Hornets Hype

Well, that should get Google’s attention. Maybe even someone who follows basketball. Apparently, my breakdown of how Chris Paul’s numbers last season gave him one of the most historic point guard seasons ever, and which, incidentally, blew away Steve Nash’s two MVP seasons, is forgotten.  Some people, who don’t believe in small markets, are convinced the Hornets will finish no better than 7th this year, and that CP3 does not even get consideration, let alone a single vote, in the MVP category, though Derrick Rose and Kevin Durant do.  Crazy.  And people wonder why I disappear in the offseason.  People are so fucking ridiculous that they forget what the sport of basketball is and/or are so fucking bored that they just invent stories to keep themselves occupied.  Oooh… Stephon is insane, Rubio won’t come over, C.J. Watson only took a one year deal?!  Whatthefuckever.

Listen.  It’s not rocket science.  If you’ve ever watched basketball, it’s pretty fucking obvious that Chris Paul is a once-in-a-generation talent.  Quick, name the best players in the NBA.  If you didn’t say CP, Kobe, and one other person, then you’re a moron.  Yeah, yeah, freedom of choice, opinion, etc.  All that also includes the freedom to be wrong, to be a moron, and just plain ignorant.  Congratulations.  Sometimes I wish this country was a totalitarian state and they made everyone worship the players who had talent and heart (yeah, I’m talking to you Vince Carter), rather than just those that get the most attention.  At least it’d be a little more honest.

Sorry if I don’t drop to my knees and worship the capitalist propaganda that would make us believe the Knicks deserve a championship when they haven’t even put forth a team that resembles a professional unit since Allan Houston played for them and don’t bask in the glow of yet another Celtics-Lakers matchup when there are are 30 teams in the league with 30 equally laudable fanbases, or for that matter, drool at the mere mention of the “Chosen One”—a.k.a. the Nike whore or whoever makes the sponsors figure will make them the most money (um, Dwayne Wade?).  Call me an elitist, call me a purist, yeah, like those are bad things, but I appreciate the game of basketball.  I’ll follow the talent like Deep Throat said to follow the money.  And the media is complicit.  Already they’re putting it again as Kobe-LRJ for MVP and Celts-Lakeshow for the ring.  Fucking sad.  Unprecedented parity and they mouth the same shit?  Dimemag is one of the few that gets it.  They ask the hard questions.  Steve Nash (no offense, dude, I love your game), and Duncan (ditto) both have two MVPs, and Shaq one?  What the fuck?  Dime thought that weird.  Me too.  But I digress.  Dime also noticed that no one has truly appreciated  CP3’s greatness.  That the rest of the country isn’t onboard makes me want to drop a bunch of downers chased with beer like Hunter S. Thompson and go on a shooting spree.

But why cry over spilt media milk?  That’s just how it is today, money, money, money.  No one cares about the truth or the purity of existence that is exemplified by the beauty of physical perfection, which is exactly what excellence in sports is.  Forget that Chris does things that no one has, probably ever, other than Magic, Johnny Stock, and the Big O.  That’s okay.  People can forget.  And then the season will start.  And then you’ll all remember why they called him the Baby-Faced Assassin, the Grief Merchant, or the guy who could talk about Fight Club.  Call him what you will, or ignore him if you will; I’ll be watching, though, and I’ll call him what he is: a warrior, a winner, and the-real-MVP, and someday soon, an NBA Champion.

And it will happen in New Orleans.  And people will wonder why they don’t know more about him.  They’ll wonder what inane thing they were doing when Chris Paul did ______ because their TV station didn’t carry that game.  You really want to know what “amazing” is?  Just watch CP do his thing.

Until then, pretend that someone else deserves the headlines.  Pretend that some other player should be the league’s MVP.  When the truth is he can do things that no one else can, is a leader like few others, and who will continue to smash records on his way to greatness.  I know where I’ll be when it happens.  Do you?

The folks over at Right Guard, in the interest of promoting their CP+3 Sweepstakes, let me know that they are providing us with a signed Chris Paul away jersey, which we are going to give away to a lucky winner of our choice.

What You Have to Do: This is a two-parter.

1) Become a fan of the official Right Guard page on Facebook (I can only assume they will check, people, so be honest!)

2) Post your best Chris Paul “fact.” What do I mean by this? OK, you know all those wacky Chuck Norris facts people like to make up? See here for reference. That’s what I want: your very best fact about the superpowers of Chris Paul. For example, “Chris Paul doesn’t sleep. He waits.” Or, “When Chris Paul touches fire, he doesn’t get burned. The fire gets Chris Pauled.” Only you can’t expect to win by stealing one everyone’s heard and changing the name to Chris Paul. Be creative. Whichever one makes me spit my beverage out on my keyboard wins.

What You Get: An autographed, authentic Chris Paul away jersey in a fabulous shade of creole blue turquoise.

When It Ends: Sunday. At noon.

Q: Aren’t Hornets 247, At the Hive, and Hoops Addict running a similar contest?

A: Why, yes. Yes they are. Is it cheating if you enter all three? Meh, whatever. Hornets Hype says triple the entries, triple your chances of winning, triple the fun! You could also enter the Official Sweepstakes, which gets you and two friends a chance to play ball with CP3. You’d be rolling in riches then, I tell you. Rolling.

** By entering the sweepstakes you agree to release Sponsor, the NBA Entities, Hornets Hype and their respective affiliates and agencies from any and all liabilities for injuries, damages or losses of any kind to in connection with the sweepstakes, prize or any prize-related activity.

This is the last thing fire saw bearing down it before it was Chris Pauled.

ESPN True Hoop, good stuff.  ESPN headline: “Buzz Kill: Hornets thriftiness costing team?”, not so much.  For those of you that may not know, True Hoop likes to aggregate various media sources and present them all for the reader in one place.  What spurred this headline?  John DeShazier, who wrote in the Times Picayune:

The silence has been deafening, the inactivity telling. All we can figure is that the Hornets didn’t seriously intend to add any meaningful pieces in free agency, that their declaring a willingness to pay the luxury tax if it meant putting together a championship-caliber team was hollow. The franchise seems to have done everything in its power to make sure it doesn’t add payroll this summer. … If the Hornets can’t or won’t do what they have to do to catch the Lakers and to beat the Nuggets, Spurs, Trail Blazers, Jazz and Mavericks, then they shouldn’t sell bluster, knowing full well that fans and players are going to call them on it. The lack of activity wouldn’t be so glaring if the Hornets hadn’t gone out of their way to sell the theory that they’d move boldly, swiftly and effectively to plug their holes. Instead, the teams that really were interested in getting stronger let their wallets do the talking. They roared; the Hornets haven’t yet even mustered a whisper. Their silence if deafening, and their inactivity is telling.”

I wanted to respond by posting on ESPN, something I rarely do, but wasn’t sure if I had an account there, so here’s my retort that would have been posted there:

John DeShazier is one of the least-credible and exaggerated sportswriters in New Orleans.  The fact is, the Hornets as of today, have significantly higher payrolls than the teams he mentions: Denver, San Antonio, Portland, Utah, and Dallas, as well as Cleveland and Orlando.  Only Boston and LAL seem to be outspending the Hornets.  New Orleans simply is standing by the team they’ve put together, which wasn’t healthy last year, and is putting trust in their draft picks.  Considering they like to have 14 guys on the roster, they only have one more slot to fill.  To suggest inactivity is always a negative is foolish.  They easily could have hosted a firesale this summer.  To their credit, they’ve realized the mistake made with Chandler last year and are trying to keep a winner together.  It makes me sad that this joker somehow makes an ESPN headline.  New Orleans is not “penny-pinching” by any stretch of the imagination.

Feel free to double check my numbers on HoopsHype.com.  I mark New Orleans at $78M, with others at: Denver $72M, San Antonio $76M, Portland $48M, Utah $73M, Dallas $69M, Cleveland $77M, and Orlando $77M (with Boston at $79M and LAL at $84M).  The fact that the national media spreads its usual ignorance by using a local sportswriter defies all reason and only perpetuates the complex feeling of persecution that New Orleanians often endure.  Maybe we should stop blaming the national media if the TP writers have no clue.   Or maybe the TP should hire a fucking basketball person and the rest of the country should wake up.  This isn’t some kind of transcendantal realization, it’s a few minutes of research.

That’s all right.  No problem.  They can all suck it when Chris Paul is eating everyone’s souls next year and the media flip-flops more than Bill Clinton on Monica Lewinsky.  This team gets it now.  They know their time is now.  They want vengeance.  And CP, the Grief Merchant, will deliver it.

Free hats. Disclaimer: This picture was not supposed to look so naked. There

We checked out the official Hornets draft party last night down at Gordon Biersch, as some of you who might have been following my Twitter feed already knew. Living in New Orleans we usually try to make it out to as many of the Hornets events as we can.

It was about an hour before the draft when I hopped into a space at the bar and started to follow the rumors that were going down on Twitter, which was creaking along there and might have actually died at one scary point due to Michael Jackson’s death (RIP). Everyone was running with the idea that Phoenix might be trading Amare Stoudemire to Golden State or Ben Wallace to New Orleans for Tyson Chandler or possibly both. Meanwhile an older gentleman at the bar was buying me shots of Jager and trying to convince me that I did not, in fact, want to watch the draft at all– I wanted to go across the street to Harrahs and play the slots.

I was pretty sure I wanted to watch the draft, however, so I stayed, and chatted with some nice people I’d been Twittering back and forth with (I’m not sure Twittering is the verb, but I really hate to say Tweeting, so I’m going to declare that, on this blog at least, I was Twittering.) After a while mW got there. Oh, in fact here we are (The below video is approximately 12 seconds of me yelling because I can’t hear myself. I actually had no idea if you could hear me at all until I just watched it. Um, you can. Because I’m yelling.):
Hornets draft party! on 12seconds.tv

Now, for those of you looking for all the salacious celebrity pics, I forgot my camera and was following the draft on my laptop, which I had out on the bar. I also realized that I’d picked a spot close to one Hornets table, but the players were actually at a different table on the opposite side of the room. So not only did we not want to lose our spot, which I had staked out 2 hours prior, but there were about a hundred people packed into the approximately 30 foot space between us and CP. I was more concerned about melting before we even got as far as the #13 pick than stalking Hornets players. Therefore I had to acquire all these pics the good old-fashioned blogger way: uncredited, from Getty Images. But I will assure you that Chris Paul and Julian Wright were there. I could hear their voices, even if I couldn’t see them. (If it had been Tyson Chandler, I probably could have seen him over the crowd from my barstool, but we are talking about CP here.) The Hornets ran some interactive fan contests, and it seemed like everyone packed into that itty bitty area had fun.

CP is interviewed outside by some local stations, ticktock6 realizes in terror that this is the same CST mic that was stuck in her face into which she has NO. EARTHLY. IDEA. what she rambled on about. Oh help.

I have to admit I was unenthusiastic about #21 pick Darren Collison. I know next to nothing about him. Well, I know next to nothing about college ball in general, so that’s hardly a surprise. But I really thought we should’ve take DeJuan Blair, who ended up falling into the second round presumably because teams were scared off by his knee surgeries. I am fairly sure I managed to control these opinions when some cameramen came up and shined a light on me and asked me what I thought. I am also fairly sure I talked for a while. I am also fairly sure the two Jager shots had a significant effect on the fact that I kinda forgot about this whole experience till the above picture of Chris Paul and the CST mike jogged my memory and I realized that’s who I talked to. So, if you’re watching whatever draft montage they put together and air as a pregame or halftime feature next fall, and the girl wearing turquoise and (I think, oh lord) a Hornets draft cap backwards comes on and talks a mile a minute, that is me. CST, feel free to not use this footage. Anyhow, I feel a lot better about the Collison pick today, having checked out At the Hive’s post regarding his stats (they’re right up there or better than some lottery PGs). He was a 4 year college kid and didn’t have the hype of some of the others, but I think we’ll all remember we have a guy named David West who was in a similar situation when we drafted him and turned out all right.

I should make a note here that by the time we left the party I’d managed to collect Hornets beads, a turquoise T-shirt (I already have this particular one, and it’s XL… we may have 1 or 2 up for grabs), and the aforementioned Hornets draft cap, which was given to me by @hornetsdotcom. I have been asked a lot of times around town where I got such and such magnet or sticker or whatever, and the answer is you should try to make it to at least one official watch party a season, because they give out massive amounts of Hornets shwag. This particular party, however, should probably have been at a larger venue, because the place was packed wall to wall from when the draft started through when Chris Paul left. But overall, the staff at GB is highly awesome and they’ve hosted some solid Hornets events.

This nice man drew CP's picture

There were other fun moments about the draft, like the Minnesota Timberwolves Mad Point Guard Rampage of 2009, but the other significant moment for the Hornets didn’t happen until we were already home. We watched Blair finally go to San Antonio (where he’ll probably be perversely good, causing us to hate San Antonio more than we already do), and LSU product Marcus Thornton go to Miami at 43. Then a couple of minutes later, David Stern’s apprentice minion (I didn’t know that Stern doesn’t hang around to do the second round, funny!) came to the podium again. As soon as he said, “The Miami Heat convey the rights to the #43 pick Marcus Thornton…” I just had a feeling it was us. And sure enough, it was! So the Hornets ended up with two picks after all. (From what I’ve read today, Thornton was always on our board, and as soon as he didn’t get picked in the first round, the Hornets got on the phones.)

Whew. Crazy end to a crazy week in the NBA. But you know what? We got through another big trade week without selling low on Tyson Chandler, who, I have been vehemently arguing to anyone who will listen, deserves a chance to prove he can rebound from his injury before we melodramatically rant and rave about how he’s “NEVER GOING TO BE THE SAME AGAIN!” We turned a lone low #21 pick in a junky draft into two guys who can hopefully fill roles on the roster and allow CP to get some rest and the Hornets to shop Antonio Daniels’ expiring contract with no worries. We drafted safe, 4-year player types. The Hornets’ front office sneakily drafted a 2nd rounder who, if he makes the team, will appeal to local fans and create buzz. Sometimes I am concerned that they don’t “get” this market, so that was a good thing to see. And maybe I’m being a girl here, but it kinda made me all warm and fuzzy to see the team give the local kid a chance to play for his hometown team.

About the t-shirt. I’d give it to a commenter who wears an XL, but I don’t know…. I think the Hype Cat has an interest in it…

Hype Cat's New Hornets T-Shirt

Major style improvements for CP since then

Come see who the Hornets select with their #21 pick tomorrow night at the official draft party. The fun starts at 6 PM at Gordon Biersch. With celebrity appearances by ticktock6, Chris Paul, and Julian Wright. (What? I’m a celebrity appearance. I mean, Chris Paul’s a cool kid and everything, but he’s no ticktock6, am I right?)

Seriously, though, it’s cool that CP’s in town. Hornets Hype is gonna be at this shindig. Because we like hanging out with Hornets fans. And because we want to see how draft night goes down. But most importantly, because I haven’t had Southwest egg rolls  since the season ended. You think maybe they’re free?

Official flyer and info here.

I’m not sure even how to react to the fact that someone actually wrote an article entitled “Hornets, Pistons win in Chris Paul trade” which begins:

Joe Dumars should go after New Orleans point guard Chris Paul.

It’s not as outrageous as you might think.

Um, except for yes it is.

Just like this was also stupid.

Sigh. Insert joke involving me having ______ (amount A) of ____________ (highly undesirable object B) to sell you if you think for more than 10 seconds about these articles.

Tell me what y’all think of the following excerpt:

I’ve said it before and I will continue to say it — Chris Paul is a punk. Paul personally instigated the chippy play Sunday night with his antics. Paul not only flopped continuously but had the nerve to get an attitude with both the referring crew and the Nuggets players. And how Carmelo Anthony was called for a foul when Tyson Chandler veered sharply and ran Melo over, I’ll never know; to say the officiating in the Denver New Orleans game was spotty is being kind.  In this series the scenario is this: if Paul is feted and treated like an untouchable, the Hornets will upset Denver. If the refs officiate the game as it happens and not as Paul or head coach Byron Scott say it’s happening, Denver wins.

Sigh.

Uh, did any of you notice the officiating in this one being particularly in the Hornets’ favor? I certainly didn’t. I think the Hornets got screwed because the more physical team was allowed to be physical with them and they weren’t physical enough back (NOTE: This is not the refs’ fault). Which, as we know, is familiar because it’s the pattern in our big stack of Jazz losses too. Yeah. I’m sure the physical play of a team known for physical play is solely the fault of the guy on the opposing team who’s under six feet tall. And also, in case he didn’t notice, the Hornets lost! Which kind of ruins his whole argument. Not to mention the fact that during games Byron Scott shows the approximate emotional range of a clam. I’m not sure what coach he’s watching.

And then I remembered this was the douchebag who, in like the first game of the season, accused the Hornets of getting post-Katrina pity reffing. No, I am not making this up. He’s the internet’s foremost Chris Paul hater. It hit me like a freight train of deja vu: “I’ve made fun of this guy before, haven’t I?”

And guys, this one hurts. Because my New Year’s Resolution this year was honestly, I promise, to try to use alternate words in place of “douchebag,” because I feel I am guilty of overuse. But what am I supposed to do? Dude is a douche.

So, whatever, Ball Don’t Lie. I don’t think you should be quoting people like this. He’s clearly got a bias against Chris Paul (said in November, and I quote, that people who think he’s great are “guilty of worshipping false idols” !!!!). Not to mention trivializing a national disaster that we happen to take pretty seriously around here. (Edited to Clarify: I am not saying CP isn’t a punk on the court– he is– but I think people should know these are the words of a serial CP-hater, so they can choose to take them with or without a grain of salt!)

Move along, there’s nothing to see here…. except an archaic genital hygiene product.

Okay, folks.  Tough order today.  A fully healthy Spurs team against a depleted Hornets squad.  No Tyson.  No Peja.  Posey suspended.  Hilton is gimpy.  This would be a tough game at full strength, let alone with what we have.  So can the Hornets win?  I don’t know.  But I know one thing.

Chris Paul and David West have to go Nova.

No iffs ands or buts.  Well, unless we put up like 18 three-pointers, but Butler, Mo, and the rest of the cast haven’t seemed to have been putting up that many lately, let alone making them all.  But otherwise, if our two All-Stars don’t rip it up, well, it’s back to the Ledge for Hornets fans.  (Speaking of, haven’t seen those Phoenix people lately…where they at?)  But I don’t see our guys failing.  Win or lose, these two are going to leave it all out there.

CP and DX understand that this isn’t just another game to put one in the win column.  This isn’t even important because it’s a Western Conference or Divisional game.  Nope. This is the team that knocked us out of the playoffs last year.  On our home court.  In Game 7.  It’s about revenge.

We can all say that we have good “character” guys, who don’t care about things like that.  But I say that’s bullshit.  These guys are competitors.  They get angry.  They harbor dark feelings.  You may not see that side of them in interviews or at charity events, but if you watch our guys on the court, they have that dark fire in them.  So tonight, I hope they will unleash that dark side.  They’ll need it.

Chris Paul sucks.  27-8-8.  Can’t even get a triple double.  Only 2 steals and only 7-7 from the free throw line.  Only led the team to victory over the woeful Warriors, and let them crawl back from the -20 they were all game to lose by ten.  Horrible.  I can’t believe Hornets fans want him mentioned in the MVP conversation.

Psych.  Chris Paul = Where Amazing Happens.  I really can’t sum it up better than a friend of mine, Alden, who turned to me after the first quarter of the Lakers game, and said straight-faced, “that Chris Paul is a wizard.”  Right?  CP does seem to routinely defy the laws of physics.  How better to put it?  Incredulously, though, no one calls CP “the Wizard,” “the Little Wizard,” or anything similar.  So how to describe his play?

I mean, most great players have some kind of nickname, right?  We know this much, Chris is often referred to as CP3, or just CP.  Sometime last year, the nickname was coined “Baby-Faced Assassin.”  Not bad, but ever since I’ve seen Kevin Martin play (who, by the way is not “K-Mart”, that one’s already taken, thank you very much), I have trouble calling Paul “baby-faced.”

Luckily, some of our Chinese friends over at Hoop China helped us out. You may recall that during the Olympics, the commentators talked about the Chinese giving several marquee NBA players nicknames.  While, at that time, they reported Chris didn’t have one, we’ve learned since this is not true.  The following comes from HornetsHype poster, Jonas:

[The Chinese] call CP3 “little baby” cause his last name Paul…sound[s] like chinese word “baby”, and he’s so lovely that we call him “little baby”.  We also call CP3…“King of hornets”…we finally call him CP3 as you guys in US. But also we call him…“black ghost”, “small cannon”(Paul also sound[s] like Chinese word cannon), [and] “sun of hornets” (The King is also the sun of hornets).

Also, from HornetsHype poster, Lucialanlan:

CP’[s] other nikename is “pineapple”, in Chinese, pineapple is called boluo, Paul’s Chinese name is baoluo,and CP3’s fans [are] also called boluomi,which means pineapple fans.

Great stuff.  TT6 says she likes “Small Cannon.”  I also want to add another, courtesy of our enemies of the night, though cool blog, Golden State of Mind, who posted a comic featuring CP, where the “Name Forge of Destiny,” decides that for CP’s “obvious virtuosity,” and “ability to thoroughly lay waste to all who stand in your way” that he be referred to as the “Grief Merchant.”  That’s my favorite.  Grief Merchant.  

So tell me, what is your favorite CP nickname?

Stop me if you’ve heard this one: the MVP race is a three way contest.  Be it the writers at NBAtv, ESPN, Yahoo, or wherever: it’s all about Kobe, Lebron, and Dwyane.  What about the guy who came in second in the MVP voting last year, Chris Paul?  Never mentioned.  These major media outlets run through highlights, and someone almost inevitably says something like “CP is playing is out of his mind, and he’s not even in the MVP conversation,” with a tone that’s somewhat apologetic.  But then they move on.  They have bigger markets to address, after all.

I guess the first thought might be that CP is having an off year.  Wrong.  Higher FG%, FT%, higher rebound rate, more steals per game, and more points per game on less shots than last year.  Oh, but his assists are down 0.6.  But he still leads the League in assists per game.  Don’t believe me?  Check out Basketball-Reference.com.  A great site.  (I got the numbers below from there too.)  Maybe the lack of discussion of CP3 for MVP is the Hornets record?  Nope.  We’re only a few games below last year’s pace, and well ahead of Wade’s Heat.  Okay, so forget this year and last.  There are no answers there.  So ask yourself a more pertinent question.  Is CP3 having an MVP-caliber season?  I figured the best way to find the answer was to compare his stats this year to those of past MVP point guard seasons.  Any predictions on how CP will stack up?

You hear now and then that Chris broke one of Oscar Robertson’s records.  Well, Oscar won the MVP in 1963-64.  Byron also likes to call CP a six-foot Magic Johnson; MJ won the MVP three times: in 1986-87, 1988-89, and 1989-90.  And, of course, the most recent point guard to win the MVP, was Steve Nash, back-to-back in 2004-05 and 2005-06.  So how does CP stack up?  Pretty damn well.  Not the best year ever by a point guard, but certainly within the spectrum of MVP-caliber play.  Let’s get to it.

One caveat must be given.  Oscar Robertson played in a different era, with different rules.  For starters, you’ll see he has no 3-point shooting stats.  There was no 3-point shot back then.  Also, they didn’t break the boards down into offensive and defensive, and didn’t count turnovers or steals. I’ve compared percentages and per game stats because obviously CP hasn’t played a full season yet this year.  The immediate impression that jumps out is that CP’s year is better really than either of Nash’s MVP seasons (something which the below stats will clearly confirm).  The other initial impressions are that Magic Johnson has some awesome years and the Big O played lots of minutes.

Minutes per game to me mostly means how important that guy is to their team.  One could suggest that CP’s longer minutes give him more time to accrue stats, but Nash and Magic played on higher paced teams.  (Yes, I know pace-adjusted stats are all the rage, but I’ll leave those to the real stat masters over at atthehive and hornets247 for now.  Plus, they don’t always work with guys as old as Oscar, as they didn’t keep all the same stats to input into the equations.)  Field goal percentage.  CP may be in the middle bottom of the pack, but he’s over the 50% threshold, which not many guards surpass.  His “weakness” if he can be said to have one, from looking at these stats, is 3-point shooting (one thing Nash excelled at), but CP’s kind of been on a slump from there lately, and he has 20 games to pull that  number up.

Free throw shooting?  CP may only come in at fifth here, but considering Duncan, Shaq, and Wilt have all been MVPs, well.  Yeah.  86% doesn’t sound too bad.  Rebounding, again mediocre, but notice that the only player his height, Nash, CP beats hands down.  Magic had 9 inches on Chris and Oscar had five.  Not bad, really.  Surprisingly, CP actually is only fifth at assists per game, as well.  You’d expect our little basketball wizard to be higher up, right?  Well, I’m going to cheat a little here and go to pace-adjusted stats.  We don’t have them for Oscar’s MVP season, but the best in his entire career was 37.8%.  Magic for his MVP years: 47.2%, 48.6%, and 45.5%.  Steve N with 49.2% and 44.4%.  How about Chris Paul this year?  54.8%.  Let me say that again.  54.8%.  By far the best.  You know how people say if CP played for D’Antoni, he’d average 20 assists a game?  Well, we need to start recognizing in the popular media the difference between pace and recognize CP’s greatness at any pace.

Now, the second set of stats make Chris’ case even more.  First, they show that CP is the master thief among MVP point guards.  Also, CP held onto the ball much better than any of these other guys.  Not surprisingly, thought, he’s not the best shot blocker.  Chris commits a few more fouls than anyone but Oscar, but as long as he’s not on average in foul trouble, which he’s not, who cares?  Magic and Oscar definitely kill CP in scoring, but CP crushed Nash.  Although, in fairness, Stevie was definitely the most effective scorer, as shown by True Shooting % and Effective Field Goal Percentage.

My final observation: CP dominates Hollinger’s Player Efficiency Rating.  Not only does he annihilate Nash, and handily beat the others, but he’s posting the highest PER ever for a point guard.  And guess what?  The guy who currently holds that distinction?  Chris Paul from last year.  And no one’s talking about this guy for MVP?  Seriously?  The case is clear.  CP3 is an MVP.  Not only that, but here’s a bonus stat.  Chris is in only in his fourth year; Oscar won the award in his fourth.  However, Magic won it in his 8th, 10th, and 11th seasons; and Nash won it in his 9th and 10th.  CP is just starting to peak.  Think about it.

The only remaining question is, then, is CP as good as Kobe, Lebron, or Dwyane this year?  One difficulty in making this determination is that they have different style games.  It’s like trying to explain why Nash beat out Shaq in 2006.  How do you really quantify what each one brings in comparison?  It’s apples and oranges.  Two 2 guards, a 3, and Chris at the 1?  You just can’t look at the same criteria for each one, but have to balance the overall impact of each player on his team, in some sort balancing test of shifting priorities.

Nonetheless, somewhat inexplicably, for “analysts,” all anyone ever says is that Chris doesn’t score as much as these guys!  If it was, Allen Iverson would have 4 MVPs and Tracy McGrady 2.  Yet, anyone who’s ever watched Chris play more than once or twice knows that he doesn’t try to dominate the game by scoring as much as these other guys.  That said, Hornets fans have seen him go off in a quarter for more than 20 on multiple occasions, just because he can, and the situation dictated it.  

But it’s not all about scoring.  It’s about making your team better.  CP knows it’s a team sport, and that even if he scores 50 or gets a triple double (the latter of which he leads the League with the most so far this year), and his team isn’t playing well, his team won’t win.  All that matters to Chris is winning, not personal stats, and his goal is a championship, nothing more, nothing less.  But along the way, he deserves to be mentioned by the rest of us as an MVP candidate.  And I say, as an MVP, period.  Here’s what some other people have to say:

• John Hollinger, ESPN;
• Dave Berri, The Wages of Wins Journal;
• Alejandro de Rios, The Gambit; and
• Rob Fitz, Celtics 17.

I know this much, Chris Paul’s stats this year compare favorably to those of past point guard MVPs.  Not just All-Stars.  MVPs.  So anyone that doesn’t at least put him in that conversation is crazy.