The Hornets played the 7th best defense in the league last year, acquired defensive wizards James Posey, and emitted various hoo-ha's about not trying to acquire "non-defense playing" guys like J.R. Smith. Of course, that made us all feel good about our defensive prospects for '08-'09. Posey makes us tough! Let's go out and D up like the Celtics! Woo!

Yeah. Hasn't happened.

The defensive efficiency has has taken a dip for two major reasons: we're starting to foul too much and we're allowing opposing teams to light us up from the field. Over a one or two game stretch, it might not be too worrisome. But over a 10 game period, these increases are indicative of a larger problem.

Rising allowed eFG% and allowed FT are generally caused by the same issue- leaving opponents open. Defenders must either let open players shoot the ball or foul them to prevent them from shooting the ball. The Hornets have done that time and time again, regardless of the quality of their opposition. Why are so many opposing players wide open?

Poor penetration defense and poor perimeter rotations. Those two things were on prominent display versus Sacramento. Udrih, Salmons, Greene, you name it, were driving to the rim at will. I decided to mess around with some video software and highlight a couple examples from the Kings game. This is my first time doing any video, so sorry about the choppiness in some parts.

Watching those two plays in real speed, it's difficult to tell what went wrong. On the first one, it almost looks like it might be Peja's fault- why didn't he rotate to cover the ball? Only when you slow it down and watch West immaturely go for the steal does it become obvious. Ditto on the second play. At game speed, it looks like good passing from Sacramento just created chaos in the Hornets' D. In actuality, Chris Paul randomly decided to follow the ball (totally unnecessarily) and leave his man. I included these two plays because they were microcosms of our defense in general. If there's one thing to take away, it's this: our defense is struggling because of small, minute, mistakes. These are rookie mistakes. These are things you see defensively undisciplined teams do. Gambling. Ball watching.

Above all, these are coaching downfalls. A good coach sees Paul do that and bangs it into his head that he needs to stay at home. There's nothing he can do rotating underneath the hoop that Tyson Chandler and David West can't already take care of. A good coach sees West try for that steal and admonishes him for playing defense with his hands instead of his feet. These subtle mistakes manifest themselves in seemingly overarching and unsolvable issues- ridiculously high allowed field goal percentages, high rates of fouls. Until the coaching staff and the players recognize that good defense starts at the smallest of scales, this team will continue to struggle.

Sacramento 108 (5-8)  |  New Orleans 96 (5-5)

Ugly. That's a pretty good word for it.

Tonight the Kevin Martin-less Kings outplayed a healthy Hornets squad, who wasted a 20 PT, 15 AST, 4 STL performance from Chris Paul. Without Kevin Martin. Kevin Martin did not play. Oof.

Actually, outplayed isn't really the best word for it. The team stats were almost identical in every category with one solitary exception: 3 pointers. New Orleans dropped a horrific 2 out of 13 from beyond the arc, while Sacramento made a merely average 7 of 19. But last night, average was enough. And that's really the difference when it comes down to it.

Ok, so that's not really the whole story. In all honesty, we could have won this game. Keep in mind that we did outscore them in the first half without a single trey. So, a victory was imminent despite the poor percentage from deep if only a few other things had happened:

A. David West had pulled down more than 1 (ONE!) rebound and

B. John Salmons hadn't beat Rasual Butler off the dribble on every possession, ending the game with 29 PTs after going 13 of 18 from the field.

Seriously, Byron? You're not going to try a different defensive scheme when a mediocre 2 drops 30 points on you? Were you really that mad at Morris that he truly deserved 0 (ZERO!) minutes?

It's doubly frustrating that we lost this game considering that we could have jumped Houston in the divisional standings after they dropped a game without the services of any of their big 3.

Regardless, I'm not pressing the panic button yet. Remember that this Hornets squad dropped a game to Sacramento at the end of last season in a crucial quest to land atop the Western Conference standings. We missed that 1 seed by a single game.

Continue reading this post »

To say the Hornets have stumbled out of the gates is something of an understatement. We've been handled by the Hawks, Lakers, and Rockets thus far. It's a long season, and things will surely start to even out a little as we get into December and January. That said, this team could use a little shake up. Some thoughts on our problems and some potential solutions:

Peja Stojakovic

He's one of the game's best pure shooters, nobody denies that. His biggest challenge is facing off against physical opponents. We've seen tough defenders throw him off time and time again- Bruce Bowen blasted him to smithereens in the playoffs last year, and Ron Artest did it again on Saturday. All that leads me to postulate: why not start James Posey against the more physical perimeter defenders?

Continue reading this post »

David West's Footlocker House of Hoops thing that SLAM does in every issue. Here are the scans from the lastest SLAM, featuring Fluffy Bunny... with hair! Click images for larger.

That first picture is sick.

I'm not going to lie; I thought Melvin Ely would be much better than he was this year, and I thought David West would be a little bit worse. Both players defied my expectations. One was an All-Star, and one registered a -3 +/- score in game that he played exactly 1 second. Here's a game-by-game look at the two Hornet power forwards, again using Hollinger's Game Score (individual game PER). At the top again, are the high GS, low GS, average GS and standard deviation. The yellow line is a 5 game moving average. Click either graph for bigger.

Best Game: January 28 vs. DEN. Ely missed 12 consecutive games in December and January with a broken eyesocket, courtesy of the Nuggets' Kenyon Martin. So it was especially satisfying to see him go off against Martin and Co. to the tune of 16 and 9 on 7 for 9 shooting. He played 22 minutes in his best game of the year, slightly better than a start at Detroit.

Trends: Really nothing spectacular, and not too much to draw from the graph. The trend line is all over the place. Interestingly, he was playing some of his worst basketball going into the playoffs. He peaked early in the year, and never reached that level after his injury.

Best Game: DX had quite a few excellent games during his first All-Star campaign. But I think all Hornets fans will agree that one stood out more than the rest: March 22nd. West poured in 37 points against Defensive Player of the Year Kevin Garnett, unafraid of KG's menacing glares or incessant floor pounding. He not only had those 37 points, he also had the flexing pose of the year, perhaps topping Tyson Chandler's swagger off the court in January.

Trends: The consistency you would expect from an All-Star is surprisingly lacking; even watching every game during the regular season, that didn't seem to be the case to me. But it is. West seems to take a few games to recover from a single bad game, which is the opposite of what the media kept reporting during the playoffs. But still, a 15.3 Game Score average? Nothing to sneeze at...

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...

And One!

Well, the end of the How'd He Do series is imminent. All the major players are in the books, with only Ryan Bowen, Rasual Butler, Chris Andersen, and Mike James left to review. So this is probably a good time to stop and check out what's gone down thus far. Thanks to all of you that voted, you've helped create the first ever batch of Hornet approval ratings!

• Melvin Ely (41%)
• Morris Peterson (67%)
• David West (95%)
• Bonzi Wells (58%)
• Peja Stojakovic (91%)
• Jannero Pargo (70%)
• Hilton Armstrong (34%)
• Tyson Chandler (97%)
• Julian Wright
• Chris Paul (100%)
  

As I mentioned in some of the comments, I removed '1' ratings for a few players. Seriously, Peja did not have a 1 season. Neither did David West or Tyson Chandler. Get over New Orleans' success, bitter fans of other teams.

The top 3 were CP (duh), TC, and DX in that order. Peja was 4th, and General Pargo overtook Mo-Pete for the 5th spot. Bonzi probably caused the most division. Some people (myself) had him high, while others pegged him as a 1. Ely and Armstrong didn't score well, but hopefully they will both rebound excellently. Finally, I'm surprised that Tyson finished higher than DX. Interesting.

The How'd He Do is the first part of @tH's player review series for the summer. Next up are some funky graphs and a best game thingamabob (huh, the spell check recognizes this??). The draft can't come soon enough...

After a couple of off days blogging about the salary cap, the draft, and our current needs, it's time for the third installment of the How'd He Do? series. So far, Mo-Pete has received a 67% approval rating, and Melvin Ely has gotten a 41% approval rating. Get to it if your vote hasn't been counted yet. Today we have one of our key cogs, a presence down low and on defense, a prolific yeller at refs, a possessor of an undying scowl, a world class tuba player (in his own mind), the seventeen foot assassin himself: David West.

via media.2theadvocate.com

Now you see it. Now you don't.

Positives: All-Star selection (and don't let anyone tell you B-Diddy was better; DX had a higher PER and a higher Usg%), nice jump in defensive rebounding rate, legitimate non-CP3 scoring option, played terrific help D allowing CP to gamble for steals, lowered his turnover rate as the year went on, showed some nice passing ability in the last month and a half, career best .850 free throws, increased his FTA/g for the fourth year in a row, SEVENTEEN FOOT ASSASSIN.

Negatives: Offensive rebounding rate dropped for the fourth straight year to a career low 7.2%, committed 4th most Illegal D violations in WC (12), committed 4th most offensive fouls in WC (39),

My Grade (1 to 5): 5, Explanation: He was the perfect complement to Chris Paul on both offense and defense. Offensively, he gave the Hornets a much needed post scorer and made sure CP3 didn't tire himself about by creating every shot on every play. Defensively, his terrific help D allowed CP to gamble for steals (and end up leading the league in the category). He was durable (76 games). At the end of the day, I still think he's underrated. At the beginning of the year, everyone was calling him underrated. After his All-Star selection, people couldn't stop raving about him. As CP made his MVP charge, everyone lumped DX's year as part of CP's year, saying Chris Paul "created" David West. So in the course of a year, he's gone from underrated, to possibly overrated, back to underrated again... which is probably just how he likes it.

There comes a game in every great player's career where he is absolutely unstoppable on the biggest of stages. Think Dirk Nowitzki's 30/19 performance in a 2003 Game 7 versus the Kings. Think Tim Duncan's 37 and 14 at Staples Center versus the Lakers in '98, paving the way for a sweep of a team that would eventually three-peat. Think Kevin Garnett's 32 and 21 in Game 7 in the 2005 Conference Semis. I could keep going with this list.

But the point is, tonight, David West became that player. He became that guy who found it within himself to go to the next level. No, he didn't show us that he will be the next Tim Duncan, the next Kevin Garnett, or the next Dirk Nowitzki. He showed us that he is ready to step into their shoes.

And that's what made this game so special. We could see the future, smell it, touch it, feel it. Win one more game, and this team will have achieved greatness unseen by the Hornet franchise. The future is now. It's very rare that an entire fan-base can see a new age unfolding before its very eyes, all within a single game. I imagine this is how San Antonio fans felt as the Duncan era began to take shape. I'm elated that the new website's first day also witnessed David West's break out party.

Tonight definitely ranks up there with Glen Rice's 39 versus New York, and Baron's triple double madness versus Orlando. Regardless of what happens the rest of the way, David West's 38/14/5/5 will go down as one of my fondest Hornet memories.

[Note: I'll get some numbers and similar less sappy things up tomorrow morning.]