Hornets Happenings | Hornets Score Low on Offseason Team Improvements

Anyone who is reasonably knowledgeable about NBA basketball knows that there are some strong positives for the New Orleans Hornets.

They have one of the best players in the league. Chris Paul will arguably go down as one of the best point guards of all-time.

Matched up with Paul is power forward David West. West can be a very good and sometimes great player.

The Hornets also have some glaring weaknesses including:

1. The Hornets' bench is among the worst in the league.
2. Small forward Peja Stojakovic's best days are behind him. Stojakovic's contract is killing the Hornets.
3. Starting shooting guard Rasual Butler is better when he comes off of the bench.
4. Center Tyson Chandler has no offensive game other than the dunk and put back. Chandler's contract is also hurting the Hornets.
   
5. Paul plays too many minutes per game.
6. West plays too many minutes per game.

The Hornets slid from being contenders for the Conference title to barely squeaking into the playoffs. It's reasonable to assume that the Hornets' owners and management notice this also and are taking steps to help the Hornets transition back to being contenders as they were in 2007-2008.

Let's look at each weaknesses and evaluate to what extent the Hornets offseason moves to date have eliminated it.

For simplicity sake, I will evaluate the weakness as addressed on a scale of zero through five, where zero means the weakness was not addressed at all, while five means that the weakness has been turned into a strength.

With this scale, a perfect score would be 30. This means that the Hornets would have turned each weakness into a team strength.

1. Bench—I rate the Hornets' bench as a two. The addition of Darren Collison and Marcus Thornton should slightly improve the bench play from the guard position.

2. Small Forward—This is a big zero. The small forward position has yet to be addressed in the offseason.

3. Starting Shooting Guard—This also gets a zero. It's not likely that Thornton is going to break into the starting lineup.

4. Center—Another zero.

5. Chris Paul's minutes—So far from limited looks at his rookie league play, Collison looks like he will be a legitimate NBA player one day. This receives a rating of two.

6. David West's minutes—Once again,  zero.

The Hornets score a four-of-30. One could possibly argue that items one and five could each be scored a point higher. 

Maybe the Hornets receive a six-of-30, instead. Either way, it's less than a passing score.

This should prove to be a long, long season.