[外電] Hornets were set for difficult tran …
原文出自nola.com
http://www.nola.com/hornets/t-p/index.ssf?/base/sports-1/110162534257540.xml
Hornets were set for difficult transition to the Western
Conference, but the struggles have been more than expected
Sunday, November 28, 2004
By John Reid
Staff writer
LOS ANGELES -- Coach Byron Scott received hugs from his
players and was handed the game ball by guard Darrell
Armstrong after the Hornets defeated the Utah Jazz on
Monday.
It's the only time this season Scott has been able to
celebrate. The Hornets started the season with a
franchise-record eight consecutive losses before
winning a game.
On the next night the Hornets returned to their bad habits
-- giving up open shots and sputtering in the closing
minutes -- as they lost 115-109 in triple overtime to the
lowly Golden State Warriors.
The Hornets, shifted to the Western Conference this season,
were expecting to have a more difficult time. But they didn't
expect to struggle this badly.
Here are 10 reasons why the Hornets are 1-10 after Friday's
road loss to the Phoenix Suns.
1. SCOTT'S NEW SYSTEM: Scott likes an up-tempo offense with
constant movement. But his players, particularly the
starters, may be too old to perfect that style. Starting
forward P.J. Brown is 35, and point guard Darrell Armstrong
(filling in for injured Baron Davis) is 36. Forward George
Lynch, who started the first eight games, is 34. It has been
a struggle to run constantly and get back in transition to
stop younger and more athletic teams.
Another problem is that several players still didn't know
all their responsibilities in the Princeton offense
entering the sixth game. At Milwaukee on Nov. 13, Scott
could be heard yelling from the bench to alert guard Alex
Garcia and forward David West where they should be on a
particular play. The offense doesn't appear complicated,
but the players must know the responsibilities of all
five positions. On some plays, the shooting guard will
handle the point guard duties, and vice versa. It appears
they are still adjusting to all those responsibilities.
2. BARON DAVIS' LATEST INJURY: In his first 3-1/2 seasons
with the Hornets, Davis played in 262 consecutive games.
But the streak ended during the 2002-03 season when Davis
missed 32 games because of back and knee problems. Last
season he missed 15 games because of a sprained left ankle.
The trend is continuing this season. Davis is on the
injured list with a inflamed disc in his lower back, which
has forced him to miss the past five games . Davis is no
longer the durable young star who can average 35 to 45
minutes a game.
He has a back condition that he may have to play through
for the rest of his career, and that means it's time to
look at seriously curtailing his playing time. When Davis
is unavailable to play, teams don't have to worry about
using double-teams in the backcourt.They can surround the
middle and disrupt center Jamaal Magloire. So far the
Hornets have struggled to get enough points from other
players to make up for Davis' 24.6-per-game scoring average.
3. JAMAL MASHBURN'S CONTRACT: It's puzzling why the Hornets
haven't reached a settlement to buy out the remainder of
Mashburn's contract, so both sides can move on. The New
York Knicks did that this season with Shandon Anderson,
and the Chicago Bulls did it with Eddie Robinson.
It's obvious that Mashburn no longer fits. The Hornets are
up-tempo, and Mashburn is a half-court player better suited
for the Eastern Conference. Keeping him on the injured list
has limited the team's flexibility to shift players on and
off the roster. His $9.3 million salary also counts against
the salary cap, and it hampered Bristow from signing a high
-profile free agent.
For all practical purposes, Mashburn's career is finished.
As he said before this season, there is no surgical procedure,
no magic pill that is going to cure him from having bone
rubbing against bone in his right knee.
4. FREE-AGENCY FIASCO: General manager Allan Bristow made a
mistake this summer by offering Raptors free-agent guard
Morris Peterson a three-year, $15 million deal that Toronto
easily matched. After Stephen Jackson turned down the Hornets'
full mid-level exception of six years for $36 million, Bristow
should have turned up the heat and offered the same deal to
Peterson. Once the Raptors matched Peterson's deal, Bristow
was left with signing free agent Rodney Rogers.
So far, Rogers has been a bust. Despite knowing how rigorous
Scott runs his training camps, Rogers reported out of shape
and remains on the injured list with a sprained left knee.
Rogers played in four games and has averaged 4.8 points. The
Hornets also signed forward/center Chris Andersen this summer.
He's shown that he can rebound and block shots, but he has to
make more shots in the post.
Davis was right when he complained through his agent this
summer that the team didn't do enough to improve the roster.
5. BAD DRAFTS: Former Hornets front office executive Bob Bass
is doing a lot of fishing and relaxing after retiring this past
summer, but he has to be blamed for several bad drafts since
2001 that have severely limited the talent level. After hitting
home runs in the 1999 and 200 drafts (Davis and Magloire), the
Hornets had the 16th pick in the 2001 draft and forward Zach
Randolph, guards Jamaal Tinsley and Tony Parker, center Samuel
Dalembert and forward Gerald Wallace were all available. Bass
selected forward Kirk Haston. He was waived last season by the
Hornets after three unproductive seasons.
In 2002, Bass made another blunder, trading the team's first
-round draft pick (17th overall) to the Washington Wizards
for veteran shooting guard Courtney Alexander, who missed all
of last season with the Hornets with a ruptured Achilles' tendon.
Besides his injuries, Alexander didn't perform to his potential
in Washington or in New Orleans. If the Hornets had not traded
for Alexander, they could have drafted forward Tayshaun Prince,
who helped the Detroit Pistons win last season's NBA championship.
Prince was the 23rd pick in the 2002 draft.
The jury is still out on West, the team's 2003 first-rounder,
but so far he looks lost in Scott's system.
6. DEFENSIVE PROBLEMS: Guard David Wesley is one of the team's
hardest workers but he has struggled as a defender against bigger
guards such as the Lakers' Kobe Bryant, the Bucks' Michael Redd
and the Dallas Mavericks' Michael Finley.
Bryant scored 31, and Redd was able to recover from a disastrous
0-for-8 start to score a game-high 30 points, which included
6-of-8 on 3-point attempts. But Wesley isn't the only defender
having a difficult time. When Phoenix Suns center Amare Stoudemire
scored a career-high 38 points in the Suns' Nov. 17 victory at
New Orleans Arena, he was able to get around Magloire several
times. No Hornets came over in time to contest his shots. It
remains puzzling to Scott that his players can communicate and
aggressively challenge shots in practice, but don't in games.
Without that kind of effort, they are yielding the third-highest
field-goal percentage by opponents in the league at 46.5. In
five of their losses, they allowed opponents to shoot 50 percent
or better.
7. UNSETTLED ROTATION: Scott is still searching for an effective
combination off the bench. The backups enter the game in the
second quarter, and opponents extend their lead. West has had
a few good games, but for the most part he is still playing like
he's worried about making mistakes. Recent pickup Matt Freije is
a good outside shooter, but he hasn't shown it. He combined to
go 0-for-11 against Utah and Golden State.
Point guard Junior Harrington may need to play more, especially
with Armstrong struggling to make 3-pointers. It may not have
been a wise decision to put Harrington on the injured list for
the first five games, because so far he's played more consistent
than the rest of the backups. And it looks like forward Lee Nailon
should have gotten more playing time in the first two weeks of
the season.
8. GROWING PAINS: Rookie J.R. Smith is going to be a star,
but right now he's a rookie that every veteran shooting guard
in the Western Conference is picking on. It's going to be up
to Smith to spend the extra time needed to prepare better
against veteran stars such as Bryant, Finley and Latrell
Sprewell. Sometimes Smith looks overwhelmed, and his confidence
appears to have wavered since a productive training camp. But
the only way he is going to learn is by playing. He needs to
be in the game longer than the six minutes he played in last
Tuesday's triple overtime loss.
9. FALLOUT FROM TRAINERGATE: Davis and Magloire were both
unhappy with the team's decision to ban personal trainers
from the team's practice facility. The issue subsided after
the first couple of days of training camp, yet Magloire still
doesn't look happy and his production was down until the team
went on its West Coast trip.
10. THE WESTERN CONFERENCE: P.J. Brown is going through the
biggest change with the switch in conferences. Just about
every game he draws a difficult matchup. When the Hornets
played in the East, Brown could bang inside, look to rebound
and didn't have to worry about having to defend someone
taking shots 17 to 20 feet from the basket. In the West,
that's a normal shot for Minnesota's Kevin Garnett, Dallas'
Dirk Nowitzki and Phoenix's Shawn Marion.
Brown has had to defend so far away from the basket that he's
not rebounding as effectively as in the past. Lynch, who lost
his starting job to Nailon, also has struggled to defend
quicker small forwards.
. . . . . . .
John Reid can be reached at jreid@timespicayune.com
or at (504) 826-3405.
很長的一篇文章，不過算是很完整的分析，推薦大家看完
除了有關Draft那段有些事後諸葛以外其他都滿有道理的，怪獸那一段
很感傷Q____Q
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