New Orleans Hornets Week 2 Review

It's been a tale of two weeks so far in the young season for the New Orleans Hornets. After a surprising start with victories over the Suns, Warriors and Cavaliers last week, the Hornets opened up this week with a surprising loss to an equally surprising Atlanta Hawks team, and then an extremely dissapointing loss at their old stomping grounds in Charlotte. Losing to the Bobcats is inexcusable but the loss was eased by a game the very next night, a home victory over the Miami Heat.

After the initial high of the season wore off, the Hornets fell back down to earth on Wednesday night when an Atlanta Hawks team walked into New Orleans and beat the Hornets down. The Hawks were more physical, hungrier and more determined than the Hornets on that night, even with the returns of Tyson Chandler and Peja Stojakovic to the lineup. The best part out of the game was the said returns of the two injured starters.

The main negative of this week is not the two losses, but how the Hornets lost those games. Chris Paul has been absolutely amazing this season, picking up exactly where he left off last year and has put up 20 points and 10 assists in all six games this season. His contributions and performance just cannot be categorized into words and I believe there's not a player in the NBA playing at his current level. But the problem with the Hornets is, they've looked soft through six games. They've become a jump shooting team and were able to get out muscled by teams without big strong presences in Charlotte and Atlanta (and no offense to Emeka Okafor and Al Horford, they're good players just not strong inside presences). Byron Scott has a lot to address in the physicality of this team. The Hornets don't want to fall back into finesse mode where all you have to do is bump them around and take them out of their games, and David West will shoot jumper after jumper with Peja Stojakovic firing up three point bricks. The Hornets need to address a lack of frontcourt scoring and that includes utilizing David West's frame more down in the low block and continuing to feed Tyson Chandler and Hilton Armstrong shot after shot.

The Hornets have no injuries to report this week minus the dental work of Melvin Ely that kept him from the games against the Bobcats and Heat and the bench continues to be servicable this season with surprising contributions from Mike James and Hilton Armstrong this week. Mike James has fought off Devin Brown from taking his point guard spot six games into the season and the Hornets look comfortable with Mike James being this year's lesser version of Jannero Pargo.

Rasual Butler Watch: Rasual Butler continues to be a contributing member of the Hornets bench. He's used Julian Wright's early ankle injury to his advantage and has shot 47 percent from the three point line through the first six games. In the Saturday night victory against the Heat, though, Julian Wright logged 10 minutes and Butler has to feel the pressure to continue to perform at a servicable level. All it takes is a stretch of cold games for Butler to lose his job to Wright. I hope he continues to surprise me.

The Hornets will take the next few days off before Wednesday's huge game against the Lakers. They then finish the week Friday against the Trail Blazers at home before playing their only road game next week a few hours away Saturday night in Houston against the Rockets. The Hornets have a strenuous week ahead and their toughness has to be adressed. All things considered, though, it's still been a solid start for the Big Easy Bugs.


Top Ten Teams Through November 9th, 2008
1. Los Angeles Lakers
2. Utah Jazz
3. Boston Celtics
4. Atlanta Hawks
5. Phoenix Suns
6. Houston Rockets
7. Detroit Pistons
8. New Orleans Hornets
9. Cleveland Cavaliers
10. Orlando Magic

Written By GoHornets21
CBS Spoortsline community member