Dear Hornets247 readers,

Let me first describe how big basketball and the Hornets are in this country. (the cheese scoffing, weed smoking, clog wearing people of Holland) There are approximately sixteen million people living in such a geographically compact area, so small we’d be hard pressed to match Louisiana. We love our sports though, we have internationally recognised Football (Soccer, or Sawker) stars and we are pretty good at it, entertaining to boot. We’ll most likely win at the very least two Golds this Winter Olympics in the speed skating events… Yes, speed skating. Also note that Dutch folks are the tallest people on earth. All three of us.

So where does this leave Basketball? You might have heard of the wonderful talent we brought to the NBA in Francisco Elson, or the equally talented Dan Gadzuric and yes Hornet fans, a Dutch person was actually drafted in the late 2nd round last year. (Henk Norel) We did supply you with the legendary Rik Smits as well. Why am I underselling us? We’re awesome, what have Louisiana done lately?

I think you’ve gotten a pretty clear picture of how big this game is in the Netherlands; 99% of the people will say they have never heard of Chris Paul, nor the New Orleans Hornets. They’re aware of the city of New Orleans, just not the team.

At the same time there’s no love from the NBA or the Hornets to our stoned, sawker lovin’ people. I have a life outside of the Hornets and the genius of Chris Paul and his cast. More often than not games are played at 2am, which leads me to beg the question; why? Why are nearly all the weekend games so late? I noticed that the Raptors play a lot of matches at a decent time for Europeans, so whats the reason behind the Hornets not doing so? Maybe some local Hornet fans could explain to me why there is no love for midday matches? We give you Rik Smits and what we get in return are baggy eyes and a tablespoon full of caffeine in our systems the next day. Show a brother some love.

Groeten uit Nederland
Oscar