New Orleans Hornets

By David Friedman(noreply@blogger.com) I don't expect that people who are making good money peddling their formulas and evaluations will stop doing so just because I have pointed out the flaws in their methodologies but it would be nice if someone who has the resources to do so would at least look into the way that certain statistics are kept, most notably assists. Wouldn't you like to know how many of Chris Paul's league-leading 925 assists last season were really assists under rule book definitions? I don't mean to single out Paul but as regular visitors to this site already know, during last year's playoffs when I was writing a recap for the Hornets' 101-82 game one victory over the Spurs I noticed some irregularities between the official play by play data regarding Paul's ass...   [read the full post]

By noreply@blogger.com (David Friedman) The Hornets played much better defense in the second quarter and cut the lead to 58-51 by halftime. A lot of attention is rightfully paid to the offensive skills of Paul and West but New Orleans is an excellent defensive team (the first quarter of this game notwithstanding). ESPN's Jeff Van Gundy said that New Orleans' defense starts with Paul and center Tyson Chandler, noting that "Paul has got great lateral quickness and great instincts," while Chandler is a very good post defender, "the one guy who gave Yao Ming trouble one on one"--and Van Gundy should know, since he coached Houston last year. I've seen some nonsense statistics recently that purportedly show that Paul is not a good defensive player but the problem with these numbers is t...   [read the full post]

By David Friedman Don't interpret this post to be some kind of eulogy for the Spurs. This is not the time for that--yet. Although history shows that teams that win the first two games of a playoff series at home virtually always win the series, the veteran-laden defending champions should not be counted out. The Spurs have led at halftime in both games only to get blitzed in the third quarter on each occasion. They must find a way to avoid the offensive dry spells that have plagued them right after halftime and they must tinker a bit with their defensive game plan: Paul is a pass-first player, so I think that the Spurs should stay at home on guys like Stojakovic and Peterson and force Paul to shoot more often; of course, that plan won't work if Paul gets into the paint an...   [read the full post]

By David Friedman West scored 11 points in the third quarter as the Hornets took a 74-66 lead. Michael Finley opened the fourth quarter with a three pointer to make the score 74-69 but New Orleans steadily pulled away after that. The Spurs' quarter by quarter scoring went 27-22-17-16 while the Hornets scored at least 22 in each quarter. Less than two minutes later, Paul passed to West on the right wing. West faked a jumper, took two dribbles into the lane and made a tough runner. Shockingly, the friendly New Orleans scorekeeper did not give Paul an assist on this play. Paul is a very good point guard and he hardly needs to have anybody padding his statistics. What's more, this is not fair to West--who is generating a lot of his offense on his own--nor is it fair to the play...   [read the full post]

By David Friedman The Hornets are considered one of the most surprising teams of this season but maybe we should not be quite so surprised; last season, Chris Paul missed 18 games and David West missed 30 games. West's extended absence proved to be particularly damaging; the Hornets were 28-24 when he played (.538) and 11-19 (.367) when he did not play. Also, Peja Stojakovic played just 13 games for the Hornets in 2006-07 but this season he is healthy again and he has reemerged as one of the league's best three point shooters. Paul and West each earned their first All-Star selections this season and it is only natural that more on court time together has translated into improved play not only from an individual standpoint but also in terms of the team's overall per...   [read the full post]