Hornets 75, Kings 71: What Was That?

“Pondexter is the odd man out in a circus full of fail.”

Pretty much summed up what I saw tonite…..hurry up Jack!!!!!!!!!!

a case of the Post Peja Blues?

Kidding but really, I’m sure the team wasn’t ecstatic to see him go either.

Anyway, earlier in the season (and in pre-season) there were a lot of fans happy to have Green but now we see an NBA player can’t run from his past (history of very bad basketball). I wonder if having Jack will allow/prompt Williams to redistribute Green’s poorly played minutes in the future. Maybe they’re showcasing him to sucker some team for a big. If so, he’s not helping the team in that area either …

Smith wasn’t all that great before this year either, let’s hope he doesn’t regress too (he’s younger so maybe this improved play will stay.

11-1 is awesome. I don’t want to doubt Williams but while the defense he installed and preaches is a big part of the reason for the record, I hope he’s not so stubborn as to play guys who hurt the team more than they help, simply because they play good defense …

Thanks. Good recap.

There’s a conspicuous uniqueness problem: The whole team was shooting poorly this game. And over the course of the season I don’t see his shooting too much being as cartoonishly lethal as it’s coming off as described by critics. He’s a shooting guard, not a distributor, comparing his assist rate seems extraneous to assessing his value as a 2nd-team off-guard. We’ve previously been saddled with Posey (FG 36%), Devin Brown (FG 39%), Bobby Brown (FG 39%), and if we gave guys making minus-40% of their cumulative shots regardless of floor-spotting big minutes, then I’d be on-board and agree that we’ve got a problem.

In Thornton’s defense, he had a good year, but (this argument hinges on whether or not you are compelled by CP3’s contention, key word being compelled, not emotionally turned-off, because I feel like alot of people making arguments for Thornton aren’t using premises like Rohan does rooted in statistics/sometimes are defaulting to simply cheering on Thornton because of the ray of hope he gave us last year in a tough, bad season) I feel like CP3’s argument has legs. Last year our defense was not good, and we were almost always trying to come back against defenses that played slack after running up a safe lead, virtually ensuring that Thornton (and even Collison based on whether you think his lack of production’s due to not gelling with the Pacer offense or not) could rack up sick, unusually efficient stats.

With Green’s objectively more reliable history over a lengthier sample coupled with his better defense and duties as an off-guard, I’m not bothered by him having a non-unique a bad shooting night as his floormates and/or shooting more than his peers on the floor, and feel like if it was a problem, Monty Williams would make a move. We’re 11-1, & I don’t think it’s despite Willie Green & think his defense plus all else that I’ve mentioned makes him a safer asset. Not to mention, alot may hinge on the maturity of Thornton’s response to Monty’s demand of him to play stouter defense for a team with a more conservative makeup/locker-room stuff we don’t know about – I think there’s a hint of it in that CP/our leader’s sided with the Monty line. That’s just my respectful & sincere 2-cents.

I said it after the Cleveland game, and I’ll say it here: it doesn’t matter how you do it so long as you do it. They played awful. They looked awful. They sucked. They had no business winning. They still won. That’s all that matters is the W.

Of course, they can’t continue to flirt with disaster as they currently are but you have to have faith that will be righted. Tomorrow’s game against the Clippers is pretty huge, if for no other reason than because the team really needs to take advantage of the easy games on their schedule. After that, it’s at Utah, at Portland and a hugely important game at home against San Antonio (surprise, surprise, I’ll be back in Ponchatoula, LA, (my hometown) for Thanksgiving and got tickets to the game at the Arena before I drive back!) following, so it’s imperative the team finds a way to win that game against the Clippers.

I know you can’t be encouraged by their play, but you do have to be somewhat encouraged they can play so bad (especially Paul, West and Okafor) and still find a way to win.

but does anyone know if the new guys will join the team tomorrow or will that be on Wednesday?

Got home and watched it…boy was that gross. Our shooting was terrible. Need to improve, but defensively we were stout which was nice.

Still a lot of work to get done!

a few nice things still happened:

A) Good teams have ugly wins. When they aren’t on offensively, they are able to pull out an ugly win because the defense remains constant. Over the years, I can recall teams like Boston and San Antonio going on the road plenty of times and winning in the same manner. This directly goes to the argument on whether we’re an average/slightly above average team enjoying a hot start versus one of the NBA’s top teams in the league. Guess which way I’m leaning.

B) Trevor Ariza may be showing signs of coming out of his offensive slump. As Rohan correctly mentioned, attacking the basket is key and perhaps he’ll finally start connecting on some And-1’s (crazy he doesn’t get plenty of them with his skill-set). The biggest thing going forward with him appears to be decision-making whereby, whatever he does (shoots or drives), it’s done with a high degree of confidence.

C) Sticking with the gameplan. Our leaders, despite all their sub-performances continued to play like All-stars instead of deferring. I’m glad West and Okafor had a ton of attempts despite poor percentages for much of the game. When you’re shooting horribly, last thing you want to do is become perimeter orientated. I completely feel that there were also plenty of missed calls by the ref’s thus making the King’s defense look better than they actually performed. In the end, one of the stars did get hot – West – and really pulled out the victory after Ariza and others kept us in it.