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In theory, this should be one of the easiest games on the schedule. The Mavs are not a good team, missing key players, playing on the road, on the 2nd night of a back to back, and they lost an hour traveling from Dallas to Charlotte, Seth Curry tweaked his knee tonight.

No excuses. Hornets must win this game. Anything less would be completely unacceptable.

Key to the game - Batum needs to set the tone early on both ends.

Yeah there can't be excuses for this one. They just got done losing a tight game to San Antonio tonight. A loss is definitely unacceptable here.

cant lose game? we gonna lose, or win close

I fully expect Bats to have a massive game tonight.


"BBMF'ers"

Good time to ask - what do folks think of "Mavericks" as a team name? Feels like if a new team tried to use it, would be terrible.

Great movie though.

The dude on the right looks like Will Forte lol.

THAT IS **** JAMES GARNER, YOU SHOW SOME DAMN RESPECT!!!!!111!!!1

Sorry, Maverick is one of my favorite black and white shows. The Brett Maverick episodes are better (James Garner, duh) but Bart Maverick was okay too.

I don't remember Nic having good games offensively against the Mav's (the worst being the match up in play offs the season when Dallas won the ring).
Defensively, in the beginning with Mc Millan, he was sometimes used for his length against Nowitzki, with some success (and some whines from the german version of pau gasol). The best being to deny this kind of player the ball. If you remember when he switched on KP during the knicks game, that was basically the idea (and he did fine against kp as kp as long as he is, is not physical enough to counter this).
He often had offensive fouls against the mav's, some good floppers there (it must be a texan thing).

I don't know if the Mav's will match him up with Barnes. If so, that's a tough assignement (unless he fights trhough screens even if he gets some fouls, he has to toughen up). I actually expect Barnes to have a very good game, but that's not necessary a bad thing (as long as the rest of the mav's struggle).
In offense, i hope he will be on dallas's guards, as he can post up Matthews (which could be fun if some blazers fan watch though i assume they are busy enough with their actual roster and the sexy panic button).

Anyway, i expect much more from the bench (which obviously suffers from marvin/Frank's switch) tonight, and a great kemba/cody game. Hopefully Bogut won't break anyone. I just don't see how we could not control the pace and the rebound tonight. If marvin's back i even expect some great things for Kemba (but i stfu ).

Easy game just got easier. Bogut is resting tonight.

... And Dirk is still out.

This is a must win game....

Tricky Rick on the radio dodging questions left and right. They asked him, in reference to Cliff's quotes about being able to tell certain players are not ready after 45 seconds, which player he thought might not be showing up each night on defense. Rick dodged the question and spent 5 minutes praising Marvin. Next question, they asked him which player has been disappointing so far this season. He dodged the question and spent the next few minutes praising Marco.

I felt like he was at a job interview trying to turn all his negatives into positives. "Rick, what you are biggest weaknesses?" "I' don't like to focus on the negative. [name drop famous person] once told me, the key to success is maximizing your strengths. In that regard, I am a team player, that will be a great asset to your organization" [interviewers roll eyes]

My answers to the questions Rick was asked

1) Nic Batum - there is a very noticeable difference in his energy level from game to game or even 1st Q to 3rd Q. As the highest paid player, and one of the leaders of this team, he needs to be held accountable when he doesn't show up with sufficient effort on defense.

2) Ramon Sessions - pretty much career lows across the board, stats/%s/advance stats, among team worst net ratings, struggling to beat one-man press.

Seems weird that we haven't heard anything about Lamb's availability yet.

Random poster here Kemba going to unleash all the Rage he has in his body and going for 60 book it.

I hear a lot of clamorin about kemba not being able to keep up his shooting, horses a$$. Dude was a solid shooter on good volume last year, is it unfeasible that he made another leap? He can pad his 3pt numbers tonight again

Thinking this game is going to be closer than people may think. This is a team that historically has caused the Hornets trouble and it would be easy to overlook this team in the middle of the 3 home games. Players may look to conserve energy for Saturday and not perform optimally tonight.

Holy cow those Mav injuries. Probably still will be a close game