Injuries, poor coaching, poor performances. Blame it on whatever you like I has just been a spectacular fail this season. Looking at it from various angles many teams now do not fear us as they did last year, they embrace us as an opponent.
The reason that Chris Paul is having such a ridiculous year "statistically" is due to the increased pressure and responsibility placed upon him to provide us with offense and defense flair. I can't back up that with any statistics because that would be a little contradicting, however if one was to want to find any justification to the percentage of possessions taken by CP head over to atthehive.com
Hornet fans like myself had extremely high expectations. Extremely would be an understated adjective used. However I think that for myself personally expectations indicate where something should be compared to where it is. Free Agent acquisitions of James Posey, a year under the belt, sounds like a successful year. Indeed this deceives many as the Hornets just flopped from top team in the NBA to worst of the best.
But "Why" has this occurred? Why? This key word or question plagues our minds day after day. We can only point to speculations, stats that may or may not mean something, injuries, or just a mulligan of a season. Clearly it is a combination of all of the above and some other external factors.
Coach Scott in my view should not be blamed for the debacle, he in fact has steadied the ship to at least help us "reach" the playoffs (which I say with due caution). Scott has had to deal with a team without last years flair, tenacity and ability to just play ball. Last season Coach Byron could quite easily say something to which players would respond and execute. This compares to this year when motivation goes in one ear, leaves the same ear and is never uttered again. Consistency is what I feel like is killing Coach Scott at the moment, he can't honestly go to one player (other than CP) and say "I need you to take control of the game on both ends." He just can't.
It seems that after every game he or another states something along the lines of, "We're not where we need to be but once we get everyone together and playing as a whole we can be dangerous."
Okay, stop there. That has happened just 24 times this year. And our record? 20-4. Nice. But again how many times has that occurred. 24. Just 24 times have we had our full team, playing together, on the same page, playing winning basketball.
Needless to say my point is that time is or rather has (Tyson and Peja injury) run out. Our team is decimated and it is likely that Tyson will opt out and look to start afresh somewhere else next season. The team will likely never be mentioned as a contender ever again until management can pull something together and re-assemble a strong lineup featuring Chris Paul, and maybe David West because he's my favourite player =]
But the truth of the matter is that what was once a great giant of the West is now just an annoying little bee that might just sting you, give you an infection on the path to the championship.
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