I Had Hoped Our Offensive Woes Were Over

The Hornets played their first pre-season game last night in Oklahoma City against the Houston Rockets. Now, you should never put much stock in pre-season games, but you can glean some important facts from them. So, here's what I saw:

• A post up by Desmond Mason would have been an improvement over the shooting on display by the starters last night. They fired up bricks, combining for 10 of 35 from the field. The bench was no stronger, with only Armstrong(4-7), Haluska(5-9) and Bowen(2-3) shooting well. The rest combined to go 9 of 31. I was hoping our ugly offensive woes were gone - but if they open the season shooting like this, I'll probably claw my eyes out.
• As Byron has been saying they would in training camp, they did try to push the pace, managing 106 posessions for the game. They did get a large number of offensive rebounds(15), but if you halve that to a more standard 8, you still get 99 posessions for the game. That's 9 more than a year ago, which is a significant increase in pace.
• Morris Peterson shot 0-6. Julian Wright went 1-6 with an airball . . . .
• Hilton Armstrong played with confidence - making a quick post move on his first posession and swatting Yao twice in succession before being forced to foul. He also scrapped for rebounds, which was nice since he got pushed around a lot under the hoop last year.
• Chris Paul was set on getting to the rim - generating an amazing 14 free throws in only 20 minutes. I love the aggressiveness, but please, Chris, don't get injured. It's only the preseason.
• Haluska was crafty and tough - and a nice surprise.
• Peja looked good in the second half, hitting 5-10 shots for 13 points.
• Tyson did his thing, putting up 9 points and 9 rebounds in 21 minutes. Given starters minutes, that's 14 and 14. It's so nice to have that from the Center position.