First Quarter Impressions: unfortunately, we don’t get to see Jerry-Dee Bayless play tonight (yes, he’s on our list of players whose name we refuse to pronounce correctly). Regardless, the Hornets came out looking good. Bobby Brown had 5 assists in the first stanza, and the word from the announcers is that Jeff Bower is really excited by BB’s play. Hilton is looking imposing on defense and aggressive on the offensive end. Derrick Byars, meanwhile, is one of our scoring leaders, with a high shooting percentage, nice second-efforts, and just started the second quarter with a nasty fast-break dunk.

Second Quarter Impressions: off to a slow start, Ju-Ju is getting aggressive and getting to the line; I like it. Several good plays on the defensive end, too. (Although, his socks and shorts almost meet, and that’s weird.) BB seemed to walk off a turned ankle from the end of the 1st quarter and continues to play well. Baby Bugs up by 10. Haven’t seen much of Dalron Johnson this summer, but he’s made some good plays tonight; couple long jumpers on one end and some good hustle rebounds on the other. To answer TT6’s ongoing “Where is Chris Paul?” question, the answer today is in Vegas, watching the Baby Bugs. OoooHHHHHhhhh!!!! Last basket of the half for the Bees is a sick alley oop from BB to fellow-starter Brandon Bowman. Nice way to close out. And by the by, while Bowman’s been quiet on the offensive end, and strangely wears a long-sleeved shirt under his jersey, he took down a couple nice boards near the end of the 2nd. That said, our lead’s down to 2.

Third Quarter Impressions: rough start here. To quote ticktock, “we’re building a brick castle here. Not a brick house.” Yeah. Bowman and Haluska both throwing up several ugly shots. Hilton getting to the line is the only thing keeping them in the game. They’ve brought in a lot of reserves, like Courtney Sims, Ndubi Ebi, Filip Vedenov, and Larry Owens, but to little effect. Another nice alley oop to Byars, though. Then, Byars finishes the quarter with a nice basket on a pick and roll from BB. Baby Bugs now down by 5.

Fourth Quarter Impressions: the Hornets are sticking around, but haven’t done anything to shrink the lead. For a team that has been outstanding in the 4th quarter in the first five games, they haven’t really impressed tonight. Bowman and Haluska are nowhere to be seen and Hilton looks exhausted. The Blazers’ J.R. Pinnock is lighting them up for about 30 points, and now they’re just jacking up 3s to try and close the gap. None are falling. Baby Bugs lose by 15. Rough second half. Oh well.

The Vegas Summer League is over. Not the excitement or skill level of the NBA game, but it get’s you hyped for the season to come. The Hornets still have quite a few roster spots and it will be interesting to see where they go from here.

As we’ve said before, it doesn’t really matter if you win in the Summer League, but I liked how they won tonight.  They were down by 11 or so at some point in the second half, and then managed to use solid defense to whittle the Clippers’ lead away, all the while steadily plugging away a the other end of the court, culminating in a 23-14 fourth quarter lead and a 6-2 overtime lead.

The story of the game was Hilton.  Monster 25-8 game in just over 30 minutes (on 10-17 shooting).  Bobby Brown again looked good, leading the team on its comeback, and recovering from a poor shooting start to go 4-6 at the end of the game, for a total of 17 points; although, he did have a few Pargoesque moments where he inexplicably jacked up a three or long two on the move rather than pass to an open teammate.  Ju-Ju didn’t look as great on offense this game, but put in solid defense.  Similarly, Adam Haluska continued to struggle with his shot, but played some good defense down the stretch.

Surprise of the game was 6′11″ Courtney Sims going 6-9 and putting up a quick 13 points.   Larry Owens also had a good showing in limited minutes, although Derrick Byars and Filip Vedenov struggled again.

Rumors that new Hornet, James Posey, would play in this game were not true.  Okay, there were no such rumors.  I just like to say “Hornet, James Posey.”  Sweet.

Next Vegas game is Saturday at 9:30 CST. Have some Abita and watch the game before going out!

Whether or not you have issues with the slightly excessive 4-year contract (OK, OK, I’ll stop… hey, at least in 2 years we’ll have a hot ‘n’ spicy expiring contract to use as trade bait!), we can all rejoice in the fact that, after a maddeningly dull offseason, we have a new Hornet on the roster! The last time we saw Posey, he was chillin’ in the corner bombing 3’s for the Celts during the NBA finals. Ya know, if I was going to retire at age 36, I’d do it in New Orleans, but maybe that’s just me…

I would be remiss in my duties as Queen of Hornetblogging if I did not scour the internet for everything you need to know about Posey. (This is a blatant fabrication. As you will see, most of this post will consist of things you didn’t need to know. But it’s more fun that way….) Here you are:

• Posey wore #41 for the Boston Celtics and the Memphis Grizzlies, and #42 for Miami. I’m going to guess that was because 41 wasn’t available, because he also wore 41 in college. And hey, we’ve got #41 free!
• Posey went to Xavier, but was drafted in 1999. This means he didn’t overlap with David West, who graduated in ‘03. (Ha– I didn’t even have to do the math in my head on this, because I too went to college from 1999-2003.)
• Now the Hornets have 3 guys on the roster who shared the same college coach, Skip Prosser: West, Posey, and Chris Paul.
• Posey’s birthday is January 13th.
• In 2005 he was involved in the massive wacky 5-team trade that also resulted in the Hornets getting Rasual Butler from Miami.
• He wears a mouthguard striped in the team colors (see above– that’s Miami, and the Boston one was green/white, naturally)! Teal and purple… teal and yellow… teal and white… oh, the possibilities! What’s he going to pick?
• There are questionable photos of him on the internet wearing no underwear. Hey, I said I was gonna bring you only the best!

P.S. Summer League Alert: New Orleans Baby Bugs (Hornets) vs. L.A. Dinghies (Clippers) coming up at 5:00 Central via webcast.

Slacking here. Missed Summer League Game 3. Sorry folks. But I can give you the word on the end result. Hornets won. Not that that matters. What is important is that Ju-Ju and Hilton continued to look good. The biggest disappointment, though, has to be Adam Haluska, who again had a miserable shooting game; get you confidence back, son, because you know you can play. Our other starters, Bowman and Brown, continued to look good, with Brown looking more and more like a possible backup PG, and 6′9″ Bowman putting up his own 12 points on 3-6 shooting from the field and 5-6 from the line. Over at TrueHoop, Henry Abbott named Ju-Ju the best defender of the Vegas League and Brown the best surprise. The next game is on the 17th, at 5PM CST.

In the real NBA, Marcus Camby got traded by the Nuggets to the Clippers for, drum roll please, cap space. The Cavs gave Daniel Gibson a 5-year deal to keep him. The Knicks signed another guard, Anthony Roberson, to a 2-year deal. The Magic signed backup PG Anthony Johnson.

UPDATE: Bucks get Tyronne Lue and Malik Allen. T-Wolves re-signed Craig Smith. Also, Clips signed Kelenna Azubuike to a 3-year $9 mil offer sheet (Golden State still has the chance to match). Elsewhere, Darius Miles, out 2-years with an unprecedented “career-ending” medical designation, is trying out with several teams, in attempting a comeback. In Utah, the Jazz allegedly gave D-Will $2 mil more than CP got on his 4-year deal…suckers.

According to Boston.com: “New Orleans Hornets should know that in James Posey they are getting a pure mercenary, totally devoid of sentiment according to Boston Globe columnist Bob Ryan.” This, after the guy helped bring them a ring? Wasn’t the whole city cheering him a few weeks back? That’s gratitude for you. A.K.A. the city that caused the scar across my eyebrow. Fuck Boston. Enjoy your one and done like the Heat had a few years back. We have a stacked line-up for the next 4 years.

So our Young Bees kinda sucked it up in Friday’s game. Let’s see if they can do a little beasting of their own on the Bobcats this afternoon. Game is at 3, so if you’ve got nothing better to do, you should check it out. Here’s the internet feed.

And I am not joking when I say nothing better to do. The screen is itty bitty, and it’s kind of hard to tell who’s who. If you look at the pics, the uniforms have names and logos and everything. But on the tiny 4×6 rectangle you get from the web feed, all I saw were numbers. And there are no commentators (although there is random 90’s rap!). The only way I figured out that the Hornets were the black team and not the white team was because I recognized Julian Wright’s unique bouncy run, then squinted and confirmed that he was wearing a 32.

P.S. Marc Stein of that 4-letter channel says that the Hornets are looking like the frontrunners to get Posey. Take that as you will.

EDIT: Baby Bugs win 77-75.

Hornets v. Grizzlies. I only got to watch half the game, but it got me excited, and it was free on NBA.com (don’t get TT6 started about free…) Yes, the Hornets summer roster leaves much to be desired, but everyone’s summer league roster does. There were some good signs, though, and some bad, bullet-style:

The Good

• Filip Videnov: A native of Bulgaria, he played in Italy last season. He’s a 6-foot-5, 28-year-old shooting guard, who was a pretty sweet 2-3 from deep, and 3-4 overall, and that other made shot was a deep two.
• Hilton Armstrong: plenty of minutes for this Hornet, but a strange game. He looked strong in the paint defensively, which was a real good sign, but only hit 33% from the field, yet was 7-8 from the line and his shot looked surprisingly smooth. Although, he had 9 fouls. Not a typo. 9 fouls (summer league rules give players 10 fouls).
• Adam Haluska: this ex- and maybe future-Hornet looked pretty good. He was only 2-6 from the field, but 4-4 from the line; I saw him make a sick penetration move late, get fouled, and then still put it in and then add one.

The Bad

• Julian Wright: a sure-thing Hornet and probably our best player on the court. But 4-17 from the field? Methinks someone was a tad overeager to prove himself. And he got a double-double. The bad kind. 12 points and 11 turnovers. Oof.

The Ugly, but Not So Much

• Bobby Brown: undrafted in 2007, he’s a 6′1 guard, who alternately looked good and bad. Saw some mean bricks, and sloppy turnovers, but he also had 5 assists and 11 points. He got the most minutes of anyone, so obviously the coaches want to see what he can do. Let’s see what he brings next game.
• Not a Hornet, but ex-Hornet-draftee, 6′9″ 225 lb. Darrell Arthur, must have been pissed about the draft day antics which resulted in him being traded 37 times, because he put up 18 on the Hornets on 9-12 shooting in only 26 minutes of play…

I didn’t really see much of anyone else, but the stats are on NBA.com, and maybe Ticktock will add more later. Game 2 is Sunday afternoon, so check it out!

Edited by Ticktock6: mW wondered why Derrick Byars wasn’t playing. I said I read somewhere he played for Orlando yesterday so he didn’t get there in time or wasn’t ready. He questioned the reliability of my source (mW, unlike me, is dubious about “the forums”), asking if that was even possible. Short answer: It is. He did. You can play in Orlando Summer League for one team and Vegas Summer League for another.

This, according to the official site, is when the Hornets will be playing at Las Vegas Summer League, which (hey now!) is coming up this weekend. Important to note that these times are Not Our Time Zone, aka Pacific Time, so you have to make it two hours later and you’re all set. The last game will be on NBATV, and the rest may be available a la internet.

Check out this great post from Jim Eichenhofer, over at the New Orleans Hornets’ official website for information about everyone who will be at the Las Vegas Summer League:

Summer League Roster.