Surprised by the Hornets

J.A. Adande correctly notes that "Coach of the Year often is a way to cover up bad predictions" and this will likely redound to the benefit of New Orleans coach Byron Scott since the team is doing better than expected. It's worth asking, though, if anything especially surprising happened. When you get right down to it -- not really. They didn't make any offseason moves that turned out much better than expected, they haven't seen a rookie turn out to be a great contributor, and they haven't seen an unheralded guy emerge into greatness.

Chris Paul was a great player last season and he's even better this season, but that's really what you expect from a young player. The main difference, it seems to me, is this -- thus far Paul has missed two games over the course of the season, whereas last year he missed 18. David West has missed six games this season, whereas last season he missed 30. Tyson Chandler has missed three games, but last season he missed nine. It's hard to win the games when your best players don't play, especially when you're a team with a bad bench. Have those players available more, and the team does better. New Orleans' success wasn't widely predicted (though there were exceptions) since they didn't do so well last year, don't have a distinguished pedigree, and didn't do anything interesting in the off-season. But their success has mostly amounted to everyone doing what they did last year but being injured less.

Comments

http://matthewyglesias.theatlantic.com/archives/2007/10/nba_predictions_1.php#comments

Posted by blah | April 4, 2008 7:13 PM

That's not fair, blah, going back to actual predictions.

In any case, it is amazing how much people underrate Byron Scott. He is genuinely a very good coach. Everyone is talking about how great the West is this year and NO is going to come in first, ahead of Phil Jackson and Popovich. It is not a matter of the players just being healthy. There are plenty of teams with health and talent that don't get the job done.

Posted by Al | April 4, 2008 7:35 PM

Wow. Can I pretend that my list of teams predicted to be in the Western playoffs is ordered from last to first, rather than the reverse?

Posted by SomeCallMeTim | April 4, 2008 7:47 PM

Some deal with the Canadiens this year, unusually healthy. But you knew that.

Posted by Delicious Pundit | April 4, 2008 7:47 PM

Paul and West improved from very good to all star. Chandler improved from getting better to very good. Stojakovich recaptured his shooting magic. Pargo and rookie Wright have contributed. The Wells trade paid off. Their defense has improved to top 5. None of those things in themselves are surprising but what are the chances of them all happening at once. Any team can say "if a through g happen, we'll win the conference" but how often do a through g all happen?

Posted by Steven | April 4, 2008 7:55 PM

Paul and West improved from very good to all star. Chandler improved from getting better to very good. Stojakovich recaptured his shooting magic. Pargo and rookie Wright have contributed. The Wells trade paid off. Their defense has improved to top 5. None of those things in themselves are surprising but what are the chances of them all happening at once. Any team can say "if a through g happen, we'll win the conference" but how often do a through g all happen?

Posted by Steven | April 4, 2008 7:56 PM

If Rajon is better than 'people think', he's All-NBA 3rd team material - Rondo went at least 3 rounds too early in every fantasy draft I did this year, only one of which is dominated by C's fans.

As for predictions, mine mostly align with Petey's, aside from the Knicks. A starting 5 of Marbury, Crawford, Q-Rich, Z-Bo and Fat Eddy is starting 5 of the same guy in different sized bodies, essentially.

Magic win their division. Cavs and Wiz both underperform. Hornets make playoffs, Nuggets and Lakers don't.

If I may say, this doesn't look half bad, aside from the Lakers, though I claim a mulligan on first Bynum, second Kobe stopping being a whiny little bitch for a few months and third them getting Gasol for $.05 on the dollar. No one could have predicted..

Posted by Pooh | April 4, 2008 8:01 PM

It is funny to reread that thread and see how much of it was focused on Kobe and how the Lakers were just going to be bad. One season later, we are talking about the Lakers as a juggernaut for years to come, with several complementary stars and a deep bench.

I also see that my picks were horrible on that thread, as per usual. Except that I said Atlanta would make the playoffs - to which SCMT responded by calling me a drunk. Heeee...

Also, as to the Hornets, it is funny that they are a top defensive team now. Just a cooincidence that as soon as Byron got to Jersey the Nets turned into a top 5 defensive team, and the same now for NO. Yup, just a coincidence.

Posted by Al | April 4, 2008 8:18 PM

Even now, after their regular season performance, how many people here think New Orleans will even reach the Western Conference finals, let alone win the NBA championship?

Posted by mq | April 4, 2008 8:35 PM

Except that I said Atlanta would make the playoffs - to which SCMT responded by calling me a drunk.

Bastard. I was hoping you wouldn't see that.

Posted by SomeCallMeTim | April 4, 2008 8:58 PM

Point taken. I'd bet on the Spurs, Lakers, Jazz, Suns in that order for the WCF. However, among the contending 9 in the WC, Hornets have the best record against them (16-10).

Posted by Steven | April 4, 2008 9:03 PM

So the Wiz and the Bees clinch on the same night and MY says the Bees aren't anything special. The Wiz clinch at 2 games over .500, the Hornets clinch at 31 games over .500. In the West. First.

Stick that in your pipe and smoke it.

Posted by milo | April 4, 2008 11:07 PM

Regarding the Hornets, I think it was Hollinger on ESPN who argued that playoff experience is overrated. In 2005 the Suns made the West finals despite no playoff experience with that unit (well, Marion and Stoudemire and J.Johnson played in the first round with Marbury in '03). J-Kidd took New Jersey to the finals in '02 with rookies in RJ and Collins, plus Kenyon/Keith/Kittles who had never done crap. Also see: Orlando '95.

That said, those are just a couple of anecdotes and I think Hollinger is wrong. Most teams that make the NBA Finals do so after a couple years of knocking on the door. (See: Cleveland '07, Chicago '91, LAL '00, Detroit '88, Detroit '04, Dallas '06, Miami '06, Philly '01, Utah '97 off the top of my head)

I think the Hornets will lose in the first or second round. Probably first.

Posted by nbt | April 4, 2008 11:48 PM

Lakers in 2000 hadn't been knocking on the door a couple of years. In the two prior years, weren't they swept by the Jazz in the first round and I know they were swept by the Spurs in the second round of 1999. In 2000, Shaq got his head out of his ass and Kobe took a monumental leap forward, and the role players were assembled, and they added Phil Jackson, who was a pretty big upgrade from Kurt Rambis.

Ditto with the Cavs last year. They missed the playoffs a bunch of years in a row, then they get whipped in the second round, then they make a run to get whipped in the finals.

As for the playoffs, I am hoping the Nuggets make it in just so that I can pop some popcorn and enjoy watching them quit as soon as it gets tough as they bow out in five games. We used to have a drinking game where we would drink whenever George Karl would blame the refs or throw one of his players under the bus, but we had to quit after too many trips to the hospital.

As for the Hornets, they have had no injuries this year, with a bunch of guys who have battled injuries their whole career. They have no bench to speak of, and any one player going down for a significant period of time would have been crippling. It is rare to be that fortunate. And I think should it come down to a seven game series against Jackson or Popovich, we will be reminded why there are no banners in New Jersey.

Posted by Curtis | April 5, 2008 12:36 AM

Well, I'll stick by the only two predictions I made in that comments thread: the Spurs, if healthy, will win the West, and the Celtics will not win the East.

Posted by Antid Oto | April 5, 2008 1:15 AM

I'd have to say the logical conclusion to this line of thought is to eliminate the coach of the year award. Good or bad, most coaches do the same thing year after year.

There are some decisions that they make in an individual year, but it's not likely that the media could focus on that level of detail when the alternative is just to reward the most surprising success story.

Posted by Christopher Colaninno | April 5, 2008 10:08 AM

"As for the playoffs, I am hoping the Nuggets make it in just so that I can pop some popcorn and enjoy watching them quit as soon as it gets tough as they bow out in five games."

Nene is looking awfully good in limited minutes, Curtis. If he can continue working his way back, I'm hoping the Spurs get the #2 seed so we can face you in the first round.

With a healthy Nene, we can eat your senior citizens for breakfast.

"We used to have a drinking game where we would drink whenever George Karl would blame the refs or throw one of his players under the bus, but we had to quit after too many trips to the hospital."

After Karl's abysmal handling of J.R. Smith last season, my metric for judging his worth as a coach now comes down to the simple question of how much he can get out of J.R.

With teams invariably loading up on Iverson and 'Melo whenever they touch the ball, having J.R. available on the weak side to punish the opposing team's defense for not playing straight up is absolutely imperative. A good coach should understand this.

So far, Karl has been doing his job, as J.R. has been playing very nicely the last two months. If Karl doesn't lose faith in J.R. in the playoffs, he'll be a good coach in my mind.

Posted by Petey | April 5, 2008 12:55 PM

ok, i called boston to the finals because the east is so weak, just not winning against the west, i said betting against the spurs is foolish, which seems to remain true (they haven't exactly collapsed, sitting at 2), and mocked those who thought denver would be great (they're not, are just going to get into the playoffs, admittedly in the strongest conference ever). i'm doing pretty well, aside from saying the nets might be the sleeper bet for the east (i noted detroit could do it, they just lose focus at times).

the only thing no one seems to have foreseen is NO making the serious leap to head of the west, but that doesn't mean much once the playoffs start (no way to predict lakers get gasol). should be interesting.

Posted by dj superflat | April 5, 2008 1:59 PM

haha, go on petey, keep predicting the nuggets to beat the spurs...how long have you been making that particular prediction? at least for 3 years, right?

Posted by jamie | April 5, 2008 4:21 PM

You have to figure the Nuggets at this point are trying to figure out how many games they can win and still miss the play-offs. If they sneak in, they will lose in five games in the first round again. Their best chance at success is to be the best team in NBA history to miss the post-season. And with tonight's performance against the Artest-less and Miller-less Kings, they are poised to make quite a run at it.

There is no team in the top five out West that the Nuggets would beat twice in a best of seven series. I know this is not provable, since they will only get one such shot, and when they fail, it will demonstrate they couldn't against that team only. But if the over/under on Nuggets postseason wins is 1.5 or higher, the under is looking mighty safe yet again.

Posted by Curtis | April 6, 2008 1:16 AM