It’s Round 2 of HoopsAddict.com’s Floor Burn Tournament, celebrating all things hustle. Had we known that Ryan Bowen was going to re-sign, we surely would’ve nominated him.  But as we said last week, it’s Ju-Ju. And he kicked a$$ in the first round!

So let’s make sure he shines in Round 2 against the Blazers’ Joel Przybilla. The vote is close, so go vote now!  Tell all your friends!

The next step on the road to total Hornets world domination has been achieved. And we are very, very pleased.

Last year the Hornets had only 2 nationally televised games on the schedule. Granted, they got an ABC game thrown in there late, when it became obvious in March that something exciting was going down in New Orleans. The end result of this was that the parts of the world that don’t have Bob and Gil on CST all “discovered” Chris Paul at the same time when Game One against Dallas went live on April 18th. So while a couple of games were added to the national schedule in the 2007-08 season, for the purposes of this post, we’ll state that there were two Hornets games on ESPN’s schedule at this point last year.

This year there are 13.

Thirteen! Whoo!  Nine on ESPN, three on TNT, and one on ABC. We’ve also bagged two major holidays in Thanksgiving and Christmas. For greater breakdown of the pros and cons of the 2008-09 schedule, cruise on over to Big Easy Buzz. It’s important to note that this isn’t counting NBATV, which hasn’t come out with its schedule yet. So all the sports package folks not in the immediate area can probably look forward to greater Hornets goodness.

The Hornets are coming for you. Worldwide.

But the most important date? Saturday, November 1. 7:00 PM. Cleveland Cavaliers. New Orleans Arena. You want to be there.

Full 2008-09 schedule here.

Hoops Addict is doing a pretty cool Floor Burn Tournament. The first round is up right now and voting runs through August 11th. It’s basically about recognizing hustle players vs. stars who get hype all the time. Here’s the description:

Each night ESPN, NBA.com and YouTube are flooded with clips of players soaring through the air for rim rocking dunks, buzzer beating three-pointers and blocked shots that make your jaw drop in amazement. While those are all entertaining plays, teams who win championships need players who are willing to get a little dirty and do the little things needed to help their team win. As valuable and crucial as these players are to their respective teams success, these players rarely get the credit or respect that they deserve.

(Note: We wrote up a description for both Ryan Bowen, the Captain of Hustle, and Julian Wright, the Giraffe Calf, but the Hornets haven’t resigned Bowen (yet?) for next year, so therefore the Hornets are being represented by JuJu.) Said mW:

“The man is a physical freak; with a wingspan longer than you’d expect, explosive speed, and the intelligence to read opposing players and anticipate their moves, Ju-Ju has quickly become one of the Hornets’ best defenders, while simultaneously snagging steals left and right when he’s not hopping around for boards. He may not have dominated the stat sheet like other rookies last year, but he did a little of everything and was a total hustle player.”

Anyway, he’s up against Damien Wilkins from Seattle/OKC, so go vote for JuJu!

Edited to Add:

1) The Hornets’ schedule is supposedly going to be out tomorrow around noon.

2) If Jannero Pargo signs with the Spurs I will get violent.

That is all.

(Photo credit: Storm Surge Photography)

Or, “See, this blog’s mission is not over because ESPN haters still exist!”

The other day, Chris Broussard listed the top Big Threes in the league. The Hornets came in at #5 with Chris Paul, David West, and Tyson Chandler. “These three have tremendous chemistry,” is how he leads off, citing CP’s general amazingness, D West’s versatility, and TC’s defense. The ordering of the rest of the list, though, is sort of wacky to my mind, not just because I’m a Hornets fan. And, since it’s been awhile since I pointed out why someone on ESPN was wrong (waahhh, the offseason is no fun), I’m going to point out my biggest issue with two of the “Big Threes” ranked ahead of the Hornets.

#1 Boston: Garnett, Pierce, Allen. OK, moving on.

#2 San Antonio: Duncan, Parker, Ginobili. Old, but good. They have great past success together, so I’ll agree.

#3 Los Angeles: Bryant, Gasol, Bynum. See, OK, I’m aware that he got the idea for this article from the fact that, with the Ron Artest trade, Houston now has a three and the NBA is currently stacked with Big Threes rather than great duos. But. This three has never played together. If I was making this list, I wouldn’t be putting “paper” threes in there. I mean, we could just have a paper season if you want to do it that way.

#4 Houston: Yao, Artest, McGrady. Big fat ditto. If you’re going to say chemistry is one of the main reasons NO is so good, how can you rank totally untested trios higher?

#5 New Orleans. Move us the hell up until these dudes above have proved they can play together.

#6 Phoenix: Nash, Stoudemire, O’Neal. Not buying it. Just on rep? Past individual success? Phoenix got worse in the second half of the season. No way should they be above…

#7 Detroit: Billups, Hamilton, Wallace. Right? How many successive deep playoff runs have they had together?

#8 Dallas: Nowitzki, Howard, Kidd. Broussard: “Man, I’m giving the old trios lots of credit.” Yeah. Ya are. And this is why you are wrong. In fact everyone but Dirk sucks. Did he watch our series?

#9 Washington: Arenas, Butler, Jamison. Provided they’re healthy, higher.

OK, now that I’ve had my fun telling ESPN why they’re wrong– I feel refreshed, really– let’s step back for a sec and realized that I’m not really offended by this list. Why? Well, the Hornets don’t actually have a Big Three, do they? If that’s our Big Three, we’ve also got a nasty extra 16 points per game coming from Peja, who is definitely not the fourth offensive option. We could swap him and Tyson in that list and still have a pretty decent Big Three. So it’s pretty much the Lakers and us alone at the top of the Big Four list, huh? Bryant-Gasol-Bynum-Odom vs. Paul-West-Chandler-Stojakovic. Who else has as good a Big Four?

Fun year coming up in the West.

P.S. Totally off topic, but I have NBATV on and they have NBA Stories: Rookie Life on, and it’s rather funny. They filled someone’s entire car with popcorn. Interestingly enough, they had Kobe on and he was just raving about how lucky he was to have Byron Scott his rookie year telling him what to do. And there’s a clip of Byron directing little Kobe.

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.

From the Times Picayune comes a sad story about a kid who died of cancer before he got his wish to see the Hornets play. He asked to be buried in his Chris Paul jersey. George Shinn sent flowers to the family and asked if he could help with funeral costs, and Chris Paul is going to write the kid’s name, Brian, on his shoes when he plays tonight. The article mentions that CP wanted to go to the funeral, but couldn’t because the Hornets have to travel. So, you know, if you weren’t already on board with the whole “Chris Paul is MVP and also a great guy” thing, you will be after you read this story.

Chris Paul doesn’t have to do the things he does. He could be indifferent. But he’s not. When I met him, he was polite and friendly– you could totally see how everyone says he’s a cool guy to be around. Hell, he’d watched all of his MVP videos and he knew exactly which one was ours. He didn’t have to care about this kid and his family, especially during the playoffs. But he did.

Speaking of CP3, this bit about what the various players did during the Game 1 Ring of Fire delay just goes to back up what I said about him in my Chris Paul Blog Day entry.

TNT had to awkwardly fill air time that they did not expect to occur (not their fault), so they performed the tried and true method of panning around the court and commenting on the players they saw. The cameras hit Tim Duncan, who sat on the bench with coach Greg Popovich, holding the skipper’s clipboard, drawing up fake plays that must have been hilarious by the way Popovich was laughing, and simply joking around. The cameras hit Bonzi Wells, who was having his own fun, showboating to the home crowd fans. But then the cameras hit Chris Paul, who simply stood there like mannequin, a steely gaze in his eyes that would have bordered on creepy had he been somebody who I met on the street. Chris Paul was not thinking about the hilarity of the situation at hand. He was not thinking about the crowd, nor was he thinking about the episode of Lost he had tivo’d, nor was he thinking about the ridiculously hot Hornets dancing squad, the Honeybees. He was thinking about basketball. Nothing else. Being a primary topic of discussion, TNT probably had Chris Paul on their cameras about four or five times, and he never lost that gaze.

More Hornets articles… Y’all know I love me some Bonzi. Here’s a nice article about him today from the San Antonio Express News. Damn, I wish I hadn’t read an article about Bonzi. It just reminds me how much I’d love a Red Bull right now. No joke.

And in case you missed it on Tuesday, there was a really sweet feature on David West and how he almost quit basketball after changing schools in high school.

Aaand I’ll probably be back in a couple hours with more stuff. Carry on, Buzz Nation.

Seeing as I started an ENTIRE BLOG devoted to the idea of “You need more Hornets in your life,” my biased self would like to state that HornetsHype wholly supports TrueHoop’s support of the New Orleans Hornets. Me supporting their support… it’s like a little circle of teal. It just warms my heart.

Speaking of TrueHoop, there was an amusing tidbit posted yesterday about how to make your own Manu Ginobili votive candle (skull head, #20 jersey, and all). So yours truly commented thusly: “That’s all right. New Orleans fans’ backyard voodoo altar > San Antonio votives. We put da gris gris on them, bebe.”

Someone in the comment thread asked what that meant, and I represented for New Orleans thusly:

“Gris gris… It’s like… if you took some grave dirt, and some of Manu Ginobili’s hair, and snuck behind the bench and cut off a corner of Tony Parker’s jersey… and put it all in a little bag, and voila!”

So there. You cannot say my mission is not to educate.

Welcome, friendly bandwagoners of America! Talk to me when you’re wearing as much teal as I am (see photo)… I keep saying the HypeMeter is at an all time high, and then it just gets a little higher! Now where to find some grave dirt…

EDITED: I lied, though. This is the best Hornet wackiness the internet has to offer today. Just watch the whole thing and you’ll see. Watch till right after Tony Parker’s interview.

This one goes out to you & the rest of the TNT broadcasting crew. In case you need some NEW COLORS…

Only Hollingers’s stat machine thinks the Hornets will win. Just the way we like it…

Also, why is it pitch black in NOLA at 8:30 AM? Is the world about to end? Is it a sign? More importantly, are the Spurs waking up at their hotel and wondering if this is the apocalypse? (Silly Spurs… they don’t know that the apocalypse has already happened. New Orleanians know. We were there.)

Just a roundup of the good hype I’ve read over the past couple days:

Holy Positive Attendance Article! In USA Today. Finally. I’ve been waiting for a bunch of these to roll in. Of course, the positive ones have been slower in coming than the negative ones that were all over the place during the winter.

CP3 = King of PER: Chris Paul leads, oh, everyone in the playoffs in PER at 32.36. Kobe and Dwight come in a distant second and third at 28.31 and 28.26 respectively.

Who Made You? with Tyson Chandler: Video here. LOL at lil Tyson looking exactly like now Tyson, minus facial hair.

Mo Pete/Bart Fun: In case anyone missed it (and you shouldn’t have, since it’s been various places including Sportscenter), here’s the video of the Hornets doing trick shots in practice the day after clinching the Dallas series. Along with bonus extras from Alejandro de los Rios. And– if you’re a fan of sketchy low-budget local ads– the original Mo Pete trick shot in the Morris Bart commercial!

Why Am I Not Surprised? … that after they spent 40 minutes doing trickshots, the Hornets broke out in a spontaneous dodgeball game.

I Told You TrueHoop Dispensed Hornets Love: And here’s more, in the form of a fun Mike James interview.

And One Bee-llion (Ha. See what I did there) More Links: … located at Hornets247.

And here’s a bonus: If you’re in the CBD and you’ve got a lunch break, there’s going to be a Hornets second line going through the Quarter, starting at Café Du Monde at 11:30 and concluding at Harrah’s. There will be Soul Rebels, Hugo, Honeybees, and our favorite SerbSicles. They’ll be tossing out giveaways (T shirts, car stickers, and such) too.

Enjoy your Fan Up Friday!