The Hive Five: Game Thirty-One

Well, I must admit, that wasn’t among the greatest of ways to end 2007. I wonder how the Hornets’ players felt last midnight. “Yayyy its 2008!!! Woo!! Wee!! Actually never mind… we just lost to Toronto.” This is why the NBA shouldn’t schedule New Year’s Eve games. The following picture symbolizes the tremendous evil the National Basketball Association has come to stand for:

 

Chris Paul gets blocked back into 2007.

Ah, isn’t it awesome losing games you should’ve won. Dropping a 10 point lead to Toronto in the fourth? Only the Hornets of last year could have done that. Good thing we’re now in 2008. New Year’s Resolution: Never Lose Again.

 

	Pace	Eff	eFG	FT/FG	OREB%	TOr
TOR	89.0	109.0	53.5%	27.8	8.8	12.4
NOR		103.4	46.4%	18.1	27.9	13.5

1. Shooting (X) Yuck. Toronto completely shot the lights out in this one, and the Hornets completely didn’t.

2. Turnovers (√) I got tired reading about how Jose Calderon leads the league in assist to turnover ratio. Turns out, the guy’s actually very good; he finished with 12 assists to go with 3 turns. CP3? Oh, just a measly 16 assists with ONE turnover. Eat it, Jose.

3. Offensive Rebounding (√) Andrea Bargnani? Yeah, that’s what I thought. David West ate him alive, finishing with 33 and 11. In fact, Toronto was so bad at rebounding, even Peja picked up 10 rebounds. Bargnani finished with 2 rebounds from the Power Forward position.

4. Free Throws (X) Seeing CP miss those two free throws at the end was just awful. Rasual Butler, Tyson Chandler, and especially Bobby Jackson thought so too.

 

5. Pace (89) Great pace set by the Hornets, but they just couldn’t make their shots (or their free throws). A disappointing end to 2007, to be sure, but an extremely encouraging December with wins over Dallas, Phoenix and Cleveland. Here’s to an awesome 2008.

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