New Orleans Hornet ready to face the Toronto Raptors on Tuesday – NBA Preview
The New Orleans Hornet will face Toronto Raptors on Tuesday evening at Air Canada Centre, Toronto. This will be Hornets first road game out of their five game trip. Last time teams met in New Orleans on January 17th
the Hornets won 85-81 over the Raptors.
Hornets are looking forward to an optimistic start to their road trip. They are currently sitting at fifth position in the Western Conference, which is now getting hard to hold on. The Hornets line-up looks far better than before
with Emeka Okafor inclusion in the side. Okafor will match-up David West below the loop. Okafor was out due to stress in his left hip, West also missed a game because of family emergency.
If the Hornets lost the game against the deprived Raptors, they will make their road trip pretty tough. As their next trip games are with hard-hitting teams like New York Knicks, Memphis Grizzlies, and Chicago Bulls. Scoring defence
of the Hornets is pretty healthy 92.6 points per game and they are ahead of others in this regard in the Western Conference. But they have scored 100 points only one time in just 12 games last month.
Hornets point guard Chris Paul is struggling big time. His scoring rate is 12.5 points per game, which is 3.6, less than his season average in the last eight games. While shooting is 34.4 percent from the field, this is certainly
not helpful for the Hornets.
"I couldn't make a shot," said Paul. "I've got to do my part."
Paul missed almost all of his shots against the raptors in their last encounter, but he provided 11 assists to cover up his mistakes in the shooting. This was not enough as Hornets hoping for more than this from him.
On the other hand the Raptors are a frustration. They provide surprising performances very often as they did against Chicago Bulls. Raptors lost 114-96 to the Dallas Mavericks in their last game, as they were outclassed in the
final 24 minutes.
"They were just picking us apart," said point guard Jose Calderon, who finished with 15 points, eight rebounds and eight assists. "... We stopped them in the first half but in the second we couldn't stop it."
Calderon failed to score on January 17th but provided 13 assists and five boards. The Raptors so far have lost 20 games out of 23.
If Bargnani is not available to play on Tuesday, the Raptors will be relying heavily on their guard DeMar DeRozan to continue his cool performance. DeRozan is averaging 18.9 points and over 50 percent in shooting in last 11 games,
and he was the top scorer in the last game against the Hornets.
Raptors have won only five games in the last two months and with Hornets getting Okafor at the right time, this looks like a regular win for the guests. Hornets will try to brush the season series for the second time in three
years.
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