Ju-Ju is taking on the presumptive champ, Shane Battier, in Round 3 of HoopsAddict.com’s Floor Burn Tournament, celebrating all things hustle.  This could be his last match unless you all rustle up the votes!  Do it!  Do it!

Um..yeah, and there was some U.S.A.-Germany game.  Sorry about that.   

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!

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)

 In case you haven’t already caught this over on Hornet247, Dariusz Ejkiewicz has put out a really sweet new JuJu wallpaper (considering I have his other one on my laptop and it looks like he is staring into my eyes with serial killer-like intensity, I might switch to this one!) I actually like the simplicity and the colors here. Comes in many sizes, so people can get their Mac on (or you know, whatever laptop you have that also uses these sizes).

1680×1050|1280×1024|1280×800|1280×960|1024×768

So I’m on my way to work, and I hear an unidentified Hornet on an Eric Hill Nissan radio spot. I’m like, “Oh, word. Another sketchy local ad featuring a Hornet! You know you’ve really made it when you get your own sketchy local ad.”

I missed the beginning of the ad, so here I am trying to figure out which Hornet player it was. I know it’s not CP3, West, Stojakovic, Peterson, or Chandler, because I know what they sound like. I know it’s not Pargo because he mumbles. I think, “What other Hornet is well-known enough to be in the Nissan ad, but at the same time not too cool to be in the Nissan ad?” I wonder to myself, “Julian Wright?”

On the drive home, I hear the same ad again from the beginning, and sure enough it’s Julian Wright.

Looking back, I should have known only the rookie is gonna have a Nissan.

So we’ve got JuJu in the Nissan ad, Mo Pete in the hilarious Morris Bart commercial (where he might be made of cardboard and the ball flies into the basket from the totally wrong angle), and CP in the A-1 Appliance ad (taking over from Reggie Bush). Are there any other Hornets in local ads that I haven’t seen/heard?

In which we find out I should never make predictions again… because I suck at it! Let’s revisit those.

• How many beers will ticktock6 consume at the season ticketholder Beer Garden before her fingers fall off from the cold? 1.5. Was that beer I was swallowing? I couldn’t feel my throat. So cold they closed the beer down early. 0-1.
• Will D West’s bench-sitting outfit involve colors besides black or gray? David West wasn’t on the bench. ?? Therefore, since it is impossible to say whether he wore color while… being wherever he was that wasn’t at the game, I am counting this one as neither wrong nor right. 0-1.
• Will the Back Row Believes sign get on the jumbotron, despite being the awesomest sign in the New Orleans Arena? I told you. 1-1.
• Will Super Hugo drop kick the basketball into ANY SECTION BESIDES 101? There was no Super Hugo tonight. BUT. There was a signed football. GUESS WHICH SECTION THEY THREW IT INTO. I don’t make this stuff up. 2-1.
• Will Birdman dress? He dressed but didn’t play. 2-2.
• How many CP-TC alley oops tonight? Three. But! Julian Wright was out there stealing Tyson’s fun and oh yeah, like, pretty much the whole show, racking up 20 points and 8 rebounds. He also threw down three alley oops, bringing the total to six. So I wasn’t technically right, but who expects Julian Wright? (See title. He’s like the Spanish Inquisition.) 2-3.

I go 2-3. The Hornets go to 42-19.

Chris Paul has 23 pts, 16 assists, 3 steals (Yawn. How routine). Tyson Chandler, out to prove there is more to life than being really, really, really, ridiculously good looking, adds 19 points, 10 rebounds.

CrowdWatch: 17,225. Sellout! That’s five out of the last eight, dating back to the Memphis game before the All Star break. I love the Hornets, but it is not enough that I love the Hornets. Everyone must love the Hornets. I have declared this. Higher and higher!

Oh wow. How much fun was that game? How much more Julian Wright can we get? Correct answer: there is never too much Julian Wright!

Hornets 116, Hawks 101.

How did I love that game? Let me count the ways.

But first. Birdman sighting on the bench. Accompanied by Bonzi (he remembered to wear clothes!) and D West (even when supposedly dressed up, he’s wearing what looks suspiciously like his usual black shirt and sweats. Were they… dare I say it… dress sweats?)

• Ryan Bowen gets the start… and two nifty steals. And HUGE RANDOM WHITE GUY DUNKS.
• We didn’t think we shot 15 3-pointers and tied a franchise record. I mean, we knew the Hornets made a bunch, but I think it’s not that they took any more than usual… they just lit them up. I did notice we didn’t have a whole lot of those “ILL ADVISED THREE- WHY WHY WHY?” moments.
• The other night the Knicks had the gall to bust out a fake Chandler. Tonight we’ve got the poor man’s West.
• Fourth Quarter. Stupid DanceCam. But wait! They’re dragging out a ladder. There’s apparently something wrong with the net, and it takes a huuuuuuge timeout to fix it. This means… extended DanceCam!
• Hilarity is about to ensue.
• Hilton Armstrong, seemingly chill with his recent benching, keeps popping off the bench and dancing around. I keep wondering aloud when they’re going to start going there with the camera. Because come on. It’s fun just begging to happen. GO THERE, arena people.
• Dude in a suit and tie up in one of the boxes dancing. I think he’s totally a plant, because haven’t we seen that guy before?
• Finally they go to the bench, where Hilton, Julian, and CP are sitting in a row. JuJu is persuaded to get up and “Jump On It.” He dances. The crowd goes crazy. The players fall over laughing.
• The woeful Hawks were even good sports about the silliness, though at this point they’re behind 99-82. At one point, they put the Kiss Cam on Josh Childress and Tyson Chandler. Tyson is sort of standing there smiling up at it and shaking his head, and Childress sees the camera, sticks his tongue out, and lunges toward him. AWESOME.
• The Hornets’ players who are waiting at the scorers’ table to go on the floor, tired of playing with the camera, start shooting the ball around in a circle with each other. Pargo’s dribbling around his legs and over the back and doing all sorts of crazy shit. Mike James spins the ball on his finger for a good long time, and Tyson passes to a little kid courtside, and the kid passes back.
• Julian Wright dunk + Sportscenter = Meant to Be.
• Tyson Chandler: 16 rebounds, 11 of which are offensive. Do you think Atlanta is sitting there tonight thinking they’re missing, let’s see… souls?
• WTF, LeBron. Why you gotta crap all over CP3’s MVP fun like that?
• CrowdWatch: 12, 430. Attendance was crap. But who cares? They missed out.
• I just wrote an NBA recap that included approximately 2% actual basketball! Everyone’s got a talent.

Ugh. The only positive thing about tonight’s game was Julian Wright. And, I suppose, the sellout. But mostly Julian Wright. He just comes off the bench with such energy and versatility. I wish we could give him more minutes instead of, say, Rasual Butler, who often seems invisible out there. He got 6th Man of the Game after playing for, seriously, what seemed to be only about 6-7 minutes.

Now that I think about it, that may say more about how the rest of the team played…

If you weren’t there for the pre-game warmup, Julian started off the night with a ferocious dunk off a pass to himself. Not to be outdone, Chris Paul followed up with a dunk of his own… which was pretty sick for someone his height. Then the whole team just started to screw around and dunk. Julian Wright’s were by far the most awesome, though. It had us cracking up. (It says something when the game’s most entertaining moment is in warmups…)

Our new guys were on the bench. I like Mike James’ fashion vibe, at least. Velvety blazer + jeans = slick. They seemed to get along with each other well, even though they didn’t talk as much to the other guys. Or maybe they were just laughing at the Hornets’ offense…

Besides Julian Wright, the only other moment in the game which provided me with a satisfactory level of entertainment was when David West stripped on the bench in the 1st quarter. Our row was kinda like, “Wait… did he just run off the court, take off his shorts, and run back on?” Three trainers attempted to block for him using towels. We couldn’t really figure out why, though the whole incident appeared to crack up Wright. Maybe they should use D West at the halftime show instead of the quick change artists.