Hornets Offense Misses Team Flight as Sixers Cruise to Victory

By:
Published: December 12, 2010

New Orleans started off the game by going 5 for 21 in the first quarter and conventional wisdom said that there was no place to go but up. Conventional wisdom was wrong. After an embarressing first quarter, the Hornets topped themselves by going 1 for 21 in the second quarter. They finished the first half with just 23 points and the second half wasn’t much better despite what the box score says.

I know most observers will say that the result was do to a lack of effort, but I just don’t buy that. The effort was there, especially in the second half when they were fighting hard to avoid being utterly humiliated. The poor production on the offensive end was a result of an off day combined with the Hornets not playing intelligently and them pressing because of their slow start. Of course they weren’t playing with playoff type intensity or even the intensity they showed in the first 10 games, but effort wouldn’t get the largest piece in the responsibility pie.

Defensively the team was solid most of the time and made their rotations for the most part, but you aren’t going to beat anybody when you only score 70 points. The frustrating part was that even after the Hornets got stops, they seemed content to just walk the ball up the court and play half court basketball rather than try to get some easy points in transition. Beyond that, there did not seem to be any desire to try to get to the free throw line until late in the second quarter, when they were already down 19 points. In fact, in the first seventeen and a half minutes, the Hornets only drew one shooting foul.

Days like this will happen, especially when a team plays a Sunday game at 11 AM local time, but you just wish it would happen against teams they would lose to in most cases anyway. If this happened at Boston or Orlando, for instance, you just take the loss and move on. But this happened at Philadelphia against a team that a Western Conference playoff bound team should win 8 out of 10 times.

No need to address this game any further, I would rather hear from all of you. Besides I have got to save this venom for my podcast with Ryan tonight.

What you got Hornets nation?

125 Comments

  1. Pingback: Philadunkia » GM 23 RECAP: SWATTED

Leave a Reply

Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published.