Knicks-Hornets: Chris Paul And Company Know No Offense

It seems to me if you’re going to beat a team like the Knicks you need to do the following things.

1. Don’t turn the ball over and don’t miss your shots. What this does is forces the Knicks to play in the half court and play a down-tempo game. The Hornets didn’t do either of these and thus lost the game.

2. Stop the three point shooters. This particularly applies to the corner three-point shots. These are the easiest to make in the NBA and the Hornets continually gave it up and the Knicks took advantage.

3. Get offensive rebounds. The Knicks are a team that don’t possess an array of strong big men, so go after the rebounds. The Hornets did not do that tonight.

There was however another intangible for the game tonight that worked severely against the Hornets. This was Chris Paul. Now we all know what’s he’s capable of but for the 8th time this season (or something like that) Paul has failed to show up when the team needs him. Tonight he started to look for his shot when all was pretty much over and that’s to late.

Sure there was no David West tonight but this should have been a win if the Hornets just wake up and execute on offense and defense, they did neither.

So with that let’s jump over for some of the misery that ensued.

Good Stuff

• Jason Smith, on offense was effective. Early on he had his jumper going making most of his shots. It’s a shame his defense wasn’t the same.
• We out-rebounded the Knicks, does that count for anything? No not really.

Bad Stuff

• Chris Paul has to realize that whether he likes it or not he needs to be one of our primary scorers. I know he wants to get his team-mates involved but so does everyone else. The scouting report on Paul is basically stop all his passes and put some on ball pressure and you’ll be fine. I could write for days on end about how Chris needs to step up his game, the truth is that teams are making a concentrated effort to get after him and it seems to be working to perfection.
• While Trevor Ariza scored 21 points he looked just terrible getting them. As the box score would indicate he took 21 shots for those points, missed every three-pointer and really didn’t contribute a whole lot while he was out there.
• Emeka Okafor for the love of god please get this memo, “If you catch it deep in the paint go straight up.” Numerous times he’d have great post position only to turn it over, lose the ball out of bounds or draw a foul that would result in 0 points.
• Willie Green, that is all.
• Jarrett Jack does not fit in here what so ever. He received crucial playing time over Chris and it was a huge mistake as the deficit would not only remain but be extended. He doesn’t know what he’s doing out there, seems tentative, confused and lost.
• The turnovers absolutely were our downfall tonight, 19 of them. The Knicks put just a little bit of ball pressure on the Hornets and it resulted in erratic offense and turnovers leading to New York points.
• No one guarded Amare Stoudamire, he had 34 points all pretty much coming in the paint, have to man up there.
• Monty Williams and his rotations only work when the bench is working. Ever since the Jarret Jack trade the bench has been out of sync and in turn resulted in poor offense and defense.

Other Outrageous Observations

• Not sure what the crowd size was tonight, but it looked bad as usual. In turn there is news from Marc Stein at ESPN.com that the NBA is looking in to purchasing the team if Chouest does not purchase the team. This is not good news and makes the transfer of ownership that much more crucial if basketball is to remain in New Orleans. Crowd numbers are dwindling so I wouldn’t be surprised is Chouest was rethinking his purchase…

Next up is the San Antonio Spurs, that one will be ugly mark my words…

Final Word: Despicable