The Links, vol. 1

To our beloved readers,

We at Hometown Hornets sincerely apologize for not providing coverage of the first two playoff games in what is turning out to be an extremely fun series against Dallas. We realize that by adding another writer to the staff (of one) it should hypothetically be easier to churn out fascinating posts covering games, off the court activities, and whatever other crazy stuff we find. This is apparently not true, as the Hornets' recent successes has prompted us to more often be twelve sheets to the wind instead of waxing philosophic on the mental toughness and brilliant performances of CP3 in his NBA playoff debut.

As rabid fans of basketball, we understand your insatiable need for copious amounts of unnecessary, biased, and ego-centric writing. Since we have failed you in providing this service as of late, we offer you these here links and the possibly flimsy promise of doing better in the coming weeks.

Take these and love us again:

1. Hollinger has done an excellent job as the ESPN writer assigned to our series. His coverage of Game 1 and Game 2 of the Dallas series has been phenomenal, especially since it strokes every Hornets fan's ego six ways from Sunday.

2. Scoop Jackson has started drinking the Cresent City koolaid as well. His recent article is somewhat heavy-handed in its conceit, but how can I say no to something so beautiful. Scoop uses a great quote by Mark Jones concerning CP:

Don't be fooled by the angelic face; there's a killer inside.

3. Great article by Ian O'Connor of MSNBC commenting on the irony of Byron Scott effectively "bum rushing" Jason Kidd out of the playoffs four years after their famous run-in. The last paragraph floored me:

He [Byron]has the Hornets playing defense and making life miserable for one of the great playmakers of all time. If Kidd offers to shake his hand at the close of this series, Byron Scott should do what Kidd used to do best: Pass.

4. ESPN the Mag published the results of some of their recent research and compiled a pretty cool Franchise Rankings for all of professional sports. Hornets koolaid anyone?

5. And finally, if you happen to be focused enough to see beyond the playoffs (or perhaps your team isn't participating in such events) and you're looking forward to May 20 and June 26, here's a Mock Draft Listing. Again, this kind of prediction and analysis is about as reliable as my insights on curling, but it's still fun to yell at your computer screen when various writers make dumb (albeit fake) picks.

XOXOXO,
HLD & CWS