Hornets Hype

Go away, there is nothing to see here. I have the flu. Like, the real flu. The 103 degree fever and being in bed for 4 days kind. So it’s not that I hate the Hornets, it’s that I am too sick to post anything.

Congratulations to the Saints for winning the Super Bowl. Shut up, Vince Carter. Etc.

We will be back shortly. I will even give out an award or two. It will be funny. I promise. This has been a public service announcement.

Headquarters: right here.

Over on At the Hive, someone mentioned Blazers fans last year showing their rookie love with Team Bayless. Of course, I was struck by what a fantastic idea this is. Plus I really really want a Team Thornton shirt to wear to games. I’ve pretty much been obsessed with Lil Buckets’ game since the first moment I saw him. And thus:

Join TEAM THORNTON! You know you want to.

Why Team Thornton? Why not Team Collison? Well… you know Lil Buckets is my pet rookie, and as a second round draft pick who’s tearing it up out there, as well as a local Louisiana guy, I think he deserves our support! I decided Team Thornton should be purple and gold, because those colors conveniently go with both LSU and the Hornets. Of course, I made it in male and female, in case anyone else wants to join the fun. And no, I’m not violating copyright by putting a Hornets logo on, so don’t even ask me to.

You know you wanna be on Team Thornton with me.

Here are some places Hornets Hype has been recently:

• Ticktock6 talks preview & Raptors at Heels on Hardwood. (What a coincidence. I love both heels AND hardwood.)
• mW discusses offseason additions over at MavsBall
• This is old, but in case you haven’t seen it, I did this write up on how much I love the Fleur de Bee for Both Teams Played Hard’s logo ranking series

In other Hornets news, rather ominously, the NOLA.com folks dropped the news last night that, not only is Emeka Okafor now questionable for the season opener, as he has yet to get on the floor and practice with the team, but David West and Julian Wright both tweaked themselves in various ways yesterday at practice. Considering we’re not sure who’s starting at the 2 (although we’re 95% sure that at this point in the season it’s going to be Mo Pete), that means the only person in the starting lineup left standing is Chris Paul. You go, Chris. Apparently, however, Ike Diogu is now practicing and I think he’s going to play tonight. You go, Ike.

But let’s not dwell on unpleasant, unimportant nonsense like the entire team being injured again. Here, enjoy a photograph of David West posing with some cute kids. There. Don’t you feel better?

Previewing the series over on the Dime blog: NBA Playoff Blogger Faceoff: Nuggets vs. Hornets. If it’s not as snarky/hyped as I usually am, I apologize. I was kinda hungover when I wrote it.:-P

And, First Round Roundtable on At the Hive.

Hope everyone’s loving NBA Playoff Day 1 and French Quarter Fest!

Woe. There is no hype. There is anti-hype.

I’m not really going to talk about the Rockets game. There are plenty of other places you can take part in the meltdown. I’m not going to complain about the officiating because, while it was bad, it was so not the reason we lost that there isn’t any point. I was gonna have Pose write you some sad haikus, but unfortunately he and I aren’t speaking right now.

Anyhow, I just wanted to give you the heads up on some upcoming stuff:

1. NBA.com just unveiled its 2009 NBA Dance Team bracket. The Honeybees are up against the Lakers Girls, and amazingly, the picture they chose to represent the team is way better than the Lakers’ one. I think they might have a chance…. So, OK. I didn’t think anyone really paid attention to this stuff. Come to find out, mW takes it quite seriously. He even visits the team’s website to peruse the girls. But only, he informs me, in the case of tiebreakers…

……………… right.

2. Inspired by the NBA Dance Team bracket, I’ve decided to roll out the First Annual NBA Hot Baller bracket. Yes! I’ll probably be starting Thursday or Friday. That means all of you who are dudes can just scroll on by and roll your eyes, while all 5 of us female basketball fans vote for the hottest team in the NBA! I don’t think I’m going to bother with actual seeding based on looks, because that would be highly subjective. I’ll do the matchups based on actual team seedings as of tomorrow. And then, you know, let things play out where they fall. Also, in most cases it’s not going to be only one guy per team. Teams will be represented by their very best. Sorta like the dance team bracket, where you put your three best-looking girls in the front of the photo while hiding the unfortunate-looking ones in the back…

3. Thursday night is Casino Night, which is basically a season ticketholder event where you can mingle with the players… Well, or they’ll deal you a game of blackjack or something. There are prizes and food, and we’ll be there hopefully taking pictures, which we’ll post up. It was fun last year, but we got there a little too late to see some of the players, like Chris Paul, who put in his appearance early. I coulda met David West… we were like two ships passing in the night– OK, lurking by the buffet table– but he kinda looked like he wanted to stay incognito.

I’m out like the Hornets’ fourth-quarter offense…

The only Twitter feed on our site right now is TT6’s, but you may have noticed she put up a link to where you can find my Twitter feed too, over on the right sidebar.  In case you missed it, you can follow me @ mW_.  I usually tweet from the games and try to pick up on stuff that you can’t see on television.

I also try to keep up with other NBA bloggers and tweeters and re-tweet the best stuff they do that you might not catch.  Well, I’ll be at it tonight at the Hive against the Thunder.  Go Hornets!

So yesterday I was kind of annoyed to hear from several sources that a Hornets employee,who joined the team when they were in Oklahoma City, had made some slightly rant-y Facebook comments regarding New Orleans fans. My negative response to this was on three levels:

1. When I heard about it, I was already previously annoyed by watching Gil and Bob’s cheerful “party line” all evening on CST. I just felt like the comments the organization was making were insulting to fans’ intelligence.

2. I think the Hornets organization probably does not realize sometimes how incredibly sensitive people here still are about the OKC thing. They’ve still got to be REALLY careful, last season notwithstanding.

3. Characterizing New Orleans fans as people who impulsively “give up on”  teams is just inaccurate, when you stop to think for more than three seconds about how they’ve loved a losing football franchise for 42 years.

We are firm defenders of New Orleans at this site. I acknowledge having put this person on a certain List of mine, because I was annoyed. But. I wasn’t expecting this thing to get out of hand, which I think it has. It’s kind of blown up in a way that got really nasty, really fast.

I don’t feel like people’s social lives need to be scrutinized or questioned, even if I don’t agree with the things they say. No one deserves that. So I am deleting all references to this line of conversation from this site. Thanks. Peace out.

I was going to do a whole post about this two days ago, but unfortunately, right about the time I went live with the new blog layout, the Tyson Chandler trade soap opera began. And will not end until about three hours from now.

So let’s talk about our new, bluer look. First off, if you’re having any issues, feel free to comment with your computer specs (Mac or PC) and what browser you’re currently using. This will only help me. I didn’t make the new design from scratch, and I’m not sure I know enough about PHP to have been messing around with other people’s quite as much as I have in the last week. Update: If you are using IE, let me know if you are or aren’t having the issue where the gallery up top is slow to load and the pictures appear down the background of the page. I’ve got 2 PCs, and one’s having it and one’s not. I’ll try to figure it out. For now, Firefox.

Second, please bear with us as I will continue to mess around with the placement of ads, links, etc. in the sidebar until I’m 100% happy with them.  So if you see something weird off to the right, that’s just me tweaking the layout.

Third, you might have noticed that there’s a little image next to everyone’s name in the comments. It’s using  Gravatars, which are basically a globally recognized avatar that’s linked to your email address. So you can go enter your email address over there, upload an image, and you should get a small picture on this site and any other sites that use them and require an email address in the comment field.

And now we wait. Perhaps the blue will calm you.

The Hype is taking a much-needed vacation.

A little warm weather relaxation,  a little All Star watching, maybe a little site redesign, but mostly hitting the streets of Uptown with a dash of Bring Your Own Beverage for the first big parade weekend.

But before you head out there, you should totally check out At the Hive’s excellent post on the State of the New Orleans Hornets. I can say this stuff a hundred times, but at the end of the day it’s based on love, not stats, and no offense, love ain’t gonna get you many rebounds and second chance points. But numbers don’t lie, and the post has a numerical breakdown of what’s gone wrong for the Hornets this season so far, and what needs to happen for it to go right in the final 32 games.

So, go forth, friends, and remember to rep the Hornets in your teal & stripes at the parades this weekend! ‘Cause there’s a lot of basketball yet to be played. And no one gets drunk or laid at a pity party.

See you on the flipside of the season.

P.S. I would like to thank the Great NBA Love of My Life Paul Pierce, who singlehandedly dropped Dallas in the 4th quarter last night to put the Mavs below the Hornets in the standings heading into the All Star break. Forgiven!

In these dark times, what’s better than the Hornets singing Good Times?

I think you’ll all agree, with the exception of if Chris Paul was playing tonight, nothing.

Oh, and in other pregame linkage, Ticktock6 does some Hornets Q&A on Talk Hoops.

Good luck tonight AD! … We out.