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.

This is just to spread the word. What’s it all about?

On Tuesday, Chris Paul turns 23 years old. And by Tuesday, Kobe Bryant will probably have won his first Most Valuable Player Award. But this day isn’t about griping over MVP trophies or anything like that. Tuesday, May 6^th will simply be a celebration of the season Chris Paul has had and what he means to the future of this league.

We will be participating here, and I think it’s a great idea. Even if CP3 doesn’t get MVP, it’s important not to forget that he’s had a historic season. And it’s just a nice added bonus that his birthday’s coming up. So I encourage everyone with a blog to blog about Chris Paul next Tuesday! Everyone on the internet’s doing it. It’s the cool thing to do.

Go to At the Hive to sign up!

This is for all the folks who keep getting here by Googling the search term “How tall is Chris Paul?” or other variants thereof.

I offer you this answer:

Taller than me, y’all. Taller than me.

Or here, I’ll be more helpful. I’m 5′6. The heels on my shoes are roughly 3 inches high. But my head is slightly tilted. So you know, like, you do the math.

Or I could be even more helpful and tell you that Chris Paul is listed as 6′0. But in actuality he’s probably 5′11.

Yes. You can now feel free to bow to his greatness.

And that’s my public service for the day. (Man, I am shameless when it comes to putting up that picture. That was totally gratuitous. You got me.)

I’ve added a Flickr album, which you can click on in the sidebar. So if you want, you can check out our photos from the Hornets “Fan Up!” Pep Rally, and our photos from when we won the CP3 for MVP video contest.

Some of the later ones are kind of blurry, because someone was drinking/celebrating the Southwest Division Title and accidentally left the zoom on even though the players were 3 feet away. (Seriously. mW saw David West’s butt once while he was fixing his shorts. We were that close. I would have been much more appreciative of David West’s naked ass, but alas.) But you can still get a good idea of how much fun this whole thing was.

Geaux Hornets!

So here’s how it happens.

I’m in Tampa at a dinner, and I keep texting for the score. The Hornets are down by 12 at the half. The next time it’s 6. Five minutes later it’s 5. The last time I check it’s 68-65. I leave to go watch the rest of the game in the hotel bar. On the way I get a message from mW. It just says, “Wow… Go Hornets!”

And I know. I just know.

I walk up to the bar, and there in ESPN HD, the first thing I hear is, “Chris Paul has taken over this game.” New Orleans has a six-point lead.

Someone says, “There are still 9 minutes left.”

I said, “You know how many times this season the Hornets have come from behind in the second half at home and then given up the lead? Never.”

And I watch as he smokes a double team, weaves around a third defender, and takes it effortlessly right up the middle to the basket, like a dancer. And I listen as the commentating on this game stops being about Dirk Nowitzki, or Jason Kidd, or about the Mavs at all. With 35 points, 10 assists, 4 steals, and only one turnover, the “MVP!” chants thundering down, Chris Paul has said an emphatic, “Hell no. This is my party.”

It is a gorgeous thing to watch.

NBA Playoffs, meet Chris Paul.

CP3 HypeMeter: Paul finds his groove in winning playoff debut, Paul trumps experience in playoff debut. But SI gives a little bit of hate.

TysonBlog: Round One Version. The best part excerpted below:

It’s comical to me that they wanted to play us. First of all, it’s comical to me that you’re scared of a team, and say that you don’t want to play them.

But it reminds me of when I was little. I begged for the My Buddy doll, begged for the My Buddy doll. I kept asking, “Ma, get me the My Buddy. Ma, get me the My Buddy.” But my mom couldn’t really afford it, so she couldn’t get it for me at that time.

So, I kept at it. “Ma, get me a My Buddy. Every other kid got a My Buddy. Mom, I never get anything!” Just making my mom feel bad.

So, my uncle told my mom, “I’ll fix this.” I didn’t know my uncle told my mom that, but he came over with this video and pops it in the machine. I’m like, “Ah, My Buddy!” And it turns out it was the Chucky movie.

All the next week, I’m telling my mom, “Please, don’t get me My Buddy. Please, don’t get me My Buddy.”

So sometimes, what you think you really want, you don’t really want. The Mavericks think they want us, and they asked for us, and we ain’t gonna be My Buddy. They’re gonna get Chucky.

Also, I’m so over the MVP race drama now, but this is pretty funny.

a.k.a. Ticktock6 talks on camera… and talks… and talks…

Someone please tell me it wasn’t as bad as I remember it being! As I stood there rambling and sneaking sideways glances at myself (”SELF! We’re on the court! We’re on the jumbotron!”) on the screen, I realized that I had no clue what I was actually saying. No, seriously. It’s like I blacked out. Clearly Rob Nice does not know me. Because then he’d know that if I’m on a roll, you have to stop me. Haha.

I have gotten a lot of nice emails and messages about my video, so I just want to thank everyone! People actually came up to us in the arena because they recognized us, which felt so weird. For those who asked, the song is “Change in My Life” by Rockapella. Lots more about last night coming, but I’ve got to go through over 100 photos first.

Go Hornets! To watch Hornets/Mavs on CST or ESPN… that is the question. Oh, to be able to have such choices in life!

Yeah, I got nothin’. Oh, except this.

AND OH HOLY SHIT. You know how you watch on TV when they pass out the Division Championship t-shirts and hats, and the team stands around hugging and watching the season highlight video, and it’s this moment you think you will never forget, and you can almost imagine you were there?

I was about four feet behind the bench.

And I was standing on my seat, and the usher didn’t even yell at me, and the guys were passing around the hats and putting them on, and everyone was smiling. And it was everything you thought it would be.

So this is what the top looks like.

I don’t want to acknowledge that the Hornets let last night happen, so I’m going to do what I usually do in my little world of denial; that is, ignore the game and blog about something completely different.

Namely, that the Hornets held a contest for the best fan video about why Chris Paul is MVP. On Friday we found out that my video won! Which means we are going to meet Chris Paul on Tuesday. Oh, and sit courtside for the Clippers game. No, I am not making this up.

What We Won

• 2 floor seats to Hornets vs. Clippers, the last home game
• a limo to and from the game (arriving promptly at 4:30 on Tuesday at HornetsHype.com’s headquarters, a.k.a. our apartment)
• meet Chris Paul
• the video will appear on the Jumbotron sometime that night
• a feature in Hornets Bee-Mail
• a feature in the Hornets first playoff program

So. This means a couple of things. First of all, I need to get to work editing my video (some of the stats have become outdated) and burning it onto 2 DVDs for the Hornets people. Second, LIKE OMG I TOTALLY NEED TO PLAN MY OUTFIT!1!!11 (Kidding. Actually, not really, because I was going to wear my TC #6 jersey, but I’m not sure about the etiquette of doing that when you’re getting pics taken with CP3.) Third, I need to come up with something supercreative to make Chris Paul do so I can blog the photo! So if you have an awesome idea, let me know! Fourth, if you know anyone who wants tickets to the game, which I believe is sold out, we’re probably going to have 2 lower bowl tickets for sale. They’re in Section 105, top row. Email ticktock6 AT gmail.com if you’re interested. Include $$.

You can watch my award-winning masterpiece here, and it’s also embedded on our CP3 for MVP page.

WHOO!

In case you missed it, it was hilarious. Chris Paul, man… always says the right thing. And he’s so young. How lucky are the Hornets? No, seriously. How lucky? Interview also features D-West, Hilton Armstrong, Julian Wright, Rasual Butler, and Ryan Bowen goofing off in the first row, like they’ve never been on TV before.

I love the Hornets.