Don't blame injuries, blame the game.

Everyone including me is extremely frustrated at the New Orleans Hornets and the way they are playing basketball. Many blame injuries saying that Tyson Chandler is huge to this teams success and when and if he is back we will be back as one of the top 6 teams in the league. Others look towards the management decisions made and the people surrounding the core group of guys.


However I am interested to look at the actual basketball being played. Yes we are something like .500 when Tyson is out which is pretty good. But that is a huge number of games that we should be winning. I am one of the first to point fingers at management decisions, however they do have SOME good players that can do some okay things despite being over payed.


However lets have a look at what the hornets actually do on the court rather than off.


1. Pick and Post-up options:

As we can see here 1 obviously handles the ball while 5 sets a screen for 4 who then goes and sets an on-ball screen for 1. 5 rolls to the basket after setting his screen and 4 rolls looking for the post up. 1 then has two options, a pass to 5 for the dunk or pass to 4 for the post up.

As we can see 2 and 3 do nothing. They would usually be the spot up shooters i.e. Butler, Posey, Stojakovic.

My complaint with this is that it is so bland. There is no off-ball movement and the opposing team can very easily double the 4 and isolate Paul's options. There is no penetration what so ever, just entry or spot-up options.


2. Basic Pick and roll
This is usually what the Hornets run when their first options (fast break) run out. 1 dribbles the ball to a side or at the top and the other players just isolate that pick and roll. My frustrations with this is that this play works well with Tyson and Paul, not Daniels and Armstrong or Paul and Ely etc. Byron it just doesn't, Armstrong sets the weakest of screens, Marks can set "okay" screens but he doesn't do much with them. When Paul gets a screen from West (4) it usually is for the post up for West because the defense switches men and creates a "mis-match."

What's my problem with this? Nothing, but the defense then doubles West then he tries to force the issue and gets stuck, tries to kick it out but then, no ball movement. This basic Pick-and-Roll can be defended very easily because there is no movement other then the two men involved.


3. Other
Yes we do also have the Butler off-ball curl where he gets a couple of screens on the low block, but again all is needed is a quick switch to stop that. There is a couple of other plays that involve Peja, but very little and usually this is either a post-up or a pick-and-pop type of play.


Summary
What can we make of all this? Well it is simple. Byron Scott has not adapted his offense to suit his players on the court. He must have movement off the ball because the defenses easily adapt to the pick and roll offense. How many times have you seen us set a beautiful off-ball screen for Peja who gets a nice midrange shot, none. We need to make adjustments on the offensive end to get back to scoring over 100 points a game, which happens very rarely this year.

But my main problem is the lack of penetration. I love layups, love 'em. Why? Because in a hornets game do they rarely happen. In fact I am sure there are a tonne stat geeks out there that can find the percentage of field goals attempted that are layups (by other than CP and West). We have to be aggressive and when we are, we drive to the cup and lay it in for two. Sure we are made up of a tonne of shooters, but that doesn't mean we still can't be aggressive. I think everyone on the team needs to remember that a 18 foot jumpshot is worth the same as a 2 foot layup.

A quick note...

Just saw the Hornets Kings game today and I was quietly annoyed by the fact that we were so close to losing to possibly the worst team in the league. A few observations:

• Chris Paul wasn't as aggressive as I thought. I thought the Kings did an "okay" job on him. But in all seriousness CP just wasn't on his offensive game tonight. He got others involved with his passing early on, but in terms of creating havoc with his scoring game there was little of it.
  
• David, my man, West killed the Kings. Wow, 40 points is quite astonishing for a man who was limping the whole game. He sure does love the West coast.
  
• I was impressed by JuJu. His shots were falling, he was cutting nice to the basket among other things. He must not be to impressed with his defensive game because Nocioni was killing him from deep.
  
• The bench is coming along nicely. They came in and held their own. I really want this team to get healthy, Mo Pete makes a difference.

• On that note, why does Devin the "I can't hit free throws" Brown get more minutes than Mo Pete? I expect that to change soon

• I like basketball, I like Sual Bop.

Sual Bop:"What's a buzzer beater?" CP: "It's that."

How the mighty have fallen

Fallen might not be the perfect word to describe the Hornets 2008-09 campaign. However another "F" word that has been used frequently by myself and hornets fans this year has not been the one you are thinking of, rather it is "Fail."

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.