Hornets-Clippers: New Orleans Come Back Down To Earth 95-99

There was a lot that went wrong during tonight’s game so many people to shoulder the blame to, but I think you have to give this one to the Clippers. Despite the fact that we should have beaten the Clippers they thoroughly outplayed us tonight in most facets of the game. Tonight New Orleans didn’t seem aggressive, were passive on offense and gave up easy look after easy look on defense. A lack of intensity to put it another way.

Los Angeles really should have beaten us by 20, they missed a tonne of foul shots and really that’s all that kept us in the game. For most of the season the ball has bounced the right way for the Hornets, but tonight it just proved that you can’t play down to your competition.

Head over with me to breakdown what went right, because so much went wrong.

The Good Stuff:

• Really the only bright spot from tonight’s game was David West, he really was beastly tonight. His defense wasn’t as solid as it has been in recent times, but offensively he put up some numbers. DW had 30 points on 23 shots, 10 rebounds and 5 assists. I think his candidacy for the All-Star game is back on the table.
• I suppose I need to put another dot-point here just because I don’t want to be all depressed and the like but I think for the most part Jarrett Jack did an OK job on the offensive end getting his own shot. However with that grain of positivity comes the grain of negativity. For every time he’d do something nice there would be a period of offensive stagnation and just plain ugliness. So to end on a nice point he shot very well and did a nice job getting to the line to keep it close at the end.

The Bad Stuff:

• I think Chris Paul needs to re-evaluate how he’s played over the last few games. He’s been very tentative, unwilling to drive into the lane and overall it seems like he hasn’t really wanted the ball in his hands at the end of the game. Tonight pretty much epitomized what I just said because CP3 was downright terrible to end the game. I think David should have caught that ball at the end there, but Marco was wide open for three and he completely missed him. I really hope Paul gets back in the saddle because he’s looked awful. People were wondering if there’s something wrong with him injury wise. I don’t think that’s the case, but it appears that his minutes are decreasing every game (he had 32 tonight).
• If Willie Green continues to get time over Marcus Thornton for the remainder of the season then consider me baffled. At the beginning of the year the starting job at the SG position was up for grabs and not only did Thornton miss that but he missed a spot in the rotation too. Green tonight continued to ignore team-mates, hoist up long shot after long shot and played lackluster defense just to make you even angrier than before.
• The offense tonight was as bad as the defense, but I have to say it was particularly unsettling because at times we’d hoist up a prayer shot. The very first basket summed up the night for the Hornets, some lucky shots fell but for the most part we couldn’t get a good look. Defensively it was so frustrating to watch how this team has just disintegrated and let mediocre players like DeAndre Jordan walk all over them in the paint.
• Trevor Ariza continues to showcase his dribbling ability and it has me showcasing my frustrations. Ariza has continued to be an absolute loony bin when he tries to create something on offense. This is kind of Paul’s fault too because he give the ball to Trevor and indicates with his body language “Yeah man you just go to work and I’ll be the spot up shooter.” Shouldn’t it be the other way around?
• 2 steals and 2 blocked shots, just shows you how porous our defense was tonight.
• I could list some more bad stuff but I think the worst of it was that this was against a 1-11 (2-11 now) team. We have to put these games away, they should be automatic, tick in the box type games. The past three games now we’ve played down to the competition and kept these teams in the game. We have to play better than this and it all starts with our defense, man it feels like 2009 doesn’t it?

Other Outrageous Observations

• The Clipper commentators were ecstatic and you have to believe that this will be their biggest win of the season so let them have it. But they said midway through the broadcast that if Lebron had stayed on the Cavaliers he would of had a better support cast there than in Miami. That’s embarrassing.
• Blake Griffin is rookie of the year by a large margin. His athleticism is crazy good and he actually has a bit of a jumper, he probably should of had 30 against us.
• Clippers dropped 50 points in the paint on us, that’s in addition to all the free-throws they had. Pitiful defensive effort.

Next up are the Utah Jazz, I think we can put a loss in the column for that game. The Jazz are good at home and we just lost to the Clippers. Add in the fact they’ve had our number for a while now and you have yourself a blowout potential game.

Final Word: Despicable