Hornets Obliterate Celtics

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Published: December 28, 2011

Despite Eric Gordon being a late scratch with a bruised knee (nothing serious), the Hornets gave the opening night sell-out crowd just about everything they could ask for. Monty’s squad gave 48 tough minutes and after a brief offensive dry-spell in the beginning, they lead for right around ten points throughout the rest of the game, except in the fourth when the lead stretched to as many as 21. Add in the live music courtesy of Irvin Mayfield and company and the whole night was an incredible success. So glad to be a Hornets fan. Final score was 97-78.

The Hornets played team defense just like Monty expects and rebounded as a cohesive unit as opposed to five individuals. Anyone wearing Creole Blue was locating their man on the defensive boards, and scooping up anything available on the offensive side. The result was more memorable putbacks than I’ve seen since Tyson was in town. The crowd reacted predictably. You know those in attendance are doing their job when the vocal Bee-Zanies are but an afterthought in terms of fan noise. (Don’t take that the wrong way, Zanies. Love you!).

New Orleans successfully dealt with Rondo by throwing a number of different looks at him. Jack, Ariza, Vazquez, and Belinelli saw time covering him.

Pause.

Vazquez is a beast. His excitement is contagious, his passing is better than I ever expected, and his scoring ability is downright above average. He hit some shots that I didn’t think he was capable of dropping coming into today. I’ve been told I’m a bit of a homer, and quick to rush to judgement, but this guy is awesome. He will capable of starting games for someone (hopefully us) within a few years.

Resume.

Chris Kaman is a pleasure to watch. If there’s a more well-rounded player on the Hornets team, I don’t know who it is. Guy can rebound, play defense, hit the jumper, battle down low, and get the fans on their feet. Plus his Chewbacca sound is genius. Wathching him (and the rest of the team) left me with a smile on my face the entire night.

Kaman, Okafor, and Landry combine to make up one of the best front courts in the Western Conference. They’re tough on both ends of the floor, and will give trouble to anyone they face all year long. Perhaps we will call them the big-three. Nobody has taken that, right?

On that note, Kaman finished with 12 points, 9 boards and 3 blocks. Landry had a double-double, finishing with 20 points and 11 boards. Okafor added five blocks that brought at least part of the crowd to their feet, and scored in double digits. He even connected on a jumper. For those scoring at home, that’s two straight games Okafor has made a sweet J. Could be his all time high. I kid! He looked better inside on offense, too, with the exception of his rim-rejection.

Jack met our increased expectations, scoring, distributing, and playing some solid D in his first contest of the season. He finished with 21 points, 9 assists, 4 rebounds, and 2 blocks with only 1 turnover. What was that other guys name that we had? Ru Paul or something? Hard to remember when we have someone like Jack in there running point.

As I predicted, Belinelli was left open from the three point line too often and connected more often than not. He finished with 13 points on 6 shots to go with 6 boards.  If you remember, last year he started out really strong on defense, but finished looking rather shoddy. He was somewhere in between the two today.

Post Game Notes

  • There will be video of the press conference, and some pictures (not from the baseline this time unfortunately) up sometime tonight.
  • Monty’s first post game comment– “I’m glad we won, and the way we played is exciting to me.”
  • I’m actually not going to stick around here longer to do interviews and press conferences. There is sufficient media here, so all I would wind up doing is repeating someone else. Plus my girlfriend got back to Nola today and I haven’t seen her in 10 days. That’s longer than we’ve gone without being together in over a year and a half. Sorry! I’ll do double time next game.
  • One more thing– Starting soon we’re going to take a big step forward in our game-day coverage. You will love it, guaranteed.

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