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Photograph by Jonathan Bachman

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Good thing it’s the Super Bowl this week and New Orleans fans can ignore this. This Hornets’ season just got a whole lot tougher as Chris Paul will be out for up to two months after he undergoes arthroscopic knee surgery. And Phoenix comes to town tomorrow night. Great.

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Photograph by Jonathan Bachman

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After coming back from a 15-point third quarter deficit and having the lead with less than 10 seconds left in the game, the Hornets seemed poised to ride their home-court magic to another improbable victory. Then one bad David West pass and one bad Darren Collison turnover spelled doom for Bees as they fell 108-106 in overtime to the resurgent Chicago Bulls.

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“That one’s on me,” the rookie Collison said after his turnover sealed the Hornets fate tonight. “I let my team down. Definitely going to lose sleep on that play.”

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Granted, Collison’s turnover came at the worst possible time and prevented the Hornets from even attempting a game-tying shot, but there were many other factors that contributed to this loss. For one, the Hornets could have called a timeout before Collison dribbled wildly into the opposing defense. Secondly, New Orleans could have come out of the halftime break a little stronger than they did before giving up a 15-point lead. Most importantly, the Hornets would’ve won if they weren’t so sloppy.

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“We weren’t real sharp in the first three quarters,” head coach Jeff Bower said.

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If there’s any positive to take from this game is that the Hornets shot just 39.4% the entire game and were outscored 60-36 in the paint, yet still only lost by two points. This on a night where the Hornets PA system did everything it its power to channel the Saints’ good vibes by playing the Ying Yang Twins’ “Get Crunked” and showing black and gold-clad fans as often as possible in the fourth quarter.

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“We gave ourselves an opportunity to win,” Chris Paul said. “We made a few mistakes there at the end.”

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No, the Hornets are most definitely not the Saints right now and, yes, they have a long way to go to before becoming a team that can be relied on to consistently win these types of games. But what have the Hornets done to have their fans expect anything else this season? At 25-21, New Orleans is just good enough to compete for the eighth and final playoff seed in the West. Against a 23-22 Bulls team doing just the same in the Eastern Conference, the Hornets came up short. The question is whether this is a reflection of the Hornets season as a whole, or just a bump in the road on this teams’ road to finding itself in the winner’s circle.

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Photograph by Jonathan Bachman

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You can excuse Hornets fans for being a little giddy after tonight’s 108-94 win over the L.A. Clippers. For one, it was the largest home win all season, their 12th-straight win against the Clippers and, since they’ve just one eight of their last eleven games, the Hornets are just one game out of the last playoff spot in the Western Conference. Oh, and they surpassed 100 points, giving everyone in attendance a free chicken wrap at Popeyes!

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And yet, with any kind of joy it’s always nice to take a step back and look at the reality of the situation. Of their last eight wins, only two were against opponents with a winning record (Utah and Houston). And despite winning by 14 tonight, the Hornets still gave up 23 second-chance points and were out-rebounded 46 to 38 (the Hornets also only secured nine offensive rebounds off of 42 misses, not good).

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“I didn’t feel overall that our execution was at a high level,” coach Jeff Bower said. “I thought it was OK. It was good enough tonight.”

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Key phrase: “good enough tonight.” What may be good enough against the 17-20 Clippers is not going to be good enough against teams like the Spurs (whom the Hornets play next Monday) let alone powerhouses like L.A., Dallas and Denver. By Bower’s own admission, this team is still a ways off from being a true contender.

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“Based on what I watch and the goals and pictures in our heads of how we want to play, with the efficiency we’re capable of, we have a long way to go,” he said.

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That said, there’s no denying that the offense is starting to come together. Every Hornets starter scored in double figures and they registered 26 assists to just six turnovers. That, combined with a strong defensive effort, is what put the Hornets over the hump tonight.

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“We’re starting to learn that, on the defensive end, if we can get stops when we need to, that we’re pretty good,” Devin Brown said.

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The Hornets can be pretty good, and they can also be pretty bad. Luckily for them, they look like they’re getting better before they get worse. But the Hornets are at a point in their season where how wins come about isn’t as important as them actually getting those wins. Asked if he realized his team shot over 50 percent on the night, Chris Paul delivered what has become the mantra for this team:

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“I’m just trying to get wins,” he said. “I could care less how many shots we take or how many shots we missed.”

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Screengrab lifted from NBA.com

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With all the excitement since New Years, the Sugar Bowl and a friend’s birthday our weekend was so busy that we missed the Hornets win two great games (against good-to-great teams, no less!) to bring their record back to .500 for the first time since the second game of the season (!). And they won the second one last night on the road after being down double-digits against the Utah Jazz (!!!!!!). Dare I say, the Hornets are gathering some steam?

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Alas, only in the past would it be safe to assume that the Hornets would beat a team like the Oklahoma City Thunder (whom they play on Wednesday in Oklahoma) but New Orleans hasn’t pulled together a legitimate win streak in almost two years — one can no longer give this team the benefit of the doubt. That being said, this would be the perfect time to start winning streak to turn around their season. After the Thunder, the Hornets face opponents with the following records:

• New Jersey Nets - 3-30
• Washington Wizards - 10-21
  
• Philadelphia 76ers - 11-21
• L.A. Clippers - 15-18
• Detroit Pistons - 11-21
• Indiana Pacers - 10-23

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Now, let’s be conservative and say the Hornets won’t go undefeated and be at 22-16 when the San Antonio Spurs come to town (I know, it’s exciting, but let’s try to be rational). Four of these games are on the road, which is wherever Hornets go whenever they want to forget how to win basketball games, and this could be a problem. But even if they drop, say, two on the road but pick up a solid home win against a decent (well, for them) Clippers team, they would still have some budding momentum before facing the Spurs in a game that may very well define how good this Hornets team is.

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Of course, after all this we could be just were we started, with the Hornets playing up and down for the rest of what ultimately becomes a mediocre season. But after a performance like the one they just had in Salt Lake City, on can reasonably hope CP3 and Co. decide to make things interesting.

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Photograph by Jonathan Bachman

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The Hornets 95-91 win against the Miami Heat tonight was notable as much for what it wasn’t as much as what it was. To be more specific, this was a Hornets victory against a strong opponent at home and not, as many of the post-game questions noted, another road loss. (I realize this all sounds obvious and confusing, but bear with me).

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At 12-3 the Hornets have one of the best home-win percentages in the NBA, comparable to league powehouses like Denver (13-2), Orlando (13-3), Cleveland (13-2) and Boston (10-4). It’s a shame that the Hornets have to play road games, because their two wins away from New Orleans Arena is less road wins than all but three NBA teams (New Jersey, Chicago and Charlotte). What’s more depressing (at least for Hornets fans) is that if New Orleans could must to just got to around .500 on the road (say 7-8 instead of their current 2-13), their overall record would be 19-11, good for fourth overall in the West, six spots ahead of their current standing.

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“If I there is any way I could bottle up a formula for that I’d sell it to every team in the NBA,” Devin Brown said. “We’re trying to do anything we can to play this way on the road.”

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All jokes aside, the home-court advantage for the Hornets this year is mystifying (especially considering that the Hornets are in the bottom third of the NBA in home attendance). With the home win against the Heat coming off a tough road loss against Houston the night before, the home-road discrepancy is stark.

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“We’re just not able to put together complete games [on the road],” David West said after tonight’s victory. “We’re able to do that at home, to make key plays.”

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That was the prevailing sentiment among Hornets players and head coach Jeff Bower, all of which preached the line that if the Hornets just made one or two more plays a game on the road, they’d have a much better record. In all fairness, the Hornets did play their best road game all season in the loss to Houston (mainly because of Chris Paul’s triple-double and David West’s career-high 44 points), but the line about just needing to make one ore two more plays doesn’t apply to the seven road games they lost by double digits.

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But while a majority of the questions asked by us media folk had to do with the home-away discrepency, many of the answers looked at the big picture of the season. Time and again players talked about just finding a way to win games - David West said “we just gotta pick up wins” and one of Chris Paul’s New Year’s resolutions is “to win a few more games” - like that wasn’t an obvious goal before.

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“I’d like to focus on the success we’ve had a home,” Bower said, seemingly frustrated with the endless obsession about his team’s road woes. He does have a point. Right now, there aren’t many other positive things the Hornets can focus on.

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Photograph by Jonathan Bachman

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You may not have guessed it with the way they collapsed against the New York Knicks at home last Friday or how they trailed Dallas by as much as 24 on Monday, but this Hornets team still has some fight in them. Sure, the first half was tepid moments of bored punctuated at times by incompetence, but the Hornets, despite being down by as much as 16 points, came back and beat the Detroit Pistons 95-87.

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“This is a group that will compete, they will battle,” head coach Jeff Bower said. “We have to play better.”

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Yes, the Hornets outscored Detroit 53-32 in the second half and, yes, they earned their seventh win at home in eight opportunities, but they’re still digging holes for themselves for large stretches of games and they are woefully inconsistent. How can one explain New Orleans’ 14 first-half turnovers (they finished with 18) and 17 second-quarter points in a game they ultimately won by eight?

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“We weren’t taking care of the ball,” David West said. “It’s just a matter of us coming out and being a little bit more confident in what we’re trying to do on offense.”

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West seemed confident all game long and was probably the single driving force for the Hornets’ win. His season high 32 points along with 12 rebounds proved to be a steadying influence on a team struggling to find points. Though Chris Paul finished with a double-double, he finished the first half with just two points. Paul, who was diving after loose balls left and right to make up for his lack of scoring, found West for two huge baskets in the second half.

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“D-West got us going,” he said. “We just picked up the intensity. We got after [the Pistons] a little bit.”

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The Hornets, at times listless and at other times electrifying, still haven’t found what it takes to be a winning team day in and day out. Lucky for them, the season is just a quarter of the way done and there’s plenty of basketball left to play.

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Photograph by Jonathan Bachman

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For just a moment during the Hornets’ 113-96 loss to the Knicks tonight, it seemed like New Orleans was finally putting all the pieces in place. It was around the time they scored a season-high 62 first-half points and, with a 16-point lead, they seemed completely in control.

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And this, boys and girls, is why you have to play four quarters. The Hornets were out-scored 60-34 in the second half by an 8-win Knicks team that basically just waiting for the Lebron James sweepstakes to begin in the offseason. It was a result of a scoring drought by the Hornets (they didn’t score a basket in the last 4:56 of the game) and just ridiculous shooting by the Knicks (they shot 60% from the floor in the fourth quarter, including six-of-nine from three-point range). Mostly though, tonight’s loss was due to the Hornets defense (or rather, lack thereof).

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“Our defense tonight was unbelievable,” Chris Paul said. “We’ve had a few games where our defense was good. Tonight it was horrible.”

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For a team that built its reputation on defense under Byron Scott, the recent breakdowns seem appalling. But really, this is a trend that goes back to last season when the Hornets seemed like they couldn’t put a win streak together to save their lives. Now, David West says that he feels the same frustration.

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“This was a big game for us because we’re fighting to get to .500 and stay on the right side of the win column,” he said. “We just took a step back and obviously with the NBA there’s always another game, but it doesn’t get any easier.”

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The Hornets have made a terrible habit of shooting themselves in the foot right they seem to be putting the pieces together. As West said, there are more games coming up. But for a team that’s been struggling with the worst teams in the NBA, one has to wonder if the upcoming games will make things worse before they get better.

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Photographs by Jonathan Bachman

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Fact: With tonight’s 96-94 victory over the Sacramento Kings, the Hornets have won their last six games at home and are 7-2 at the Arena this season.

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Not a Fact: Just over three dozen people have witnessed every home win. Or at least that’s what it seems like. For all the positives to take from this game — first time this season three Hornets notched double-doubles, Songaila was perfect from the floor, CP3 is averaging four steals a game in his last five — the pervading emotion this game was boredom. With just over 13,000 fans in attendance (a generous number), the Hive was mostly tepid all night. Any thoughts that the crowd has carried this team at home should be taken with a grain of salt. Even when everyone finally woke up in the fourth, the Hornets had to dig deep for a win.

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“We played defense,” Chris Paul said of his team’s fourth quarter. “We finally bore down and defended and started rebounding.”

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Defense. Rebounding. These are the recurring issues that the Hornets have thus far not been able to deal with. Granted, it was a strong defensive stand in the final 10 seconds that gave the Hornets the victory, but it was a slew of defensive break downs that made the game closer than it really was. The Hornets held just a two-rebound edge on the Kings on the night and, though Sacremento had only nine offensive boards, they seemed to come at the worst times.

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“They only had 11 second-chance points and that’s a pretty good overall number,” coach Jeff Bower said. “But when they come and how they come, they just stand out so much more. They hurt, they’re an energy drain on your team at times.”

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Bower said that he’s been stressing his players to end defensive possesions. For the most part, the Hornets accomplished this (though half the time it was because the Kings scored). Right now, New Orleans has yet to show that it can play well consistently. To wit, while five players scored in Double figures for New Orleans, they got virtually no production from Darren Collison (0 points, 3 assists), James Posey (1-of-5 for three points and a rebound) and Devin Brown (4 points), all players expected to produce numbers. Lukily, Darius Songaila was perfect from the floor and made his fourth quarter minutes count.

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“It was a broken down play,” he said about his game-winning shot. “We just improvised and we drove it to the basket. The defense collapsed and it was kid of a like a loose ball that was bobbled. I came up with it and laid it up.”

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If the Hornets think they can get back to .500 or better by shooting from the hip in the fourth quarter and hoping Songaila is going to be there to bail them out, then this team is in serious trouble.

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Photographs by Jonathan Bachman

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OK, that headline is a bit misleading, but considering that the Hornets didn’t announce Chris Paul would be playing until 90 minutes or so before tip-off and that attendance at the Hive was just over half-full, it sure seemed like no one’s paying attention to this team (that and I hear the local pigskin club is making some noise in its league play).

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(At the sake of overusing parentheses [and we can't have that, can we?] I have to say that, in all fairness to the Hornets, this season could turn out worse attendance numbers since this team made that magical run to No. 2 in the conference two years ago. At 8-11, this team isn’t exactly a powerhouse and with the Saints undefeated playing right across the street, there’s little reason to even pay attention to basketball right now. But mark my words, this team WILL come together and show their worth down the stretch, full Arena or not.)

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But such are the turns that are made during an 82-game season. Sure, Paul led the Hornets to a 98-89 win over the lowly, two-win Minnesota Timberwolves, but that was to be expected. The Hornets are at a precarious moment in their season. At just about a quarter of the way through the season, this is a team that is still searching for an identity. For starters, they could think about showing consistent effort on rebounds (they gave up 20 second-chance points and collected just seven offensive rebounds off of 39 missed shots).

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“We just didn’t finish plays,” David West said afterward. “Sometimes it’s just concentrating on finishing possessions. We gotta continue to improve and we will.”

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Seems like we’ve been hearing that same quote for over a year, so should Hornets fans be worried? With all the new faces and with Jeff Bower stepping in as head coach, it seems like a rebuilding year at the Hive and that’s not far from the truth. Except for one caveat - for Bower, he gets one chance. Right now he seems like a man on the edge of something; be it a breakout season or a complete disintegration is too hard to tell. But while inconsistent play may drive fans batty, Bower continues to approach each day with patience and resolve.

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“We were able to play through some things in our line-up. I’m not going to lie, I had reservations about changing our line-up in the second quarter line-up in the beginning but decided to let them play through it and am happy with the decision.”

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Another line we’ve heard before. Or is it? Byron Scott used to love to just let his players try and figure things out when really they needed a coach. Jeff Bower, though, sees that he can only coach ‘em so much and there are appropriate times to let his players work out the kinks. The Hornets are growing as a team — it can be seen in their growing mutual trust on the floor and how they carry themselves in the locker room — but as to how quickly and how far they will grow is anybody’s guess. With Paul back in the mix, this team has the opportunity to do great things, only time will tell if they can come through.

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Photograph by Jonathan Bachman

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It’s still early, but considering how the Hornets started the season, it’s hard not to feel good about this team right now. The Hornets made 12-of-17 three-point attemps and snapped the Hawks’ seven-game win streak in their 96–88 win tonight at the Hive.

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“It gives you an opportunity to experience success while you learn and grow,” Jeff Bower said of his team’s recent three-game win streak. “It’s the easiest time for me to be more demanding.”

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It’s the old sports axiom: winning solves everything. Had the Hornets lost one or two of their last three games at home, there may have been more turmoil in the locker room, definitely more second-guessing in the media and a whole lot of conflict surrounding this entire team. But instead, the Hornets beat the best team in the West (Phoenix) and the best team in the NBA (Atlanta) and Bower can continue to harp on the importance of hustle and energy on both sides of the floor.

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Tonight, the Hornets had it all once again. Four players scored in double figures with the two rookies, Marcus Thornton and Darren Collision, leading the way with 22 and 21 points, respectively. Peja Stojakovic ignited the scoring early with four three-pointers in the first quarter alone (he finished five-of-twelve from the floor with 17 points) while Emeka Okafor and David West imposed their will in the low post, combining for 20 rebounds and seven blocked shots.

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“Our confidence is rising every game,” Thornton said. “The players believe in each other, and when we have that chemistry with each other, everything is good.”

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Chemistry is more than just good ball movement and floor energy. Chemistry is also Stojakovic cat-calling a towel-clad Thorton in the locker room while the rookie was waiting to do a post-game interview. Chemistry is all smiles on the bench from the opening tip-off to the final horn. Chemistry is the rookies sporting Tinkerbell and Little Mermaid suitcases after every game (more on that later, I promise). Yes, it may be early, but that doesn’t mean this team isn’t on the verge of something very good.