Yes, the Hornets have one of those legitimate (i.e. more than two games) winning streak things like you’d read about in the Dallas or Phoenix newspapers. And it’s thanks to a bunch of scrappy underdogs like Jannero Pargo, who went and did some kind of Gilbert Arenas impersonation last night.
News and notes and the like…
- Linkage: box | recap | video | photos
- As hinted, the guy they call Jannero was the big news, scoring a season-high 25 points on 10-of-18 shooting. He started banging in long jumpers mid-way through the third, and Jameer Nelson had no answer.
I’m really starting to like Pargo, and not in a Dan Dickau sort of way.
- Tyson Chandler saw his fantastic and wonderful and awesome five-game run of double-figure scoring come to an end, as he managed just 4 lonely points on 1-of-2 shooting. He also fouled out with a hack on Darko Milicic at the end of regulation. That led to Darko knocking down a free throw to tie the game up and force OT.
- Marc Jackson celebrated his 32nd birthday by missing all five of his shots and grabbing two rebounds in 21 minutes. Yay!
- Desmond Mason scored 21 for the Hornets, shooting 6-of-18 from the floor, while everybody’s favorite humanitarian, Rasual Butler, scored 19 points on 8-16 shooting and pulled down 11 boards.
- Devin Brown: 3-17 FGs.
- Hilton Armstrong got 16 minutes of burn and came up with 6 rebounds and that big block on Dwight Howard in OT that you’ve no doubt seen by now.
- Hedo Turkoglu scored 16 and grabbed 7 for the Magic, but he was apparently not feeling too good.
- Dwight Howard led Orlando with 17 points and 15 rebounds. Also mentioned in the above Turk link that Dwight will be dunking lots of dunks in the Dunk Contest next month.
- John Rohde wrote a story in today’s Daily Oklahoman entitled “Team is happy with ugly win“.
I’m not sure about you, but a win could look like the lovechild of Sam Cassell and George Karl and I’d still be ecstatic. The again, both the Hornets and Magic had more turnovers than assists last night. That’s pretty damn ugly.
- Tyson Chandler described the win as “Shakespeare-like”, whatever that means.
- The Orlando Magic Blog, a blog about the Orlando Magic, blog about the Orlando Magic.
I was browsing the HR Forums earlier, and saw somebody mention that the Hornets are now just 4.0 games behind the Nuggets for the eighth seed in the West. Huh? I stopped checking the standings about two weeks ago, mostly because they were giving me an almost uncontrollable urge to take a bath with the toaster. Turns out though that the Hornets are indeed just 4.0 games out of the final Playoff spot. Full standings here.
So I guess everyone that was on the tank bandwagon will be getting off right about now. Or sticking hot needles in their Jannero Pargo voodoo doll.
In other news, David West should be back playing actual basketball games within a week, news which deserves more sentences than I have time to give it right now.
Also, Marcus Vinicius has been recalled from the D-League because he done strained an achilles. Or one of his achilleses. I think “achilles” is supposed to be capitalized for some reason. I don’t know, I’m not a doctor. What I do know is that Quiznos is hurt and now he won’t be able to play the last 15 seconds of every fourth blowout loss. And that really sucks.
Next game for the Hornets is at San Antonio on Friday. Revel in the win streak while you still can.