About

Bourbon Street Shots

The aim of Bourbon Street Shots is to help all New Orleans Pelicans fans, no matter where they may live, to get the best New Orleans Pelicans information available as soon as possible. If someone has a question about the team, we want the correct answer available to them here. If the information exists elsewhere online, we don’t hesitate to point our visitors in that direction. We also obsessively follow every move the team makes and share our thoughts frequently on the site, aiming to deliver fresh and thought-provoking content. Having evolved from Hornets247, Bourbon Street Shots brings deep knowledge on all aspects of this franchise including, financial, economic, and marketing, and an understanding of the growing cultural importance of the team learned from the New Orleans Hornets ownership saga (and more). We have very high standards for the site, and as such our writers must consistently prove themselves to be educated, responsible, and passionate about the subject, the team, and the city.

Mission

To provide the best analysis of all facets of the New Orleans Pelicans. To be a meaningful and significant part of the culture of the New Orleans Pelicans. To interact with the New Orleans Pelicans, their fans, and their media in a consistent and mutually beneficial manner.

  • Analysis and Reporting: While the major media outlets provide excellent coverage of the New Orleans Pelicans, certain segments of the market are under-served by mass media. We resolve to fill in those gaps with the best analysis possible. We resolve to be correct, clear, consistent, and comprehensive.
  • Readers and Fans: As we are fans and readers ourselves, we resolve to treat fans and readers the way at least as good as we want to be treated. This includes encouraging fandom, educating fans, promoting good interactions with fans and discouraging interactions that negatively affect the culture surrounding the team or our operations.
  • Media: Though not full-time or paid members of the media, we resolve to hold ourselves at least to the standards paid and full-time media media members are held. This includes going out of our way to compliment and promote good work by media members, be an available resource to media members, and engage in criticism of opinion or analysis in open, accepted, and respectful ways.

The “In the NO” Podcast

In the NO, the Bourbon Street Shots podcast has run for three years. Hosted by Shamit Dua and Mason Ginsberg, it delivers game by game analyses, previews upcoming contests, and covers everything that happens with the team in detail. Frequent guests from ESPN like David Thorpe, Larry Coon, and Henry Abbott stop in, while guests from other ESPN Truehoop Basketball Blogs come on to help keep our listeners in the loop on other teams.

Cast and Crew

Ryan Schwan

Ryan Schwan started blogging in September of 2007, and a couple months later decided to scrap his blog and join forces with founder Niall Doherty at Hornets247. Ryan is a father of three living in Richmond, VA. He has a shirt given to him by his kids that reads “World’s Best Dad”, and is therefore a better Dad than you, unless you are from another planet. Other than being the World’s Best Dad, he aspires to be a fantasy writer and works as an analyst, turning business requirements into design documents. Exciting stuff. He’s been a Hornets fan since 2001 and Pelicans fan since 2013. He has seen almost every minute of Hornet’s basketball since then and is looking forward to the first minute of Pelicans ball.

Ryan can be reached at ryan @ the URL of this site.

Joe Gerrity

Joe started blogging in 2007, and moved onto sports in 2009. He briefly wrote for a few other websites, but quickly abandoned ship when Hornets247 came knocking. Previously a gold medalist in the Special Olympics (true story), Joe spends most of his days flipping houses, listening to funky tunes, and enjoying a relatively slow paced life in the Big Easy. Do you know what it means to love New Orleans?

Joe can be reached at joe @ the URL of this site or at @GerrityJoe.

Dr. Jason Calmes

Jason is the Producer at Bourbon Street Shots, taking care of things behind the scenes to make the site run smoothly and efficiently. A mathematician by training, trade, and temperament, these Bourbon Street Shots duties provide a great deal of excitement. Jason will occasionally spice things up with a post about recent news, finances, laws, economics, or the salary cap and has been known to sneak in snarky commentary and editorials, all related to the New Orleans Pelicans, of course. Jason’s academic areas of research include phylogenetics, materials sciences, and topology, while his day job consists of teaching the mathless and sending the earthbound into space with a subsequent safe trip back home. His other loves include sarcasm, puns, his dogs, the Saints, New Orleans, and his poor, poor wife.

Jason can be reached at 42 @ the URL of this site.

Mason Ginsberg

Mason began sports writing towards the end of 2010 over on HoopDat.org, eventually moving to SBNation’s At The Hive in March of 2011 before finally settling in with Hornets247 at the start of the 2011-12 NBA season. As for “real world” credentials, he graduated from Tulane University in 2010 and subsequently worked as a financial analyst in the New Orleans area. In July 0f 2013, Mason moved to Austin to pursue his MBA at the McCombs School of Business at the  University of Texas. In addition to the Pelicans, Mason is more than happy to argue about (err, politely discuss) baseball or football with anyone, preferably over his usual meal of steak, waffles, french fries and of course, scotch.

Mason can be reached at mason @ the URL of this site or at @MasonGinsberg.

Andrew Smith

The Bourbon Street Shots master of audio and video, you can subscribe to his interviews and video over on YouTube or at the site’s YouTube channel.

Andrew can be reached at andrew @ the URL of this site or at @DruProductions.

Michael Pellissier

Michael Pellissier is a MBA graduate of Millsaps College, in Jackson, Mississippi. He is studying to be an actuary, has passed his first actuarial exam, and is preparing for his second. He was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, but was forced to move to the quiet town of Mandeville as a 4 year old because his celebrity following in New Orleans became too much for his family to handle. He spent his high school days at St. Paul’s School and played in the soccer state finals his junior year and the semi-finals in his senior year. He was unable to capture that elusive title, and after Skip Bayless said he didn’t have the “clutch gene,” Michael decided to hang up his cleats and go to LSU. After 2 years, Michael decided to play soccer again, and, ignoring lucrative offers from Chelsea and Manchester United, he decided to transfer to Millsaps College, where he scored in his debut. The announcer mispronounced his name after the goal, so he decided goals were overrated, and he devoted the rest of his career to becoming an out of shape midfielder. He has been a diehard New Orleans basketball fan since 2008, co-founded Big Easy Sports Talk in 2012, and started writing for Bourbon Street Shots in February of 2013.

Michael can be reached at pell @ the URL of this site or at @MikePellissier.

Nick Lewellen

Nick Lewellen is a recent college graduate and graduate school hopeful. He began writing on all things related to sports for his college newspaper but was asked to relinquish his duties over an argument with an editor about the phrase, “He is a real turd in a punch bowl.” Shortly losing that argument, he started writing for Bourbon Street Shots, where the toilet humor standards are understandably more relaxed. A New Orleans sports fan his entire life, Nick started following the Pelicans back when the Hornets first moved to New Orleans. Before that he was a huge Dirk Nowitzki fan, which really helped get conversations going when he spent a year living in Germany and Austria.

Nick can be reached at nick @ the URL of this site or at @nicklewellen.

Recognition for Hornets247 / Bourbon Street Shots

Henry Abbott, ESPN’s TrueHoop:

You should really be reading Hornets247 every day. They are killing it over there.

Kelly Dwyer, Yahoo! Sports:

[Niall Doherty] and Ryan Schwan are so good at what they do, that most of the time I end up clicking away from their blog following reading a post telling myself that, geez, I get paid for this, and that I need to get my stuff together. Because these guys get it, and most of the time they “get it” far better than most of us paid mugs.

David Gladow, NOLA.com:

I’ve been remiss in not mentioning Hornets247.com to date. I think it’s a pretty great fan site, written from a statistical perspective, and more often than not, you’re going to find very knowledgeable basketball discussion there. The guys over there debunk all sorts of nonsense… and they just do a solid job in general.

Acknowledgments

Niall Doherty is a wandering Irishman who moved to the US to cover Hornets basketball. Really. He was here from the beginning, and now he’s everywhere. Don’t believe me? See for yourself.

Dariusz Ejkiewicz is the fantastic graphic designer that bring all the wonderful banners and the like to the site. He’s one of the biggest Pelicans fans in the Vistula River Basin and can be hired and admired here.

WordPress makes this way easier, too.