Hornets rise out gutter, show life in Western Conference

Charles Paul McCue
January 19, 2010
Jan. 21
January 21, 2010
Charles Paul McCue
January 19, 2010
Jan. 21
January 21, 2010

The past nine months have been like a roller coaster for the New Orleans Hornets.


The Hornets made it to the NBA Playoffs last April and were pounced in the first round in a five-game series by the Denver Nuggets, a series that saw the Hornets lose a home game by 58 points.


That’s not a type-o. They really lost by 58 points.

So fast forward a few months to November where the nightmare continued and the Hornets started this season having won just three of their first 11 games.


That slow start combined with the team’s humbling postseason exit last year forced the team to fire head coach Byron Scott on Nov. 12 and replace him with general manager Jeff Bower, who had coached the same amount of games in the NBA as I have prior to his new gig in the Big Easy – zero.


Upon the promotion, Bower then hired former USC coach Tim Floyd to serve as his top assistant coach on his staff.

Yes, the same Tim Floyd who has coached two of the worst teams in NBA history and has a combined 90-231 record as an NBA head coach.


To make matters worse, one day after Scott was fired and Bower took over, the team’s franchise player Chris Paul went down in pain with a severely twisted ankle – an injury that sidelined him for nearly a month.


So there it stood. The Hornets were 3-8, had a new coach that fans didn’t necessarily trust and their star player was on crutches.

It’s easy to see why fans regarded the team as a sinking ship and turned their full attention to the city’s other team, the Saints, who were taking the NFL by storm.


But move forward once more into the present and the Hornets have silently crept their way up the standings and have won 15 of their past 25 games to rise above .500 again, despite receiving a lack of attention from fans across the area.


The recent surge of wins has the team pushing for its third-straight playoff birth and at press time the Hornets are just three games out of fourth place in the NBA’s top-heavy Western Conference.

Like it or not, the credit for the team’s recent success has to go to the team’s new coaching regime headed by Bower and Floyd.

I like Byron Scott as much as anyone and I think he will be a great fit in another city someday, but he was unable to get his message across to his players toward the end of his tenure and the team’s play really suffered because of it.

What the new regime has done is started fresh in the middle of the season – a feat that is incredibly difficult to accomplish.

Bower has also gone away from Scott’s veterans-only philosophy and has turned the reigns over to the team’s younger players like former LSU standout Marcus Thornton, Darren Collison and Bobby Brown, who average a combined 49.6 minutes played per game on the season.

The effects of that have been two-fold.

First, the younger guys have brought energy and life to the team that they did not seem to have in recent years.

Second, it’s inspired the veteran players to step up their games a notch, too, because they know if they don’t bring it the way the young guys are, they will lose even more playing time.

It was widely rumored once Bower took over the reigns that he would hire a new coach in the offseason, but one has to wonder if it’d be a wise move to go away from a formula that is currently working if the team continues to have this much success the remainder of the season.

Another big reason for the turnaround has been the play of Paul. The all-star guard has not skipped a beat since returning from his injury and has averaged 18 points and 13 assists per game in January, while averaging just two turnovers per game.

There’s still a long way to go and the season isn’t even half-way finished, but what the Hornets are currently doing is pretty remarkable considering how they were left for dead just two months ago.

I know Louisiana is and always will be a football state. I’m not trying to debate that.

But with football season winding down, go spend a Friday night or two in the New Orleans Arena watching the Hornets. Things aren’t as bad as they were the last time you saw them play.