New Orleans Hornets All-Star point guard Chris Paul(notes) will undergo arthroscopic surgery for a cartilage tear in his left knee on Monday and could miss one to two months, sources close to Paul told Yahoo! Sports on Sunday night.

Paul injured the knee in the final moments of regulation in a loss to the Chicago Bulls on Friday. Paul was injured after he fell into a photographer on the baseline after trying to catch an errant inbounds pass from Hornets forward David West. Paul came up limping after the play, which led to the Bulls tying the game with .2 seconds left.

Paul also told reporters he had initially twisted the same knee in a win over the Golden State Warriors on Wednesday.

Test results revealed a partial tear to Paul’s meniscus. There is still some doubt as to the extent of the injury, one source said, but it is not believed to be season-ending.

Paul is expected to miss the All-Star Game because of the injury. Once the NBA confirms Paul’s unavailability, commissioner David Stern will appoint a replacement to the Western Conference roster. Denver Nuggets point guard Chauncey Billups likely will be among the leading candidates to replace Paul.

The Hornets will lean on rookie point guard Darren Collison during Paul’s absence. Paul also missed eight games earlier this season because of a sprained left ankle.

On the official NBA trade rating scale of 0-10, with 10 being trading Kirk Haston for Lebron James, 0 being trading Lebron James for Kirk Haston, and 5 being trading Kirk Haston for Kirk Haston; I'd give the Hornets get a 6. More after the jump.

Continue reading this post »

Terrible loss. Terrible considering the Warriors only had 7 players, missing their top three at least, and were well out of playoff contention.

- One of the Warriors television network's "Keys to the Game" was to let Chris Paul shoot outside jumpers. Although initially I mocked this idea when CP3 was lighting it up from afar, later in the game one of the commentator's insightful comments fascinated me. Although Chris Paul tied his career high of 43, the rest of the team hardly scored at all (of course, with the exception of David West who had 31). There was a severe lack of supporting cast here (Tyson, Posey), and the I think one of the obvious missing pieces was Mo Pete's shooting. Wait, Mo Pete was at the game? Sitting on the bench? In uniform? Hmmm...

- To be fair, the Ronny Turiaf picture thing thing above isn't entirely accurate. Sure, Devin Brown took a couple of really, really important three pointers when obvious other shooters were open and missed them, but not too much of the blame falls upon him. Most of it falls upon Byron Scott for playing him. Unless Mo Pete is actually injured terribly but for some reason on the bench ready to play, he is the obvious choice over Devin Brown. A lot of Hornets fans agree (going by the game thread's consistent Devin Brown rants) that Devin Brown has no business taking important threes and playing time. We're all still waiting for Byron's rotation to work out well, hopefully the return of Peja fixes some of it.

- Some people might chalk this up as an embarrassing loss for the Hornets, who were fighting for an important win to keep good playoff position whereas the Warriors were looking out for a good draft pick. Add that to what was mentioned earlier, the Warriors only had 7 players, suited an injured player as their 8th man, and were missing their best players: Monta, Biedrins, and Captain Jack (and Magette if you consider him good). But in reality, the young Warriors squad had a lot going for them. Jamal Crawford was ridiculous, hitting, what seemed like, every shot he took. We figured he'd cool down later, but he ended up going hot for the entire game, scoring 39. Then there was Anthony Morrow who hit 5 threes and 24 points, and the other Anthony who had an additional 20. Maybe if we had Tyson we could have stopped them from driving as much to the hoop, but there's no denying that outside shooting they definitely had today.

- Going back to the two All-Stars on the court, DX and CP3 combined for 74 points. Which was 71.8% of the entire team's total. Chris Paul consistently was awesome throughout the game, hitting the mid-range shots, threes (4-9 3PTs), and floaters. He also added 9 assists and 4 rebounds. David West was really slow in the first half, but ended up speeding it up in the second half, finishing with his 25th double double this year off of 14-27 shooting. Great game for these two, although the rest of the team left much to be desired.

- Peja finally came back and finished with 7 points. He missed two threes that I saw should have gone in but just didn't. I think he's fine now and will be happy to see him taking some of Devin Brown's attempts away. Rasual was pretty cold (1-7 3PTs) but for some reason I'm okay with him taking threes as long as Devin Brown doesn't. Once again I have to ask what Mo Pete is doing while 'Sual and D-Brown chuck it up. Also, Julian Wright had an embarassing game. He wasn't bad (8 rebounds) but it was just embarassing. He missed 3 dunks (ouch), one of which was pretty much on a fast break, albeit not as ugly as this, but still, ouch. Although I'm not disappointed with him, he played some good D and grabbed the rebounds.

- This loss puts the Hornets in a relatively bad position. Luckily the Rockets and Jazz both lost, keeping the Hornets the 6th place spot, 1/2 game behind Houston and a game behind Portland. Unfortunately, the Spurs won yesterday, putting them 2 whole games ahead. The remaining Hornets schedule is also not easy, with two extremely important games against Houston and the Spurs. The playoff race is not going to be over until the last game of the season, and what's slightly unnerving even if improbable is that only 3 teams in the West have yet to clinch a spot. If the Hornets go on a skid and Phoenix is hot for a few games, we might even not land a spot. Even though that's probably impossible, it still scares me...

Next game is against the Jazz, which is pretty imporant, considering the Jazz are fighting for a higher spot and are 2.5 games behind us. Geaux for tommorow!

via www.clipperzrool4ever.gov

GEAUX CLIPPERS AND ALTERNATE UNIVERSE CHRIS PAUL!

Hornets 108, Wizards 98

Chris Paul once again demonstrated why he possibly deserves an MVP and why he ought to be compared with the greats like Magic and Isiah (pre-coaching).

- The first quarter was extremely sluggish. It looked like the Hornets were just walking up and down; CP3 only had a couple of points and assists. Even going into the second, I was really surprised to see the Hornets go down 12. But, Chris Paul pretty much owned after that. He scored 10 points in an ensuing 12-0 run, cutting the Wizards' lead to just one at the end of the half.

- And the amazing-ness continued on to the third quarter, where the Bees outscored the Wiz 40-22. Chris Paul put up 14, 6, and 4 in the third quarter alone. Eventually, the Hornets jacked the lead up to 17 in the fourth, and apart from a couple of hiccups along the way, closed out the game.

- Regarding those hiccups, I'm really starting to worry about the bench. The bench almost blew the lead, allowing the Wizards to come back within 6. If it wasn't for some good shooting from Rasual Butler, this may have ended up a harder to win game. To reiterate: the Hornets may have lost a game to the worst team in the East.  The East. Looking at the non-adjusted "+/-" stats themselves, Hilton and Antonio Daniels were both -13 in 8 minutes of play each. I'm guessing  that with adjusted stats, the bench would be even worse.

- Mo Pete sat out for some reason, I saw him in uniform on the bench. After missing 20 games with that foot injury, perhaps Byron just wants to ease him back by first letting him get used to the uniform? I have no idea about Coach Scott's intentions; I couldn't see a reason why Mo Pete sat.

- Sean Marks had flu-like symptoms (seems to be going around: Mike James just had the flu as well) and Peja missed his fourth game due to his back spasms.

- As a side note, I was pretty happy with Razwall's play today, he had 21 points and stopped a couple of Wiz comeback runs with threes. I also found it slightly amusing that he took 13 three pointers.

- Chris Paul = Awesome, no news, but he just got his 6th triple double with 30, 13, and 10. All he has to do is eat more so he can become better than Deron Williams.

- Oh yeah, Tyson had like 5 million dunks today.

- Taking a look around the league, this really seems to be a good day to be a Hornets blog writer (or fan, or player, or coach, or athletic trainer) as Utah, Houston, and Portland all lost. I believe this brings us up to the 4th spot in the West and a game out of 3rd. I find it very sad that no team in the West has clinched a playoff spot though.

That's it for this one, winning 8 out of the last 9. Next game in Milwakee on FRIDAY  THE 13TH so beware of that one. Ramon Sessions might just dish out 100 assists.

Well, I was only able to catch parts of the game (bad internet and no working TV), but here are some thoughts on the game:

- The first half was pretty sad. I was close to giving up on the game halfway through the third. The Bees had multiple turnovers and missed a lot of wide open jumpers. Even our regular ace James Posey missed more than a couple of pretty open three pointers. Posey went just 2 for 8 from deep. 

- When the Nugs were up 26 in the third, I thought the Hornets might just give up, but I was dead wrong. Instead, we went on a 20-6 run and made it a game once more. CP3 definitely turned it on, he finished with 30 points, 11 assists, and 5 rebounds. The fact that the Bees could make it a game still impresses me.

- Vanilla Ice played at halftime.

- Denver seems a lot better with Chauncey instead of AI in the lineup, they are 22-9 after the trade. And JR Smith continues to impress me as a solid sixth man, he always seems to have great games against New Orleans. He scored 11 of his 17 points in the fourth.

- Hilton Armstrong is playing amazingly. He had 17 points and 5 rebounds, 3 of which were offensive. Hopefully he can continue this even when he comes off the bench.

- Uncharacteristic of Chris "MVP" Paul were his 7 turnovers, especially the last one.

There you have it, an end to the 4-game win streak. A bit of ugly playing by the Bees, but the way they bounced back earned them something. Still, CP3's quote sums it up:

We showed a lot of fight, but we lost. There aren't any morale victories in this game."

Hornets 92, Blazers 77

1) A win over the Blazers isn't exactly the same thing as a win over the Blazers without Brandon Roy, but I'll take it. The W extends the streak to four wins in a row, following a strong 10-3 finish in the month of December. After a lot of word that the Hornets are for some reason "not in sync with their coach", they've once again bounced back up the Western Conference standings. Byron Scott also won Coach of the Month for December (something that surprised me), but today we were once again graced with the mythical Devin Brown DNP-CD, which makes me happy.

2) Of course, the main interest of the game was the Tyson-Prissy "brawl". From what I saw, Pryz threw a forearm into Tyson's 6-pack, causing Tyson to retaliate a bit harder on Pryz's injured wrist. Then for some weird reason, Tyson was given a Flagrant-2 and ejected from the game. Although Tyson did deserve the punishment, I'm quite sure that Pryzbella deserved some justice himself. The Tyson-Prissy fued has been going on for at least the last two years, and this is the third time Tyson has been ejected from the Rose Garden. We'll all be hoping he's not suspended.

Ironically, the ejection gave rise to the Hornet surge of scoring. Said Chris Paul about what happened after the "brawl":

"I think we fed off that energy. We were talking in the huddle and that’s what really hyped the game up. We got excited after that."

The Bees went 13 for19 shooting in the fourth alone, outscoring the Blazers 41-19 in the 15 minutes after the ejection

3) I have to hand it to Hilton in the 23 minutes he played, he went 6-6 with 12 points. Although he only grabbed 3 boards, he was able to actually catch the ball and come up with a couple of really nice dunks. On the other end of the court, he also played some great D on Greg "World War II Veteran" Oden. I'm once again getting impressed with Hilton's play and still have this dream that he will someday become the next Dwight Howard. It was on my Christmas wishlist, but there's always next year, right?

4) David West and CP3 played some great ball (as usual right?). West absolutely tore up LaMarcus, scoring 25 points (12-21 shooting). It seems he's really got it back in the last few games, making his jumpers and getting a goodpost game going. I hardly even noticed Chris "MVP" Paul during the game, until the fourth where he just walked past the Blazers D and scored on a couple of driving layups. Those were the few plays that really delivered the Bees the game and sealed it. He ended up with 17 points, 11 assists, and 7 rebounds. In just 36 minutes.

And that's it for this one. As I said before, a win over the Blazers without Roy is not the same thing as one with him in it. Next game tomorrow against the Nuggets at Denver, hopefully you can stop by the game thread once again. And hopefully Tyson will be playing...

From Ball Don't Lie, an excerpt from the interview with The Glove:

BDL: Is there a point guard in the game who reminds you of yourself?

GP: (Pauses) No. I don't think anybody reminds me of me, because I did it on both ends of the floor. I played defense, I posted up, point guards don't post up [anymore] like I did, and guard somebody end to end, and get steals and stuff. Most point guards now, what they're doing is playing passing lanes, and some of them always talk about why they haven't been on first-team defense. Like Allen [Iverson] and Chris Paul, they're both my buddies, and I like them both, but that's not defense right now. Defense is more like an on the ball type of guy, like Bruce Bowen, but I don't think any point guard plays like that right now.

BDL: Who in your opinion is the best point guard in the game right now?

GP: Chris Paul.

BDL: Not Rondo?

GP: (Smiles) Nooo. No Rondo. Nooo Rondo. Chris Paul and then a close second would be [Deron] Williams.

Go Hornets!