The Hornets face off against the Suns for the second time this young season. They’re missing Eric Gordon, who has officially been declared out, but they get Jarret Jack this time around. In the 3-on-3 previewing the game we talked about Jack vs Nash at point and whether or not it would be crazy to say that overall the Hornets have the advantage at that position.
With a win, the Hornets would start 3-0 for the second straight year under Monty Williams. If the Hornets can contest the Suns jumpers and threes, they will have the advantage. The three headed monster that is Emeka Landman should more than hold it’s own against the Suns big men at both on the boards and on the scoreboard.
Headline tomorrow reads something like this– Hornets Survive Suns. It won’t be easy, but they will get it done.
Note- This will hopefully be the last game this season that we don’t incorporate a live chat beginning 30 minutes before tip and running until 10-15 minutes after. Apologies. Starting the season at this time of the year is less than ideal, but I’ll take it every day of the week given we could have been looking at no season at all.
34 responses to “Game On: Suns at Hornets”
Mayn. Jack got some moves that we breaking nash’s hip
I used to be a Jack hater, but damn… he’s about to win me over if he keeps playing like this! Sweet rebound by Smith too.
*be
Am I reading the boxscore right? Marco Belinelli has 7 rebounds with 5 minutes to go in the second quarter?
We are having a hard time generation offense without Gordon. Our shooting percentage from the field is poor, currently in the 20s for 2 and 3 point shooting.
Our defense, and offensive rebounding, have helped make up for some of our shooting woes, but not all.
We played zone defense for a while in the first quarter. Okafor was in the middle, Belli was on the left, Ariza was on the right of the frontcourt. Bellinelli got most of his rebounds during that time.
….whew….we really need some offense
where is our offense?
this is embrassing.
Maybe it’s just me, but I see a definite energy surge as soon as Vasquez checks in on the court… More movement… And they look better on D…
Not a knock on Jack, just an observation…
And in all fairness, Vasquez could do better with decision making… But that will come with time and experience… Still young
If you want to look at the reason the team lost tonight, not a single Hornets player shot 50% or above from the field, the closest was Smith who shot 4 of 9. I’m going to say this doesn’t happen again this season. There is some positives to take out of the game despite the loss, such as what seems to be a greater determination to hit the boards by Belinelli so far to start the season. Also, at least WIPTT pulled out the win.
We saw the Jarret Jack Hornets tonight.
We saw the Marco Hornets too.
Oh, Jason, I do get under your skin, don’t I? You know full well that Jarret Jack ran the show and it was a me-first Dud. Marco was forced into two last second heaves, including one from the back court (he’s the one guy on the team that will take them, Jack will NOT), and had a couple roll off the rim inside. You may not have noticed Marco’s 11 boards, or the fact that he’s been rebounding superbly through the first three games. And his defense is always good.
Meanwhile Jack keeps throwing up bricks and steadfastly refusing to find Marco for open looks. Hornets’ TV guys couldn’t believe he wouldn’t try to find Marco during that stretch halfway through the fourth where the Bees only chance at getting back in the game was firing away from distance. The ONLY shooter on this team with reliable range is Marco.
Without a true point guard, shots from outside by anyone are going to be more contested this year, leading to a lower percentage.
Bad analysis gets under my skin, as it should any rational being. People don’t, so don’t get excited. You, however, should know better. No need to be inflammatory or use this forum to further any agenda.
I noticed 11 boards, 7 in the first. Many of his were nice defensive rebounds, to boot, not just him cleaning up bad shots tied to our low shooting percentage.
It’s a team game. Focusing on Jack, Marco, or anyone else, while forgetting the others and the team play is just a poor analysis. Sometimes an individual’s actions can certainly cause be a big factor in a loss, but this game was lost due to decent shots just not going in, and that’s about it. The team defense could have been better after the frustrations started to run high. The guy were down 9 with 4 minutes left, which is a hard to close, but closeable, gap. That makes me happy.
Besides, I don’t think any of the above is really what upsets you or not.
Jason ur wierd bro
Picked up on that?
My mom uses the word “special” though.
Good one..
Very bad shooting night! Ariza-Jack-Belinelli 25% with 11/44 combined. How can you win if you shoot like that. It seemed like we were gaining momentum in the middle of the 4th but the refs killed that momentum with back-to-back calls against us. So, all of a sudden we could make it a 5 point game and who know what would happen. But, there is no reason to blame it on the refs, we simply could not execute on offense while giving them multiple easy baskets under the rim and multiple open looks behind the arc. Once we started defending better it was too late to get back into the game with that poor shooting.
We are 2-1 at the end of game 3. We could not see our ideal starting five on playing together yet. Jack missed the 1st game, Gordon missed the other two. We will be much better offensively with Gordon and I bet Belinelli will be a better contributor off the bench.
Geaux Hornets!
Worst shooting percentage ever for a Hornets squad. Downright awful.
I really liked the Kaman/Okafor lineup the other night, but it didn’t happen tonight. Not sure what that’s about.
On the bright side, I thought the crowd was better tonight.
Agreed. Much more normal crowd tonight.
Crowd was better, but I was surprised it wasn’t a sellout. I thought for sure that a holiday weekend game would have sold out.
This game tells me that the hornets can win some games without Gordon but the team will ultimately be better if he consistently plays. He is the player the team is going to look to for instant offense. There is no need to panic now because Eric is a gifted player who will do good things for this team and Marco is historically better off the bench so this loss is not a killer for the hornets at all. It hurts but they will rebound as they should.
Marco is “historically better off the bench?” Can you support that claim with evidence? Uh, no. He was a starter most the year last year, his best year in the league.
When he came off the bench last year he Scored in double figured the games he came off the bench and skill better for coming off the bench but if u want to take this comment personally that’s ur problem dude.
I think the problem was that no one really wanted to shoot, I saw a couple of people pass up open shots cause they drove or passed the ball away, I think once Gordon gets back into the line up we definitely won’t see as many nights as this.
But when nights like this come, when seriously nothing was falling there is really nothing you can do. I mean I was at a Hornets game back in the day when Paul went like 0-15. These kinds of nights happen. So we move on and start focusing on the next game.
Agreed. If we would have shot even halfway decent, we would have had a shot at winning that game. I walked out of that game still feeling okay about what I saw. The rebounding was good, and the defense wasn’t bad, either. The Suns hit a lot of tough, contested shots, and our inability to score kept us from getting back into our set defensive schemes. I think we’re still looking good at this stage, all things considered.
Yeah, the hustle stats were pretty much even. The shooting percentage is what killed us. My main concern going forward is our consistent lack of three point shooting. Suns were packing the lane after–appropriately–abandoning the perimeter.
I agree, we had a lot of positive things.(I.e. rebounding,defense,and hustling) but it was just an OFF night of shooting as a TEAM.
Hopefully we don’t have to many more OFF shooting nights but I think the team is missing a 2nd scoring option. Gordon is a good scorer and we can score well as a team but I think we are lacking a second scoring option. I look at Landry and Kaman as maybe our 2nd best scorers right now but I think we need another offensive scorer who can create there own shot.I like Marco Belinlli but he is inconsistent.
I think we need to add a three point scorer because our best outside shooter looks like Belinlli and Gordon. If we add one more scorer who can create there own shot and hit 3s consistently we will be a good team.
Overall I’m still happy because we have a team who plays hard and doesn’t quit. But fact is they will be nights where the whole team is off but it will be ok long as they keep playing as a team.
“I’m IN” Geaux Hornets!!!
The Hornets played like a Jr high team last night it was horriable to watch so i watch the rest of Mad Max on the DVR.
Turns out that Eric Gordon’s knee problems preceeded the season opener and the swelling occurs as a result of routine play, but was exacerbated by the knee knock with Grant Hill. This, unfortunately, is likely to dog him/us for a while.
Too many comments for print, I just decided to do a podcast:
If that embed code doesn’t work, try http://youtu.be/_DoukYMuM5I
That might be the ugliest game of Hornet’s basketball I have ever watched. Look at these stats: Kaman, 1-5 3 turnovers, Ariza 2-11 1 turnover, Jack 6-20 2 turnovers, 28.9% FG overall. I will say, the hustle was there, no doubt we worked hard. But you need Gordon to give you some offensive spark and easy layups from drives when things aren’t going in like tonight. We need him back. Other than that, the only bright side (Besides the hustle) is the T-Wolves lost. Oh, and speaking of Minnesota, I find myself having a hard time of rooting against Kevin Love and Ricky Rubio. They’re an exciting team.
Monty made the grievous error of subbing out Greivis in the 4Q, when he should have taken out Trevor instead. Just like last season, it looks like Monty is still thinking in terms of defense when he ought to be thinking about offense to win or tie the game. I really think Jarrett was better off staying at the 2 than moving back to the 1 at that point. While Jarrett is overall the better player, Greivis is the better ball distributor on this squad, if only a bit inexperienced.