In which the Hornets have an(other) day of the offseason and Ticktock6, freshly returned to da 504 from foreign parts a.k.a. NYC, takes a look at some of the various search terms that bring folks to our fine site.

1. “how to shoot a free throw like peja” - Dude. If we knew, we’d all be making a cool $12 million a year.

2. “do new orleans hornets not wear the teal jerseys” - Ah. You must have caught a glimpse of the team’s slightly eye-searing gold third jerseys. The Hornets usually wear the teal, but in the playoffs each time they lost, they switched to the other road jersey to mix it up a little and perhaps for superstitious purposes. Hence: Dallas Game 3 = TEAL (L), Dallas Game 4 = GOLD (W), SA Game 3 = GOLD (L), SA Game 4 = TEAL (L), SA Game 6 = GOLD (L). I’ve heard the yet-to-be-revealed new jerseys will not include the gold.

3. “what will eat hornets?” Manu Ginobili’s bald spot?

4. “what color accessories to wear with teal?” Oooh! I am actually qualified to answer this question, being one of the few female NBA bloggers! I would go with silver or white.

5. “hornets that are black white and brown” Whoa, like real ones? Like multicolored stinging bugs? Man, get some pesticide. I guess our Hornets, too, could be described to be black, white, and brown. In, um, varying shades. And with teal over the top. Otherwise they’d be naked.

6. “Charlotte Hornets to Seattle” ….

…

… There are so many things wrong with this I don’t even know where to begin.

I was just looking through my pics from this season, and besides the one with Chris Paul that was on the front of the Hornets website, I think this (below) is one of my faves (although CP is in it, too, actually, now that I look closer). I just remember being like, “I want a picture of me on the Hornets bench!”

Of course you think floor seats will be cool…

… aaaand then you realize you are sitting behind David West and you have to try to see over his back for most of the 4th quarter.

Unless this is my favorite photo from 2007-08:

The All Star logo I peeled up off the floor of the arena as we were leaving the All Star game. I had to box out a little kid to get my hands on this, too… got in there, threw an elbow or two, you know… (Oh, Ray, right back at you! I thought you were robbed for MVP. I said it then and I’ll say it now.)

All right, folks. It’s going to be tough, but I think I’m going to take the rest of the week off! Can’t be blogging every day now that the Hornets are done. (mW may want to do some kind of wrap-up post, but I think he’s shunning basketball while the pain is fresh.) This is going to be sort of an experiment in trying to wean myself slowly and painlessly off of blogging. Hopefully I can do it. I’ll still be hanging around the comments, of course. mW succeeded in not watching Celtics/Pistons last night. I watched the 4th quarter, but then the players looked too happy, so I had to turn it off.

And actually, now that the Hornets are done, it’s hitting me that there’s a surprising amount of real life stuff coming up for me. I’m going to be flying to upstate NY for my 5th college reunion next weekend, my birthday is the 6th, and as soon as I get back in town, I’ve got a massive job search coming up this summer. So, you know, if you know anyone who needs an English major, even just for the summer… fairly good writer… works well with both kids and adults… waits tables like a champ… I’m just putting it out there…

But don’t worry. I’ll probably pop back in sooner or later with some funny YouTube stuff, or something similarly lighthearted. In the meantime, feel free to discuss the future in the free agency thread (if, like me, you’re finding it hard to get over the Hornets). Or hey, give us some suggestions for next year! Should we just do the exact same thing? Continue to cover the Hornets from a hugely biased and rabid fan perspective? Add Honeybees?

I won’t leave you totally broken and alone, however. I’ll leave you with some parting words from Sporting News.

There’s a reason why you heard thousands of basketball fans moan aloud as the San Antonio Spurs finished off the New Orleans Hornets. It’s because, despite his much-publicized mean streak, Chris Paul is love.

Or — let me calm down a second here — Paul is the living, breathing epitome of the “I love this game” philosophy that still governs most fans’ attachment to the NBA. He did amazing things on the court, competed with every inch and ounce he had, showed emotion, showed compassion and showed generosity, gave strength to a broken city and created storylines for days.

Put simply, he made you feel good to sit in front of the television for three hours.

Aw. Love. Peace, buzz friends! I’m out like Isiah Thomas.

Yesterday we got TrueHooped. (Since I was home from work sick, that was a fun activity for my afternoon… just reloading the page and watching the traffic double, then triple.) Which is kind of the be-all and end-all of NBA blogging. The good news was that the site dealt with the extra traffic smoothly, despite my cheapskate ass hosting three domains on one account. It was a good day all around.

And then the Hornets made it better.

Could you have scripted a better first playoff series for Chris Paul? Old Guard vs. New Upstarts. Falling Back vs. Rising Up. And David West with another 25-point “Oh What? You Thought I Was the Fluke All Star?” night. (As my 7th grade class would say, “That’s cold.”) And no one but Hornets fans could have predicted how Jannero Pargo has gone off in this series. In fact, most media experts predicted that #7 seed Dallas would win the series, with virtually no one saying the Hornets in less than 7 games.

Honestly, I saw this happening. Not, you understand, as a definite, but as a probability I could see unfolding. “Seriously?” I thought. “If the Hornets win this series, it won’t be in 7.” I think, realistically, this series was over after Game One. Yeah, yeah, yeah, “you say that now,” but think about it. It was how the team came out after the half, down 12 points. And as they played, as Chris Paul dismantled the Mavs and took the game over, it was like watching a team realize they belong. And once you’ve got that, you don’t let it go.

If you’ve watched this team all season, you know they were capable, young, and hungry. But the thing is, most people haven’t seen this team. Until last week, the Hornets had only had 5 or 6 nationally televised games.

Well, you’ve seen them now. Get used to it.

Get used to the names. Get used to the faces. These are the faces you’ll be seeing over and over again for the next five years.

As SLAM Online wrote this morning:

Has there ever been a franchise that’s been a complete afterthought, draft one player and then all of a sudden they are a powerhouse. Chris Paul is (insert over the top praise). The Hornets season has been a smashing success. No matter what happens from here on out. The worst thing that can happen to them is they learn hard lessons. And that’s not even a bad thing.

“It’s not a blog. It’s a movement.” That’s what we here at HornetsHype like to say. Well, the movement has picked up a lot of strength. It seems as if our goals–and the team’s goals– are being accomplished every day. But I’m not going to stop blogging.

And the Hornets aren’t going to stop playing.

New Orleans Hornets vs. San Antonio Spurs. Game One. Saturday, May 2, 2008. 9 PM.

Higher and Higher.

I’ve added a Flickr album, which you can click on in the sidebar. So if you want, you can check out our photos from the Hornets “Fan Up!” Pep Rally, and our photos from when we won the CP3 for MVP video contest.

Some of the later ones are kind of blurry, because someone was drinking/celebrating the Southwest Division Title and accidentally left the zoom on even though the players were 3 feet away. (Seriously. mW saw David West’s butt once while he was fixing his shorts. We were that close. I would have been much more appreciative of David West’s naked ass, but alas.) But you can still get a good idea of how much fun this whole thing was.

Geaux Hornets!

Check out our nifty feature on Hornets.com. While you’re over there, you might as well click back out to the home page and see what else is going– oh hey, wait, who’s that with Chris Paul?

Hee.

But that’s not what I was talking about when I said the Hornets sent presents. Look at this fine, thick sheaf of playoff fun that was waiting on my doorstep in a big envelope when I got home!

As I drove past New Orleans Arena on my way home from work, the workers were putting up a giant yellow “FAN UP NEW ORLEANS” sign on the side of the arena for the playoffs. Keep up the good work, sign men!

This is a good day to be a Hornets fan.

a.k.a. Ticktock6 talks on camera… and talks… and talks…

Someone please tell me it wasn’t as bad as I remember it being! As I stood there rambling and sneaking sideways glances at myself (”SELF! We’re on the court! We’re on the jumbotron!”) on the screen, I realized that I had no clue what I was actually saying. No, seriously. It’s like I blacked out. Clearly Rob Nice does not know me. Because then he’d know that if I’m on a roll, you have to stop me. Haha.

I have gotten a lot of nice emails and messages about my video, so I just want to thank everyone! People actually came up to us in the arena because they recognized us, which felt so weird. For those who asked, the song is “Change in My Life” by Rockapella. Lots more about last night coming, but I’ve got to go through over 100 photos first.

Go Hornets! To watch Hornets/Mavs on CST or ESPN… that is the question. Oh, to be able to have such choices in life!

Yeah, I got nothin’. Oh, except this.

AND OH HOLY SHIT. You know how you watch on TV when they pass out the Division Championship t-shirts and hats, and the team stands around hugging and watching the season highlight video, and it’s this moment you think you will never forget, and you can almost imagine you were there?

I was about four feet behind the bench.

And I was standing on my seat, and the usher didn’t even yell at me, and the guys were passing around the hats and putting them on, and everyone was smiling. And it was everything you thought it would be.

So this is what the top looks like.

I don’t want to acknowledge that the Hornets let last night happen, so I’m going to do what I usually do in my little world of denial; that is, ignore the game and blog about something completely different.

Namely, that the Hornets held a contest for the best fan video about why Chris Paul is MVP. On Friday we found out that my video won! Which means we are going to meet Chris Paul on Tuesday. Oh, and sit courtside for the Clippers game. No, I am not making this up.

What We Won

• 2 floor seats to Hornets vs. Clippers, the last home game
• a limo to and from the game (arriving promptly at 4:30 on Tuesday at HornetsHype.com’s headquarters, a.k.a. our apartment)
• meet Chris Paul
• the video will appear on the Jumbotron sometime that night
• a feature in Hornets Bee-Mail
• a feature in the Hornets first playoff program

So. This means a couple of things. First of all, I need to get to work editing my video (some of the stats have become outdated) and burning it onto 2 DVDs for the Hornets people. Second, LIKE OMG I TOTALLY NEED TO PLAN MY OUTFIT!1!!11 (Kidding. Actually, not really, because I was going to wear my TC #6 jersey, but I’m not sure about the etiquette of doing that when you’re getting pics taken with CP3.) Third, I need to come up with something supercreative to make Chris Paul do so I can blog the photo! So if you have an awesome idea, let me know! Fourth, if you know anyone who wants tickets to the game, which I believe is sold out, we’re probably going to have 2 lower bowl tickets for sale. They’re in Section 105, top row. Email ticktock6 AT gmail.com if you’re interested. Include $$.

You can watch my award-winning masterpiece here, and it’s also embedded on our CP3 for MVP page.

WHOO!

So just to be funny one night when we might have been drinking (OK, that’s a huge lie– we were wasted), we stuck the Hornets winter hat over the top of the Tyson Chandler bobblehead like a cape and declared him Obi-Ty Kenobi. Then I woke up the next morning and it was still there, so I took a picture of it. And when I started this blog in January in a fit of jealous rage, due to the lack of local/national notice of the Hornets’ rise to prominence, I stuck Obi-Ty Kenobi at the top of the sidebar with the quote, “I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine.”

Because if you are not cracking Star Wars quotes while posing your Hornets bobblehead dolls for your blog, clearly you do not understand how to truly maximize the time-wasting potential of the internet.

Anyhow, it’s April 10th. The Hornets still hold the top seed in the West with four games left to play. The Chris Paul MVP hype machine is rolling, after a slow start. Last night the Hornets hit 55 wins to officially become the best Hornets team in the 21-year history of the franchise.

And I wanted to give a shout-out to Obi-Ty Kenobi, because I’m taking him down. It’s been fun, Ty, but you’re being replaced by a new bobblehead tableau. As you can see now to the right, we have the Hornets Empire.

Fear it.

(Oh, you thought I was kidding when I said I was going to pose those bobbleheads in fun ways. That’s funny. Also of mild hilarity are the three Photo Booth shots that my cat jumped into before I managed to get that one, which I am not posting. Don’t worry.)