Hornets Hype

• Yesterday afternoon I was in my car listening to actual Hornets talk on WWL. I thought, “Is this happening?” It was rather unbelievable. One guy said he has Direct TV and doesn’t get to watch the Hornets games. Wednesday’s game was the first time he’d ever seen Chris Paul play. He said he called up and immediately bought tickets for the next two Fridays.

• How big is the love fest for CP right now, by the way? The crowd on Wednesday wasn’t a sellout, but it was probably the loudest of the season. They were ready to go crazy right from the get-go. They screamed for Shinn when he talked about how great New Orleans did at hosting the All Star Game. They screamed for the starting line up. There was one moment when Chris Paul was just dribbling the ball up court, not even particularly doing anything except touching it, and there was a spontaneous standing, screaming ovation.
• Chris Paul systematically dismantled Kidd and the Mavs. He possibly was bent on destroying their souls. That was fun.
• Sorry to see Bobby go, especially after the game he had. The deal gave us more options, toughness, and a bit more size, but it remains to be seen whether chemistry will be disrupted. One would think Byron Scott would simply bench any one who even started to start shit. I imagine they know that about him and I hope attitudes won’t be a problem.
• At Casino Night last night, I missed my moment to get my pic with David West. (I was totally gonna blog it, too.) We were like ships passing in the night. Or really, ships loitering by the buffet table. I decided to go for the food first, but alas, I didn’t know the players were going to take off shortly afterward due to their game the next day. Opportunities pass.
• We got a nice numbered print with Chandler, Paul, West, and Stojakovic on it. If you renewed your season tix, you got free courtside seats for an upcoming game. We didn’t bite, but many people did.
• Hey, did you know there’s a whole aisle of Hornets gear in Walmart? I generally boycott Walmart as a rule, but I had to stop and get cat food on the way home from Metro. We were all excited to see it. They have jerseys (I didn’t know there was a whole other tier of jersey below the replica, but it turns out there is), T-shirts, sweatshirts, and… Chris Paul pajama pants!
• More and more I get the feeling this is the Hornets’ moment, and it is really starting to roll in NOLA. I feel momentum. I hope they sell out the game tonight! And hey, Buzzfest!
• I seriously don’t think I can live without a pair of Chris Paul pajama pants, so if anyone knows where to get them in a size smaller than XL, please tell me where!

I do, anyway. Good thing the All Star Game is tonight. The elusive Mr. West has been flying under the radar this weekend, as usual, but not tonight. (To the left, a rare glimpse of #30 in his natural habitat. I think he’s been the least photographed All Star.)

And now, a roundup of articles about the Man of Mystery:

* David West talks about poverty in New Orleans

* Talks about New Orleans’ recovery (video)

* In the Times Picayune

I know D-West doesn’t really care about his personal HypeMeter. But that’s all the more reason Hornets fans should bring the hype for him. I am still keeping an eye out for that jersey, in size small small small. Double West on the front and back just radiates coolness. I could rock a D-West jersey. We have many things in common. No, seriously.

• David West was Class of 2003. Me too! Class of 2003 represent.
• He has a tattoo of his alma mater’s logo. And so do I! Of course it’s a different school, different color, and different location on my body… but that matters not.
• He’s 6’9″. I could be 6’9″ if I was wearing heels and standing on a box that was a foot tall.
• D-West majored in communications. I majored in English, a similar field.
• D-West gets 19.8 points per game. I can talk about Battlestar Galactica for 19.8 minutes straight.
• If I wanted, I could wear nothing but sweats and Adidas pants for a week, just to be like D-West. Watch me.
• Through years of putting myself through graduate school with crappy jobs, I too have perfected the art of looking angry yet saying little.

See? I told you.

I’d skip right on over to here for Hornets.com coverage of the All Star Weekend, which is right now featuring All Star Diaries from David West and Peja Stojakovic (man, despite this blog’s families having originated in Croatia and Poland, that one still gives me pause… and believe me when I say, we’ve got enough Eastern European extraneous letters around this here apartment to float alphabet soup).

I thought this article was going to be the same old crap, but it ends on an up note and for that I respect them.

T.P. Watchdog Effort: Seriously respectable sports section today. CP3′s picture was in it no less than four times. I think only three pages didn’t have Hornets content. Of course, much of it was All Star content, but they did a good job with the Hornets-oriented All Star articles. T.P. Watchdog… keeping the media responsible & buzz-friendly since 2007.

Went to Hornets night at the Jam Session on Wednesday. If I had kids or was the kind of person who doesn’t mind waiting in lines to participate in contests and activities (I’m not), it would have been more fun. But the store rocked. Picked up two T-shirts, the mug (with the crawfish All Star logo!), and the bead (indecent to live in New Orleans and pay for a bead, let alone $8 for a bead, but come on… All Star bead!) I was disappointed you couldn’t buy a West West jersey in small sizes. In fact, they should have had an altogether better selection of stuff for the Hornets all stars. That’s what the people were there for. Give the people what they want!

All Star coverage on ESPN right now is mildly hilarious. CP3 calling Deion Sanders old, a chef from Galatoire’s cooking stuff up on the spot, and Amare Stoudamire is currently getting his tarot cards read. You should turn it on.

This blog has tickets to the Rookie Game, the Skills Competition, and the All Star Game on Sunday night. So watch for updates on famous people sightings! (But don’t get your hopes up. I am notoriously bad at spotting famous people. I once poured water for Peyton Manning without looking up under the baseball cap, no joke.)

… is much better.

To recap. What I said yesterday:

“And here I was having fantasies of CP3 jumping on Peja in color under a headline.”

Naturally I am going to claim full credit for this. You know it. Even though the claim has absolutely no basis in reality. But it’s cool. The Times Picayune doesn’t have to thank me for designing today’s sports page for them. This one’s a freebie. It’s on me.

Consider it my gift to them.

Times Picayune, we need to talk.

As in, we need to have a serious conversation about what is or is not acceptable when you are the hometown paper covering a premier Western Conference team. I get that there are 82 games, and probably every time the Hornets have a huge win the real rabid fans are going, “OH MY GOD that was the biggest game EVER!” Like the previous Suns win? Possibly the biggest game ever. The Spurs win? Undoubtedly the biggest game ever. So I understand that you kind of need to take that kind of attitude with a grain of salt. And being a professional media source, you can’t be freaking out over every big game that happens throughout the course of an 82-game season.

However.

In the past week, the New Orleans Hornets have been seriously slumping, casting some slim shadows of doubt over their overachievingly amazing play thus far in 2008. In January the Hornets were blowing other teams out to the tune of 14-20 points per game. In the last three games, they’ve been blown out. The defense took a break, Chris Paul had one of his worst games ever, and David West struggled after being named to his first All Star Game. It was their longest losing streak of the season. And the last game of their road trip was at Phoenix, the team that recently leapfrogged back ahead of the Hornets for the top spot in the West. It was conceivable, albeit horrifying, that the Hornets could go 0-3 on the trip.

But they didn’t.

Instead the Hornets duked it out with the Suns through two OTs, in a thrilling offensive battle of two top teams and two top point guards, and managed to get the ball to Peja, who made the perfect buzzer-beating shot and got instantly piled on by Chris Paul and all his teammates. And really, all the doubts sort of disappear, don’t they? Because if you can hang tough in that game, you deserve to be where you are. If you’re going to break a 3-game losing streak, is there a better way to do it? And man, this game topped all the highlight shows, and rightly so. It was referred to by several people as the most exciting game of the regular season thus far. (NBA.com: “Hornets Burn Suns in Instant Classic”) Even if you aren’t a Hornets fan, what was not to love about that game?

But did the game end early enough to make the paper? That is the question. And the answer is yes. Oh yes. But as I held the TP sports section distastefully by the corner, similar to the manner in which one might hold a dead rat by the tail, “What,” I said, “is this?” (Click on photo at above left to enlarge if you can’t read what the big story was this morning. Click. I dare you.)

Really only one word comes to mind, and that word is “WTF.” (Which is not technically a word, it’s an acronym, but shut up, I’m rolling.)

Come the fuck on, Times Picayune. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you probably had the fascinating breaking sports news of Tulane and LSU’s freshmen (for NEXT YEAR) already prepared. And look, you saved space on the front page for the Hornets game. Pretty skinny column, though. Almost as if… you expected them to lose. And were only going to grudgingly bestow upon those second-rate losers their allotted one inch of space and no more, dammit. And here I was having fantasies of CP3 jumping on Peja in color under a headline.

But, you say, maybe it was too late and they couldn’t get a picture. Okay, maybe. That’s a valid point. If it were not for the fact that here’s the back (see left). If it was football, you better believe they would have saved the space, late game be damned. How are the Hornets to be expected to grow a fan base without quality coverage by the local media? How can the Hornets be taken seriously by the national media when the local media doesn’t take them seriously?

Maybe the TP lacks experience in covering an 82 game season. It shows. Let me make an analogy. In soccer or hockey, it’s possible that you’ll only have 1-4 scoring plays per game. Therefore each time either team scores, it’s a big deal. In basketball, you’re going to run up and down the court and make (if you’re the Hornets in winning mode) roughly 40-50 scoring plays per game. Do you cover each and every one? Of course not. It doesn’t make sense. So what do you cover?

The plays that swing the momentum.

It’s the same with an 82 game season. Some games are more important than others. If you’re going to cover one of these sports, and cover it in a meaningful way, you’ve got to get your head around the idea of momentum. You’ve got to know that this was as huge a game as it was. You’ve got to recognize them when they come. If you’re going to skimp on coverage of a game, for God’s sake, make it the one where the Hornets bitchslap the Heat or the Grizzlies or the Clippers.

Not a game like this.

I urge Hornets fans to write in, go to nola.com and leave a comment, whatever. The coverage has gotten marginally better, but clearly there’s a long way to go. Demand better coverage.

A marquis matchup and we get Tulane football. In February. Jesus. I’m dying here.

I know the Hornets’ attendance woes are not the Times Picayune’s problem, and it’s unfair either to lay blame at their feet or to suggest that they have a responsibility to hype a product that isn’t theirs. But imagine Peja Stojakovic in color. Imagine large bold letters. Imagine a side article about Chris Paul vs. Steve Nash.

And underneath all this, in a box, imagine: “Next Game: Saturday 7 PM vs. Memphis. Call Ticketmaster for tickets.”

Imagine the world you want to see.

Well, I guess the upside to getting no televised games and less hype from the media than other teams is that ESPN doesn’t seem to have noticed the heinousness of the three game losing streak. No one’s really talking about it, which shouldn’t come as a staggering surprise, given how long it took people to talk about the Hornets when they were winning (ah, back in the older sweeter days of last week).

They still gave us an A+ on the season this morning. The Lakers and the Blazers were the only other teams given top marks in the West.

• Not unsurprisingly, the Hornets drop from #1 to #3 in both Hollinger and Stein‘s power rankings today.
• Memo to the Pistons: thanks for that.
• Everyone’s loving the Lakers this week.

San Jose Mercury News: Even Warriors’ Davis fails to draw fans in New Orleans

Blaaaahhhh, blah, blah… I’m sorry, was that guy talking?

My mistake. It must have been the wind rustling through the Uptown trees…

Today, in the T-P. This is huge buzz (ha ha). Chris Rose is a guy who seems to have his finger on the pulse of the New Orleans metro area. Especially since his Katrina columns, people go out of their way to read him. And, more importantly, they listen to what he’s saying. And today he says to get on board with the Hornets. What a perfect way to go into tonight’s game.

This site, of course, is not satisfied with mere hype. This site loves the vibe that’s been happening this week. But we’ve got to move on up. Higher and higher. Bigger and bigger.

This site will not rest until it sees us on the front page of the Times Picayune and the sports section, the morning after a standing room only sellout game that we won, after driving to work on a highway dotted with Hornets flags, listening to the morning DJs talk about the Hornets on the radio.

But you have to admit things are picking up.

You’re like, “It’s not special. It’s from the AP. It appeared in newspapers and on sites all over the country this morning.” In other words, it’s totally generic.

I submit that it is special. And I’ll tell you why. It’s the beginning part right here.

Chris Paul had 23 points, 17 assists, and nine rebounds, and the New Orleans Hornets ran away with their ninth-straight win, 117-93 over the Denver Nuggets on Monday night.

A jubilant crowd broke into repeated chants of “M-V-P” in recognition of a masterful performance by the Hornets’ guard, who is New Orleans’ best shot at making the All-Star game here next month as a reserve.

This is the first article that’s mentioned our crowd in a positive way. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, we have a genuine article about the Hornets (our Hornets! these Hornets!) that does not once mention poor attendance, the possibility of moving, and whether they’ll go to Seattle or OKC.

Not once.

And to top it off, it ran everywhere around the country. Since this is one of this site’s major demands, it was worth mentioning!