You can tell from the stands when teams are happy and everyone is on the same page. You can see it during every timeout huddle, you can see it with how they interact and support each other, and you can see it with the way they carry themselves. So last night at the Phoenix game I studied the Hornets like a marriage counselor. With a PhD. Here are some observations…
Pre-Game
The starters circle up. Chris Paul’s hand touches David West’s butt.
Posey stands by the scorers’ table offering some man loving to Peja and D-West, but they’re having none of it. He gets a taker in CP, and they have a prolonged hug. Oh, Posey. Why won’t you whisper in my ear?
At the end of the bench, Ryan Bowen tells Sean Marks a joke. Marks doesn’t get it.
1st Quarter
11:04 Morris Peterson and Julian Wright leap off the bench in happiness as Peja takes a shot. Interesting. I read on ESPN.com that the Hornets are not happy. Oh, Hornets, you’re so tricky. Fooling me with your fake camaraderie and joy.
8:16 Tyson Chandler dunks. Chris Paul hugs him around the waist. ‘Cause that’s just how tall he is.
5:45 Byron Scott smiles at assistant coach Kenny Gattison.
2:12 David West misses a shot. Chris Paul tells him all the missed long twos in the world can’t stop him from loving him.
2nd Quarter
11:23 David West returns from a bathroom break, towel on his head, to find that Melvin Ely has placed his nachos on D-West’s seat. In a touching moment, Ely, dressed in a plaid suit, offers to share.
9:33 Devin Brown falls under the basket. BUT! Hilton Armstrong helps him up.
8:00 The bench gets yanked for letting up an 8-0 run.
0:58 Rasual Butler smiles goofily.
3rd Quarter
10:49 Mike James is not a cancer on this team. I know this because he is sitting on the bench with his leg touching Mo Pete’s, and you know Mo would not let him do that if he thought he was contagious. He’s just misunderstood.
2:29 Julian Wright sings Hilton Armstrong a song he made up.
0:34 James Posey kicks up his feet, puts his head on Mo Pete’s shoulder, and they watch the Dance Cam together on the jumbotron.
4th Quarter
8:55 David West is sweating. Devin Brown offers to share his headband. It is the ultimate display of sacrifice and camaraderie. Because that is one bald man and that is a lot of sweat.
6:13 Peja and Posey are chatting just outside the huddle. Peja lays a hand on Posey’s chest. Clearly some deep expression of teammateship was just exchanged. I don’t know what it is because I sit in Row 26.
4:44 Hilton Armstrong hands Morris Peterson a cup of Gatorade. Sweetly.
2:18 JuJu tries to sing Chris Paul his song. CP stares past him with the eyes of a predator locked into its prey. That CP, he is just so mean and detached to everyone on court. Even his teammates, who only want to sing to him while CP is obsessing over silly things like closing out games.
1:06 Melvin Ely and Ryan Bowen surreptitiously clink plastic arena beer bottles together under their seats on the bench.
0:21 Byron Scott gives Chris Paul a celebratory butt slap as the Hornets roll 104-91.
This has been breaking news, brought to you by Hornets Hype. It’s breaking ’cause I WAS THERE. I saw it. That’s what makes news news, ya know. Stay tuned, people. To paraphrase a wise literary man, I’ll have grounds more relative than this.
In this morning’s Times Picayune, CP fires back at Bill Simmons. By now you’re aware of my opinion of Simmons’ column alleging the chemistry problems between Chris Paul and coach Byron Scott. But you knew Chris Paul, despite his choirboy reputation offcourt, would have something to say. You can read the whole article here, but this is CP’s quote:
For his part, Paul, too, was dumbfounded over the baseless Internet report.
“It’s crazy,” Paul said. “I figure you guys (beat writers) who are with us every day, if something was going on, you all would see it. Maybe he knows something I don’t know. If he knows something I don’t know, tell him to let me know. I would think me and coach might have one of the best relationships out of the entire NBA.
“I guess people got to have something to talk about. Maybe he should come to a game. Let’s talk. If I had a problem with coach, I’d say it. I guess he comes to one game, and he can figure it out.”
Snark! We knew CP could do snark, after the Rafer Alston incident last spring. Here’s the thing. I don’t care if it’s true or not. They were aware that it was out there, floating on the front page of ESPN.com and giving a negative impression of the team to casual NBA fans, and so they dealt with it. (Just to show you how quick that stuff travels, I’ve already read one article this weekend, and now I can’t remember where, that cited the Simmons column about the CP/Byron clash. “Reports are that Chris Paul and Byron Scott…”) Chris Paul is not going to go rogue, or go Marbury, or any junk like that.
No. You circle up, close ranks, and deal with it behind closed doors. You stick up for the team.
And you know what? I’ll throw a shout-out to the T.P. beat writers too on this one. You did something right.
Okay. So TT6 and I have been off and on tossing around this whole “Are the Hornets Falling Apart?” storyline since yesterday evening. I think I finally figured out what the problem is. Universally, the NOLA-bound response has been critical of Simmons and ESPN. Are we being overly defensivee? I don’t think so. This isn’t just the blind, rabid homerism endemic of Jazz fans. It’s something else. It’s about representation. Funny word. Representation. It implies a filter. An author is not simply “presenting” the facts to a reader, but “re-presenting” it through his or her ideological or moral view. That’s fine. We all do it. But what ticks me off, is that for the last several years, when it comes to New Orleans and the Hornets, the representation has been wrong.
The Hornets? You mean that team in Charlotte? No, sorry, they’re in New Orleans now. Oh, but Katrina hit, they’re staying in Oklahoma, right? No again. They’re coming back. But New Orleans was destroyed and it’s as safe as a civil war-torn African nation, right? No, that’s blown out of proportion. It’s fine. But Tracy McGrady said he wouldn’t feel safe going there for the All-Star game. That’s because he’d be scared to compete at that level. It didn’t stop the Arena Bowl or the Sugar Bowl or the New Orleans Bowl, or any of the hundreds of conventions and thousands of tourists that flock still to the city every week. It didn’t stop the French Quarter Fest, Jazz Fest, or Mardi Gras. Okay, but basketball? This team is going to end up in Seattle right? No. They were dumb enough to sell their team to a guy from Oklahoma. But New Orleans is really a football town, right? There’s not enough people to keep the seats full for both the Saints and the Hornets, and those people aren’t giving up the Saints, right? Um, actually we’re among the League leaders in season ticket sales. Yeah, but people still don’t go to the games right? Hey, ass, were you listening to me? Yes, the lower bowl is about sold out and the upper bowl usually sells out or it’s close. Sure, sure, but it doesn’t matter since God ordained your city full of sin and will keep sending Hurricanes your way until it’s destroyed. Funny, I hear a lot less Iowans saying that now. Oh, but Louisiana is all corrupt, come on, some one’s gonna sell you out eventually or get caught in some gambling scandal. Leave the complaining about Harrah’s to Phil Jackson; it’s stupid. Oh. Hey, anyone sense the sarcasm?
Point is, the Hornets have had to deal with a lot more MISrepresentation than pretty much any other professional sport and the prayers Shinn sanctions before the games don’t seem to be helping. Sure, this city has been affected, but New Orleanians are hardy. At the same time, people think Katrina was just a storm. It destroyed this city, man, that doesn’t go away overnight. Homes that were just fine that day still stand wrecked and unlivable. Life is forever changed in this great American city. But that doesn’t mean we should abandon our lives or what we love. And one of those things has become the Hornets. New Orleans have a zest for life in all its facets, and basketball is now one of those things. So when it comes to the media, I don’t think it’s too much to ask for writers to have the common courtesy to get their facts straight before writing crap that they don’t know about.
Byron Scott, CP, and all the rest should be a model for the league. They’re not getting caught with drugs. They’re not beating their wives/girlfriends. They’re not talking bad about each other in the press. As Gerry V recently commented, as he traveled with the team, these guys are tight, they have fun together, they hang out on non-Hornets days; their families know each other. They’re a family. The media should love these guys. But then they wouldn’t be the Real World. They wouldn’t be The Hills. They wouldn’t be Survivor or the Rock of Love. So just like all of those “reality” shows use editing, plot prompts, and overacting to manufacture drama, the media is in on it at times. Here, it’s not even just Simmons, who apparently makes sweeping statements all the time, but ESPN, who was dumb enough to run this on their front page. But some people would rather a bunch of bullshit instead of honest work.
Look at NBATV. I mean I love their extensive coverage, but sometimes, it’s just a bunch of jackasses sitting around talking shit. Gary Payton and Chris Webber? Tip to J. E. Skeets over at Ball Don’t Lie: they’re horrible. How about some analysis? (P.S. Simmons liked these guys. Is he mental?)
Listen, the Hornets haven’t had the season they were hoping for. They have played some bad games. No problem. Let’s talk about that. Ryan at 247 wants to talk about free throw rates and turnovers. Fine. Rohan’s called out bad shooting and pace over at the Hive. Stellar. Let’s do it. But to just shoot your mouth and pretend it has any weight whatsoever just because it’s posted on ESPN.com is stupid. Of course, maybe we all need to accept some of the blame. We like talk shows and talk radio, and forget that in this country these people can say just about anything and it doesn’t make it true or right. Yet people accept these media-celebrities as sources. They’re no different than you or I, they just get paid to do it. So don’t assume something anyone says is true just because they say it.
So yes, the Hornets have been slightly disappointing this year. We all hoped they’d look like the Lakers do now. They don’t. But it’s November. I believe May will look different. Maybe not. But I hope that with a few more nationally televised games, at least the national media will present the facts about this team. Not just half-assed psycho-babble and creative ignorance.
Oh yeah, someone please tell Hubie Brown to stop saying “New Orleeeeens”. It’s an “i” sound. Like “New Orlins.” We say everything our own way down here. Get over it.
OMG! Despair! Bill Simmons thinks the Hornets’ team chemistry is in DIRE PERIL. We should be freaking out. And we should listen to him. Because he has a PhD in these things.
And because, in the second quarter of a road game in which the Hornets had yet to pull away from the Clippers, a 2-11 team, he thought, in his expert opinion, they didn’t look happy enough.
Claims the front page story on ESPN.com (yes, seriously, photographic proof to the left– slow news day what?), “I mistakenly believed it would be one of those lovefest teams that players josh around during the shootarounds before each half and hug each other too much. Nope.”
Wait, huh? Don’t they? Is he talking about the same Hornets team I’m watching? Now, usually I would say, who am I to lay doubt upon the sage and expert opinions of the Sports Guy? But I think it is fair to say I have watched more Hornets games in the past year and a half than he has, approximately, ever. And to me, the Hornets generally look like they’re having a great time out there with each other. Except for Chris Paul, who looks like he is about to go nova and kill people. But guys, this is the way he always looks on the court. Haven’t you people seen the highlight from one of the playoff wins last year, where Mo Pete comes up to hug CP, and CP swaggers and slaps him away because he’s in total game mode? It’s not that he hates Mo Pete, he’s just got his game face on.
Is there maybe a bit more tension because the Hornets aren’t doing as well as their stated goals for themselves and their team? Perhaps. You know, I would be worried if they were dropping games to teams like the Sacramento Kings and then going out and goofing around. That would show they weren’t taking the losing seriously. The thing about Chris Paul tuning out Byron Scott? I don’t know. I personally don’t think Byron Scott actually does that much on-court coaching. He mostly just knows CP is gonna do his thing, and trusts him to do it. It’s not like they need to be buddy-buddy and talk all the time.
Still, I guess Bill Simmons could be right. And we are in for ridiculous Jason Kidd-esque sabotaging and chemistry issues.
Yeah. Well, back up for a sec. And consider who we’re talking about. For example, in the same column, Simmons drops this gem:
9. Is there a dumber argument in sports than “Chris Paul or Deron Williams”?
I argued before the season, passionately, that Paul was in a different league and earned myself a few death threats from the Salt Lake City area. (You stay classy, Utah.) Check out their 2009 stats through four weeks:
I mean, that’s a landslide! Come on! Can we all agree to stop arguing about this?
Nice analysis there, “Sports Guy.” Oh, except for the fact that Deron Williams has played in 2 games this year for a whopping statistical sample of 32 minutes each. But I mean, you go right ahead. That’s a great time to quote stats from “four weeks” into the season. Was that paragraph meant to be sarcasm? No, I’m serious. Was it, and I just didn’t get it? Because I believe CP3 is better, as much as the next Hornets fan, but I believe the technical term for analysis like that is statistically retarded. (And if it’s sarcasm, he’s still stupid. Does he not realize that thousands of eyes-glazed-over Utah fans are going to ambush him on the way to his car in the dark of night. Does he have a death wish?)
You know what? Hit me back when this happens.
Until then let’s just say I’m not worried. As a wise man once said, ‘Get back motherf***** you don’t know me like that.”
The dreaded moment has come…. dun dun dun. Yes, the Saints are on Monday Night Football tonight the same night the Hornets play in L.A. Now, other cities with more than two professional teams might be used to this kind of thing. But we generally don’t get much overlap between the two. I mean, it’s not that hard to schedule around. But never fear, friends, because the Saints game is at 7:30 and the Hornets, on the West Coast to play the Clippers, don’t tip off till 9:30. So there should be ample time to get to watch both games.
Wait. What?
The Hornets aren’t on CST tonight. The game is not being televised. In fact the entire roadtrip is not being televised, with the exception of Denver on Thanksgiving, which will appear on TNT. Not the Clippers game, not the Portland game on Friday. Looks like Bob and Gil are just not making the trip. And they know how I feel about Brandon Roy too. They know.
I feel completely betrayed right now. Seriously. I had no idea of this travesty until this morning. And it just got worse as I pulled up the schedule and did some investigating into our wasteland week of Televised Nowhere games. Hark, the refreshing stench of someone new being added to The List. CST, it is on.
Yeah, yeah, the Hornets won tonight. They looked great, etc., etc. Whatever, they played the Boomers. And if they don’t win by 20 again tomorrow night I’ll hurl. Let’s talk about basketball in general. Ryan Bowen. A great man. Works his ass off, even though he hasn’t even dressed for several games this year. He finally got some time tonight and looked stellar. Point? He makes a little over a million a year. Quite a bargain, relatively speaking. But, now, imagine if at practice he told Byron he didn’t feel like playing that night. Nope. He would rather sit out. Coach Scott would punch him in the face and tell Bower to trade him the next day. For a million a year.
Stephon Marbury, of the New York Knickerbockers, makes over TWENTY million a year. Dude, I don’t even know what that means. It’s a lot. If you really do the math, any one of us could live on that much money alone ($20 mil) for the rest of our life, and just live off the interest, forgetting the principal. So this bastard, who just happened to make this much in ONE YEAR, told his coach he didn’t feel like playing tonight. If I was D’Antoni, I would tell him that’s “Conduct Detrimental to the Team” and suspend his ass without pay. Who gets paid for not working? Also, just to clarify, I grew up in New York, so this isn’t just hateration. To the contrary, I really, really, want to root for the Knicks. But shit like this makes me ill.
Marbury refuses to take a buy out because he claims he’s “earned” his money. Whatever, I’ve yet to see anything in his career remotely worth $20 mil a year, but fine. Then EARN it. How the hell can he CHOOSE not to play. Can anyone reading this imagine telling their boss, “you know what, I don’t feel like working today. I’m just going to hang around the office and chill.” We all KNOW we’d be fired instantly. Must be nice to have guaranteed money. Shit, I need to get in a union like that.
Oh yeah, the Knicks got blown out tonight. And the Hornets, led by a coach who doesn’t put up with that shit, rocked. You do the math.
After the defense was so horrific in the 4th quarter that the team went down by 8 to the Sacramento Kings’ backups, I performed the unspeakably douchey act of folding down the BELIEVES part on our THE BACK ROW BELIEVES banner.
So that pretty much sums it up.
"My advice to you... is to start drinking heavily."
I’m not even gonna try. (Um, but the tooth story is not for the squeamish. I hope you ate already. Seriously.)
UPDATED 11/18: Tyson Chandler’s latest is pretty unforgettable too. He always makes me laugh. It’s entitled Looking for a Rhythm, but Not Looking There. The first part is about the Hornets’ play… the second part refers to childbirth, so you can pretty much guess what the THERE is about. He still hasn’t caught the bass in the canal in his backyard that’s kicking his ass though (which we heard about last time)…
T.C.’s blog is on NBA.com or on TysonChandler.com, in case you weren’t aware, and it cannot be missed.
Okay, the world is full of Survivor fans, and with all the discontent rumbling around the Hornets boards and blogs this seems to be the perfect time to ask the same questions here: who will be voted off the team? Should Posey replace Mo in the starting line-up? Should Peja be traded? Has Hilton progressed enough, and it seems like Mike James must be headed off the island right? What does the tribal council say?
Trick question. No one gets voted off. The starting line-up doesn’t change. This isn’t some anti-progressive Darwinian experiment where we encourage individuals to scratch and claw their way to the top no matter who they have to go through to get it. This isn’t some pseudo-free market rampage where top dollar rules all and you’d sell your mother to get your green. Those values are drama-driven and artificial cultural constructs, no matter how much we represent them as “natural.” Humans are creatures of collaboration. Our success is tied to our ability to work together efficiently. As the nineties’ Bulls. Ask the Spurs teams of the last ten years.
The Hornets are a team. When asked this year what the Celtics’ greatest asset was last year, Paul Pierce answered immediately: chemistry. Ask me why the Hornets were so great last year and will be this year? Chemistry. These guys know each other, work together well, and actually like each other. Do you really think CP starts yelling at Peja in practice for not hitting his shots in the game and then goes and yells at Jeff Bower for not trading him? No way. You think TC is telling Hilton he should stop trying to implement a spin and shoot move into his offensive arsenal, and calling George Shinn to figure out why his fourth year option was picked up, or is helping him work on that shot?
Too much of our culture is pessimistic, celebrating the demise of others. Misery loves company and all that. Or more accurately, they’re more miserable than me so I must be happy. Sorry not here. We’re all about the Hype. Basketball is a long season. We can’t just decry every missed shot and badly played game. Should we be disappointed? Sure. Despair? No way. Peja can miss every shot all game and I still have no problem with him taking a fadeway hand-in-your-face three at the buzzer. Our backups are progressing, and have done some things well some games, and other things well in other games. Give it all time to gel. The Bees could be ten games back from the 8th seed with ten games to go and I’d believe they could make it. So should you.
More importantly, despite their slow start, I believe they will win the division and be a top 3 seed. So should you.
Last night I was fuming mad at the calls in the Hornets-Lakers game. I thought the refs blew not just particular calls, but that their entire method to calling the game was flawed. Now before we go any further, I want to make it clear that the Lakers beat us. End of story. I’m not blaming the refs for the loss. But it occurred to me that it’s something I’ve seen before and just never knew how to describe it. Now I think I can.
There’s something called the Coase Theorem. It’s a theory that describes the efficiency of an economic allocation or outcome in the presence of externalities. This 1937 theory finally won the Nobel prize in 1991, and has a variety of applications, such as when Judge Learned Hand now-famously applied it to American tort law (e.g., negligence, personal injury, etc.). Basic tort law says that when someone is harmed, someone is the cause of that harm, and whosoever caused that harm must then make restitution for the aforementioned harm. Judge hand resolved this theory to the formula of B < PL, where B = the burden of adequate protection against foreseeable damages, P = the probability of damage occurring and L = the gravity of the resulting loss. The practical application of this formula, then, was to suggest to a company that if the cost of taking certain precautions was less than result of probability times the loss that might be incurred, the company was better off to settle out of court or pay the cost of lawsuits rather than to incur the cost of taking the precaution (think of the Edward Norton's auto recall example from Fight Club). The problem with this application to tort law came when certain scholars, like Richard Posner, believed that if a company made the “right” economic choice of not taking the precaution, then they were not even negligent for the harm that ensued. Yet the flaw in this interpretation was that the formula took into account the fact that the company would be held negligent. Thus, to not find that company negligent was rewarding them unjustly for making their products more dangerous to reap greater profits. You can see the controversy this caused.
Okay, you’re asking me. How the hell does this relate to basketball, let alone the call scheme of referees? Simple. Teams like the Lakers last night, like the Celtics last year, and the Spurs or Pistons since, well, ever employ stifling, in-your-face defense. They gameplan on trying to frustrate opposing players by getting in their grill, playing press defense, and making as much physical contact as the rules allow. Defense wins championships, right? Only there’s one problem, this maxim, as well as the maxim that basketball is a “contact sport,” equate physical contact as the norm, and the very reputation of being “tough” defensively means that refs expect that team to give the other team fits. As a consequence, the refs have little sympathy for the harshly defended player, because they believe that they can’t “take the game into their hands” and bail out that player when the other team is just defending well. Okay, you’re still saying, what’s the problem, right?
Well here’s the thing, when you play that kind of defense, when you are pressing, when you are swiping at the ball, when you are pressing bodies tight all night, you’re playing in a defensive gray zone: you’re trying to make as much contact possible without fouling. But by the very philosophy of such play, by the very proximity, you are bound to commit fouls. Just like CP gets burnt every now and then going for steals, so will any uber-physical defender eventually, and inevitably, commit a foul. This isn’t a game of perfection, but of percentages; you just can’t play that close and never foul. So s the problem is that the refs are afraid to make the call against these types of defenders, because they just assume they’re playing tough defense. It’s as if they are agreeing with Coase or Posner and saying that just because such teams figured out that the potential burden imposed by increased fouls is less than the probability of enough fouls to cost your team, THEY SHOULDN’T BE WHISTLED FOR FOULS THAT ARE FOULS, because they made the correct strategic choice.
I call bullshit. A foul is a foul. Whether’s it’s CP, Kobe, Chris Mihm, or Ryan Bowen. A hack is a hack. Whether you’re Bruce Bowen, Chauncey Billups, Allen Iverson, or Ricky Davis. A block is a block. Your superstar status shouldn’t matter. Your efficacy as a defensive unit shouldn’t matter. The best teams don’t foul because they don’t commit fouls, not because they play tough and are expected not to foul.
What really creates problems with execution of this Coase Corollary in NBA refereeing is the disparity it creates when one team is renowned for their defense and the other is not. So far this year, the Lakers’ defense had been lauded. The Hornets, not so much. So you get the problem where you get the Hornets getting signaled for regular fouls, which they, like any team, commit. But then, on the other end, you get a team getting away with fouls because B < PL, that is, they are a good defensive team, so we won’t reward the other team with fouls for not beating that defense themselves. Yet this creates an unbalanced game, where the referees are calling fouls on one team that they’re not calling on the other. The problem is compounded even more if one of the teams is known to pick up offensive fouls, which the Hornets are, and then you get the “defensive” team receiving the benefit of “offensive fouls” that aren’t there because their reputation as defenders says that otherwise the offensive player just couldn’t have made that move against such a tough defense without fouling.
So to sum up, what I’m saying is that tough defensive teams are allowed to get away with too many fouls based solely on their strategic choice to engage in aggressive defense and the perception of them as being good at doing so. As a result, their opponents face an unfair bias in how the games are called. Ever wonder why all the run and gun teams have trouble winning close games? It’s because all those “defense wins championship” teams foul them and never get called on it. Well, I’m calling you on it. Here. Now.
You can tell from the stands when teams are happy and everyone is on the same page. You can see it during every timeout huddle, you can see it with how they interact and support each other, and you can see it with the way they carry themselves. So last night at the Phoenix game I studied the Hornets like a marriage counselor. With a PhD. Here are some observations…
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