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Looks like the move has been made, and will be officially announced later today, per ESPN.

More analysis of the firing should follow, but for now, this million word piece is just as applicable now as it was in May.

These were my thoughts back then:

In my mind, the best option is to roll the dice on Scott. Hang on to him, regain some health, field a solid defense, allow good and healthy players to self-correct some offensive shortcomings, and hope the front office can draft a solid rookie to Scott's liking. Byron has his flaws, but in an offseason promising to be among the most turbulent the franchise has ever seen, a little stability can go a long way.

And a 3-6 start hasn't exactly changed my mind. More than anything, this firing seems like a "light a fire under the players" sort of deal. Will it work? I doubt it; firing Scott isn't nearly as imperative as finding a new coach.

Hey guys. Nice to see you all again. Been a while, no?

I was going to announce my return to this blog with some thoughtful words about the player movement in the league and how that all affects the Southwestern Division and whatnot, but since I've been in the process of moving for the past week, I decided to take the easy way out with some linkage to tie you over for a bit.

Some of these are out of date, but as always, they're well worth reading:

• The guys down at 24/7 give us a hell of recap for the summer league.
• Ball Don't Lie's summer league recap is great as well. In fact, Skeets is pretty high on Marcus Thornton and JuJu. Plus, he makes fun of Allan "No seriously guys, I'm coming back this year" Houston... which is always fun.
• OMG CHRIS PAUL'S GOING TO BE TRADED! Oh, wait, no he isn't? Why do I ever listen to anything anyone writes ever. (Hornets Hype does a great job of chronicling the whole saga.)
• For those of you who might still be hyperventilating from the last set of links, here it is from the horse's–aka CP3's–mouth (via twitter):

"Jus for the record too…I’M NOT GOIN ANYWHERE!!! No clue what Chris Thomasson was talkin about, but I didn’t say any of what he was sayin."

• Ball Don't Lie has a great rundown on both restricted and unrestricted free agents. Not that we can afford any of them or anything. It's just good to know. And knowing's half the battle... or something.
• Totally unrelated to the Hornets, but the duo down at Hornets Hype has a great piece about their visit to the basketball hall of fame.

Ok, that about does it for today. We'll be back soon with something a little more thoughtful and original. Until then go Cardina... HORNETS! (sorry)

• Re: the Pistons deal. Detroit suddenly adds a ton of firepower, getting two ~18 PER guys that can contribute on the court at the same time. The biggest issue seems to be where the pieces will fit together. I'm assuming Joe Dumars would like a lineup of Rodney Stuckey/Ben Gordon/Richard Hamilton to be on the floor together at points, but that'd be a tiny starting backcourt and wing. Villanueva can't match up with some of the more physical power forwards, and where does this put Tayshaun Prince? There's probably a good argument in here somewhere that Detroit isn't done moving pieces around.
• Re: Paul Millsap. Am I the only one that thinks he'd be worth every penny of the 10 million he's asking? I know Utah would ideally minimize their spending on him, given their cap situation, but it seems like a lot of the argument is that Millsap is inherently not worth that much anyway. A 24 year old with his rebounding and scoring ability, with no injury history? Seems worth it to me. Another question would be: why can't a team way under the cap go and offer Millsap a huge contract- let's say 15-20 million- and force Utah to seriously consider not bringing him back? (I might be missing some RFA contract max here, but I can't recall any).
  
• Jason Kidd will be 36 years old next March, his turnover rates have been uncontrollably high for the last four years, and he can only match up defensively against shooting guards (which he's decent at, but still). So why do the latest rumors have teams lining up to offer him 3 and 4 year contracts? He'd be 40 at the end of a 4 year deal. I can't see him starting for a good team, for more than another two seasons. I know so many people called Kidd overrated a couple years ago that he almost bordered on becoming underrated (a reverse David West)... but has the pendulum swung back the other way now? Depends on the dollars he's given, but it looks like a possibility.
• Lots of athletes have been killing it on Twitter, but one that definitely hasn't is Amar'e. First, he uses Twitter as a free advertising service for his Amar'e Credit Card or whatever the hell it was. Then, when he finally starts Twittering properly, he sends out fake trade rumors. Sort of amusing the first time, lame the second.
• Anyways, that's it for now. I'm going to be out of town till next Tuesday. The last time I was out of town for an extended time, we signed James Posey. So, uh, let's pray something like that doesn't happen again. If any news breaks, have at it in the FanPosts/FanShots, and I'm sure Lee and Junsier will take care of it in terms of coverage. I've scheduled a couple posts- one on Darren Collison and one on Marcus Thornton- to autopublish themselves on Saturday and Monday respectively. Later.

Not too many actual Hornets to discuss today, but plenty of potential ones. Let's get to it.

First in our minds and hearts and first on this list is Pitt's DeJuan Blair. Things weren't looking very good for us already, and the events of the last 24 hours may just have clinched a top 20 spot for him.

Blair got in for a second workout for the Chicago Bulls (drafting at #16), and they're liking what they're seeing. From the Sun Times:

''He's an intriguing guy,'' Forman said. ''The one thing, if you study drafts over the last 15 to 20 years, rebounders rebound. That's a stat that does translate. So I think he's going to be a good player in the NBA.''  While both Henderson and the 6-8 Johnson are expected to be among the lottery picks, Mullens should be available at No. 16. And his 7-0, 260-pound frame and raw potential could prove tempting to the Bulls."

The bigger issue is that Chicago also has the 26th pick. At that point, they could take Omri Cisspi, rendering Mullens moot. And no mention of Tyler Hansbrough in that article either, another non-Blair option.

Continue reading this post »

Time to bring back last summer's "Hornets on the Internets" (cleverly entitled HIts) series and hopefully run it through the season. Ideally, I'll run it every few days that some significant Hornets' news comes out, and I'll offer my brief takes. For today, some news that's a few days old since this is the first one in a while.

There's been a lot of speculation that Jannero Pargo could return next year. Between the abysmal play of Devin Brown and the non-flashiness of Antonio Daniels translating itself into incompetence in many fans' eyes, more than one analyst has hailed Pargo the "missing piece." Says WWL:

The sudden-fan favorite is back in town. Only on Monday, he wasn’t practicing or trying out. He was there watching younger brother Jeremy go through a pre-draft workout with the Hornets. "I pretty much want the same role I had when I left here. I don’t think that role would be guaranteed to me, but if I come back here, I know the system, I know the coaches and I know the players. It just would be an easy transition for me. I can’t really talk about it, but yeah, I think there’s a mutual interest on both sides," Pargo said.

Neworleans.com confirms the mutual interest aspect of things:

For his part, Paul wants Pargo back. He has made that very clear. Scott wants Pargo back. Pargo's agent, Mark Bartelstein, admits mutual interest. Barring a financial snafu, it is obvious that Jannero Pargo is set to re-join the Hornets by July 11 (or soon after) for the 2009-2010 season. He fits extremely well in New Orleans. While he could play elsewhere, he knows the territory and would be very comfortable with his coach, teammates and minutes in New Orleans. He knows the way to the Alario Center without a GPS device.

Not sure what makes the author so confident about how "obvious" a Pargo return is... but he does sound sure of it.

Continue reading this post »

Well, that was an exhilarating 82 games. Didn't go quite the way we might have hoped, but we're in the playoffs with a relatively easy path. So let's see how it goes.

Anyways, now is as good a time as any to cover months old site news that I never got around to mentioning.

In case you didn't notice, SBNation currently has a deal with both Yahoo! Sports and AP/Getty Images. If you visit Yahoo! team pages or recap pages, you'll find links to At the Hive and all other sites across the SB network. Additionally, me and the other SBN Playoff bloggers will be teaming up with J.E. Skeets and Kelly Dwyer at Yahoo!'s Ball Don't Lie over the next few weeks for playoff coverage. The first SBN bloggers' post about the first round should appear at BDL before Saturday. The AP image licensing is also cool in that now we don't steal have to steal (all) our images any more- some of them will hopefully be legal.

SBN has also launched player and team pages across the network. For example, here's the Hornets page and the Chris Paul page. The idea is that player and team pages pick up all tagged posts across the network. Additionally, if you guys write Fan Posts or Fan Shots and tag players before publishing, they will appear on the respective SBN pages.

Finally, the SBN NBA network is coming very close to completion. A Lakers blog was recently added, as was a Detroit Pistons blog. Every 2009 playoff team now has representation on the network.

I'll end with a note about commenting policy. At the Hive has grown a ton over the course of this season, and it's all thanks to you guys. The game threads have gotten more and more busy, and they will surely be bustling for the playoffs. So I'd like to make a request to keep all profanities to a minimum, as much as possible. It hasn't been a problem at all thus far, and there is generally a lot of intelligent conversation. With stakes being much higher in the playoffs, things may change. If fans of other SBN blogs come over here, keep the discourse clean with them, and everyone will benefit. Similarly, if you head over to another SBN blog, abide by their policies and keep it civil. It can only make all us Hornets fans look better.

Thanks everyone, and Go Hornets!

Hometown Hornets goes over the CP3-Magic comparison, and J.A. Adande's ridiculous take on it:

Mr. Adande should just be happy that a point guard as exciting as CP (and possibly the most exciting since Magic) is in the league right now. Not to mention that he gets to watch that player's "development" unfold. He should also try watching more than 2 or 3 Hornets' games a season. It might help.

Also, a few words on CP3-DWill, and an interesting take on their head to head matchups:

A quick look at the tables reveals that almost all of Paul's statistical contributions see a drop (the exception being FT attempted and FT%), while Williams' numbers seem to shift in both directions. What's interesting is that I wouldn't call either stat line from the head-to-heads amazing (which both players are) or terrible (which both players are not). It seems that they both affect the other's numbers pretty significantly, and why not? After all, they're pretty worthy adversaries.

Finally, Josh Q. Public with a cool little factoid on CP3 this year:

Just so you know, that was Paul’s fourth game this season with twenty-five points, ten assists, and five steals.  Just so you knw, only one other NBA player has even one such game this year, only Nate Robinson.  Just so you know, Chris Paul is very very good.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!111111111111111111!!!11111

Lee's recap is right below this. I'll bump it back up to the top later tonight/tomorrow, but right now... wow.

My assessment: one of two things has happened. (A) There's something seriously wrong with Tyson that hasn't been brought up by the Hornets (bone damage? etc.). (B) The Thunder had semi-cold feet, concerning Tyson's low stats, all along, and the (expected) injury assessment of Tyson gave them the perfect excuse to rescind the deal.

Thursday

Some Important News from Chris Broussard:

Chandler's baffled. He was examined by the doctors in Oklahoma City, and you know, he had the ankle injury and missed the last 12 games before the All Star break. But that had nothing to do with why the trade was rescinded. They looked at his big left toe, which Oklahoma's team doctor had operated on in 2007 and they determined that the risk of re-injury is great. That stunned Chandler. He felt like his toe was fine. He's had a little pain over the years... but he's a bit stunned. Chandler's excited to be back as well, but his mind is kind of spinning right now.

Hometown Hornets:

With the trade of Tyson, there seemed to be more. Turns out, there was. The Hornets were trying to protect themselves from being stuck with a $12 million contract for a player who might not return to that nightly double-double form. I welcome Tyson back to the team, and I'm excited to have the Crescent City Connection live on. But I'm anxious that his history of foot injuries might hamper his future. If that's the case, it puts this team at a serious disadvantage.

Chad Ford:

[Hornets] are [still] talking to teams. They feel like OKC way over reacted to Chandler's turf toe issue. The question is ... do they have enough time to make a deal. A team would have to be pretty sure that Chandler is healthy to make another deal for him.

Wednesday

ESPN:

The New Orleans Hornets decided to trade Tyson Chandler to clear some cap space and add depth to the frontcourt. They'll have to go back to the drawing board.

The Hornets announced on Wednesday that the Oklahoma City Thunder did not medically clear the center and therefore rescinded the trade. Chandler would have gone to the Thunder for forwards Chris Wilcox and Joe Smith.

Yahoo!:

The Oklahoma City Thunder doctors have red-flagged a turf toe condition with newly acquired center Tyson Chandler and the New Orleans Hornets trade has been voided, league executives said Wednesday night.

"It’s blown up," one league executive said.

Hoopsworld:

It's expected that the Thunder will make a subsequent deal to move their highly-coveted front court players elsewhere, though it seems unlikely they would land a player of Chandler's caliber with so little time left between now and the trade deadline to work out the details.

Jeff Bower:

We welcome Tyson back with open arms. We went into this trade to garner more frontcourt depth to add to our team as we continue our push towards the playoffs. We expect Tyson and the rest of our big guys to step up to the challenge."

Sam Presti, OKC GM

"We were pleased to add Tyson to the Thunder roster. During the course of the physical examination and outside consultations, some questions arose that gave us cause for concern. We felt that this course of action was the best for our organization."

Chris Paul:

“I’m excited to have T.C. back. I think it will give us a huge lift. Hopefully it will bring us closer together. You know, T.C. is family to us, so there won’t be any animosity when he comes in here and he understands what’s been the goal all along.”

More news as it comes in...

(Note: Sorry Cablinasian.... I saw yours was up first, but this had a comment on it......)