We’re still waiting for the official diagnosis of David West, but if you’ve seen the video of his injury — if you heard his screams of pain on the game broadcast — you would realize it is not going to be good. He has a long rehab ahead of him, and some serious decisions to make now about free agency (he was expected to opt out of the last year of his deal, but this may change everything).
The other question this injury raises: What now for the Hornets?
The good news: they probably make the playoffs.
As of Friday morning the Hornets were the seven seed in the West, one game ahead of the eight seed Grizzlies and three games up on the nine-seed Rockets. But as Zach Lowe points out at Sports Illustrated that three is really four — the Hornets hold the tiebreaker over the Rockets (the best Houston can do is tie the head-to-head, and after that the second tiebreaker is conference record, where the Hornets are way ahead).
Even if — or really, how much — the Hornets take a step back without West, giving up a four-game lead with 10 to play is nearly impossible.
Once they are in the playoffs, that’s where the Hornets will really feel the loss of West.
Coach Monty Williams has the hornets wining with defense — they give up just 101.1 points per 100 possessions, sixth best in the league (via Hoopdata). That likely will not change much with Carl Landry and Jason Smith taking over West’s minutes.
But that defense has to make up for a weak offense — 103.5 points per 100 possessions, 19th in the league.
And what little offense the Hornets bring is largely based around the Chris Paul/West pick-and-pop. Especially in crunch time. West was hitting 47 percent of his five long-two pointers a game, but also has a good post game if he gets a mismatch. CP3 knew how to play off him, other guys new how to get open off that action.
Carl Landry will now set those picks — and he has yet to play one minute this season with all the other four Hornet starters, reports John Schuhmann at NBA.com.
Landry is not as deadly as West with the long two pop off the pick — he is shooting 38 percent on that since coming to the Hornets — but he still has to be respected from that distance. Landry also is a pretty average rebounder at best, where West is good.
Basically, Landry isn’t bad but he is a second tier West. One who will not demand the attention and double teams West did.
And when the Hornets match up with the Spurs/Lakers/Mavericks in the first round they will miss the matchup problems West created. A lot. It’s hard to win playoff games without the ability to exploit mismatches and West created a lot of them. Landry is less feared on offense.
But at least the Hornets should still make the post season.