Unlike last season, which ended with happiness, hope and high expectations for the next year, this season ended with disappointment, pessimism and a spectacular disaster.  Things had gotten so bad over the past month or so that I’ll admit I felt a weird sort of relief when the Hornet’s lost last night.  Sad, but true.

The ending left enough of a bad taste in my mouth that I’m probably going to skip putting together a comprehensive review of the highs(there were some) and lows of the season.  Niall may do one, but if one of you wants to put something balanced together(emphasis on balanced), I’d encourage it and be happy to put it on the main page as a feature.  Let us know if you’re up for it in the comments or in an email.

For me, I prefer to look ahead.  There is no question that changes need to be made.  However, it is also true that the pessimistic views of the Hornet’s future are greatly overblown.(As is normal when a team fails spectacularly in trying to meet high expectations.)

So in the next couple days I’m going to start a series about what I’m hoping will happen with the team over the next four months.  I’ll be trying to produce the following posts, in pretty much this order, over the next couple weeks:

1. Coaching Evaluation: My take on Byron Scott
2. Front Office Evaluation: My take on Jeff Bower
3. Salary/Luxury Tax Situation: Sorting out just what has to happen to make this team viable.  There are a lot of misconceptions about Shinn’s willingness to spend and why certain trades are floated, so I think this one is important.
4. Roster Evaluation/Player Values:  A little distance from Game 4 will make this be a lot more realistic.
5. Team Needs:  This may be fairly extensive.  Boo.
6. Trade Thoughts:  I’ll try to shy away from specific scenarios since those things are so speculative.  I will, of course, have some examples, but will try more to focus on types of players rather than specific trades.
7. The Draft:  I’ll do what I can to review our options.  Having watched very, very little college ball this year, however, it’ll be mostly stat-based and drawn from the opinions of various experts.
8. Free Agency:  Despite the cap inflexibility, I think this will be more important than you’d think.

If there is anything else you’d like me to address – feel free to put it in the comments, and I’ll do what I can.  I hope we can keep the off-season a little more interesting than it typically is.

I’d also like to say thanks to all of you who kept showing up and reading our site all season long.  We had a good 50%-75% increase in the traffic we were seeing each month over last year, which is pretty exciting, and greatly appreciate the support. 

A special thanks to all of you who comment.  You make doing this infinitely more rewarding and enjoyable.

Thanks again,

Ryan