Hornets Season Preview

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Published: December 22, 2011

The new NBA season is only a few days away (as is Christmas, Merry Christmas everyone), so it’s time to give an in depth look into the upcoming NBA season from a Hornets point of view.

First let’s look at things by the numbers. (Combined Winning percentage of opponents)

December           .553% 

January              .571%

February             .505%

March                 .485%

April                   .494%

 

Based on the winning percentages alone, it looks like our season starts of hard and gets easier as the season goes on. Unfortunately winning percentage alone is a very flawed stat – as it does not take in to account teams who have improved and teams who have weakened. So we are going to look at something even more flawed my personal opinion.

First of December is 3 games, so let’s throw that month away.

Rankings (Hardest to Easiest)

January – Well the numbers weren’t wrong here. First of all 18 games in January which is crazy!! January includes Dallas (twice), Denver (twice), OKC (twice), Memphis (twice), San Antonio, Miami and Atlanta. We could be in for a long long month (though those after a high draft pick may not complain about that)

March – The numbers state this is the easiest month of the season, what it fails to take into account is the improvement of teams. LA Clippers (twice), LA Lakers (twice), Portland (twice), Dallas, San Antonio, Indiana and Denver. Once again there are a lot of games in March (17) including two 4 game road trips.

February – 14 games in 29 days makes it the least busiest time of our NBA schedule (if we get no all stars that is). Tough games we face include, Chicago (twice), Indiana, OKC,  New York, San Antonio and Portland.

April – 14 games in 26 days which again is action packed but we don’t face many elite teams. Memphis (twice), LA Lakers, LA Clippers, San Antonio and Denver.

 

Just for fun, let’s have a guess at how many games the Hornets will win. I don’t think we will be worst in the West by a long shot (thanks Hollinger) with an action packed season depth is going to be huge and in the front court our depth is playoff worthy, the downside is that in our back court our depth is D League worthy (I am joking, but our depth at PG is shocking). I am going to throw out a 27-39 record for 12th in the West.

 

West Playoffs
1 San Antonio
2 Oklahoma City
3 Dallas
4LA Clippers
5 LA Lakers
6 Memphis
7 Denver
8 Portland

East Playoffs
1 Miami
2 New York
3 Chicago
4 Boston
5 Indiana
6 Orlando
7 Milwaukee
8  Detroit

Miami over Oklahoma in the finals.

I wanted to do a breakdown on the roster but since we don’t even know the starting line up and the final roster I will leave this for another day. What are your predictions? How well do you think the Hornets will go? Tell me I am wrong and leave a comment below.

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