games against one of the league’s most accomplished defensive squads. But here’s my favorite stat: He’s turned it over on only 4.8 percent of his possessions in the playoffs. That, my friends, is insane — not even stand-still jump shooters can get their turnover rate that low, much less a guy asked to create something on nearly every trip. As a result, the Hornets have the lowest turnover rate of any playoff team.

Ron Hitley thinks it wasn’t intentional, AttheHive thinks it was– and you can go vote.

Chris Paul looks like he’s visibly trying to restrain himself from busting out with something assholeish at certain points in the press conference. Just keeps saying, “Wow… wow,” like he can’t believe it. Watch it here.

DX HEALTH UPDATE: The Hornets expect David West to be ready to go on Monday.

… to the Heads on Sticks craze, I give you: Robert Horry On a Stick.

OK, so here’s what I’ve decided. Maybe some calls in a certain 30 second stretch were sketchy. Maybe Robert Horry’s pick on David West was dirty.

It is possible they weren’t.

But there were a lot of us who were too furious to be objective last night and, frankly, I see it continuing into today.

Therefore I declare the previous thread, entitled “The Vitruvian Ref,” to be a SAFE SPACE.

There you may bitch all you want regardless of language or rationality. But let’s keep it there. And I, meanwhile, will moderate all Spurs troll comments OUT of that thread.

Yeah, you heard me. As I said, maybe we’re right, maybe we’re wrong, but this is my space and I’m going to give us one thread in which to bitch our hearts out. We’re all fans who get fired up. You’d be doing it if it was your team.

Now. Everyone else who doesn’t want to bitch, feel free to comment in this thread, where we will hopefully keep all talk of breaking glass and throwing things limited. If you’re an objective third party/Spurs fan and you want to come up here and talk, we’re perfectly willing to show you we can be reasonable. But don’t go down there and try to tell us we’re homers, whiners, the worst fans ever, etc. and the Hornets suck. I will kick your ass out.

FURY THIS WAY. ABANDON ALL HOPE, YE WHO ENTER.

Click for the Comment Thread of Rage, or scroll to previous post.

OK, people, in vain have I struggled with this all day.

If the team wins, I am going to the airport tonight to meet them, and I think there should be AS MANY PEOPLE AS POSSIBLE. I wrestled with posting this. See, if I plan ahead, I feel like it will jinx them. But then, if I don’t post this, then maybe some people miss out. I am sitting here chanting over and over in my head, “I am not that superstitious. I am not that superstitious.” But man, it is tough for me to type this. Anyway, JUST IN CASE, I am posting the info:

(… OK, just do it. Deep breath. Ready set go.)

What: Hornets Airport Fun

Where: Signature Flight Services, 22nd Street and Aberdeen Street, Kenner, LA. See map below. It’s right off the exit and super easy to find. End of the street on the LEFT.

When: TBD. Game will probably be over around 11ish, so you can figure… shower, press conference, short flight… 2ish? If you’re interested, check back here for flight info after the game.

Who: HornetsHype, Hornets247, HornetsAsylum probably (don’t worry, I can assure you we are all quite normal and attractive looking, despite spending startlingly long quantities of time obsessively digging up Hornets info on the internet), … YOU

What to Bring: Signs, FAN UP stuff, Hornets gear. Hornets Airport Fun is BYOB. This means I will not share my Abitas with you. Bring your own.

I think, in the end, the importance of having people out there outweighs any superstitious jinxing effect posting something like this may have. (That said, the Hornets are 18-1 recently at home, and that one game against the Utah Jazz I don’t think I straightened my hair, I mean I cannot think of anything else I could possibly have done to cause the Hornets to lose in such an egregious fashion… SO I’m going to go take care of that ASAP, if ya know what I mean…)

So FAN UP and get your ass to the airport tonight!!!

But. Only JUST IN CASE.

View Larger Map

I say awesome. I have no shame.

And yes, he missed both free throws.

The Hornets took a 3-2 series lead last night in resounding fashion, putting the patented Third Quarter Smackdown on the Spurs. Guess they haven’t figured out all our secrets yet, huh?

When you talk about breakout performances, and you’re going to talk about them considering this is the Hornets’ first playoff run together and also the first time much of the nation has been able to see Hornets games nationally televised, we’ve all heard about Chris Paul. Who was again routinely excellent (for him anyway… I feel as if I’ve typed this sentence 20 times before… why is that? am I having deja vu? where am I? I need a 4th cup of coffee).

But it wasn’t Chris Paul who was the hero of the day.

David West. Dude played like a man on the verge of something great. I really don’t know how to even talk about David West last night. Should we just have a moment of silence? I’m sitting in the arena with two Spurs fans in front of me and an elderly lady to my left, and I knew it probably wasn’t the best place in which to be yelling, “D WEST MOTHAF*@KAS!!!” at the top of my voice. But it just slipped out… like 6 or 8 times. And then to find out he was injured half the game.

Byron Scott said after the game he’s thinking West and Chandler will be OK for Thursday, so we’ll have to keep watching that situation for updates. Or, you know, you could listen to Dr. Chris Paul, who, when one of the news writers at the postgame press conference asked David West about his back pain, piped up from off camera, “He’ll be fine. Ain’t nothing wrong with him,” to everyone’s laughter. Haha. Tyson, in his own postgame interview, said he wanted to go back into the game but the trainer nixed that idea.

And now, I’m gonna leave you with some other people’s words on our very own DX. Because last night was his night. All eyes were on him, maybe as they never have been before, and it feels right that this post should be about him as well:

“David West scoring 38 points in an 83-possession game is a remarkable and impressive accomplishment. He may have had the best game of the postseason thus far, and it’s worth a re-telling. 38 points, 14 rebounds (four offensive), five assists, two steals, five blocks, just two turnovers. In a low, low possession game. Tell your friends.

I’m pretty confident when I call this the best performance of the 2008 Playoffs.” – Kelly Dwyer, Yahoo

“Despite a bad back, David West was destroying everyone Gregg Popovich put in front of him, finishing with 38 points, 14 boards, 5 assists and 5 blocks. In between possessions West was hobbling up and down the court — he basically had the game Kobe was going for when he kept launching shots in L.A.’s most recent loss.” – Dime

“…West barely spoke a word the past two days. He had been dreadful in Game 4, and the less that Scott heard out of him, the more certain he became that this pressure game would bring out the best of him. They’ve been together four years now, and it took Scott until this season to truly understand the gravity, the harshness, that his perfectionist power forward has for himself.

‘When he plays bad, he takes it real personal,’ Scott said. ‘He goes within himself and really starts to think about what he has to do for the next game. I love that about him. It took me a year or so to kind of realize that from a personality standpoint, thinking about what he didn’t do, and what he has to do next. There were times, though, where I wondered to myself: What is he pissed off at now?’” – Adrian Wojnarowski

Uh-oh. Spurs shoulda asked Dallas what happens when David West goes silent for two days straight. And so here we are. With two shining golden chances.

Two chances to close it out.

Two chances to say, “You thought you knew everything about us. But we’re not who you thought we were.”

And, see, if you live in New Orleans, that’s something you understand. And it’s a reason for loving this team even more. You understand being counted out and downplayed, swept out of sight. And you know, somehow you just know, that every step the Hornets take toward the future, every time they claw themselves out of a halftime hole, every time they get up in someone’s face with attitude, every game they win, every time someone sees Chris Paul play for the first time and writes an article saying, “Wow. How did I miss this? This is great“… it means a little more than a number in a win-loss column.

Anyway, win or lose, we’ll get to see the Hornets again. Thanks, guys, for that.

“…The Spurs fell into a burning ring of fire…”