The Spurs tipped off their 2009-10 campaign in impressive fashion, defeating the New Orleans Hornets 113-96 in the season opener at home this evening. It’s hard to imagine an opening game that inspires more confidence moving forward.
I think the overwhelming truth that must be taken from tonight’s game is how deep this squad is. Discounting [...]

… there’s a game tonight. Which means two things:

Come back at 7 Central for a liveblog co-hosted with Hornets 24/7.
Pre-game notes.

So… The Hornets most substantial offseason move was trading Tyson Chandler for Emeka Okafor. I think there are arguments to be made either way as to whether the move is a step forward or backward [...]

The SportingNews says Spurs in 7.
Kelly Dwyer, Yahoo!: The Hornets took in another hot one from David West, who poured in 34 points, but he was outplayed by Tim Duncan. West tried, he contested shots and worked, but Duncan finished with 20 points, 19 rebounds, six assists, four turnovers and a block in 33 minutes. [...]

I know a lot of people will be skeptical of my use of the term “rival” in this instance as we have only played the Hornets in one postseason series ever (last year) and we emerged victorious. But my use of the term is a conjecture about the future, not a description of the past. [...]

I began writing this edition of the Notebook last night but honestly I was too frustrated to compose anything articulate. With a little distance between me and the Spurs’ impotent fourth quarter performance, I can now offer some reasonable reflections on what went down.
The game began slow, and remained relatively close for the entire contest. [...]

A founding tenet of Spurs dogma is the principle that regular season games should only be seen as a preparatory exercise for a deep post-season run. For the team’s emotions to wax and wain too heavily with each rivalry game is to allow us to lose sight of the fact that the wins that truly [...]