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The news was broken this afternoon by Adrian Wojnarowski at Yahoo! Sports:

The New Orleans Hornets have traded center Hilton Armstrong and cash to the Sacramento Kings in a salary-clearing move, league sources told Yahoo! Sports.

The deal removes Hilton’s $2.8 million salary from the Hornets’ payroll, leaving them only a little more than $500,000 over the luxury-tax threshold. The Kings will send the Hornets a future, conditional second-round pick.

Jimmy Smith of the Times-Picayune reports confirmation of the deal, also from a league source, so it seems it's as good as done. (Update: Hornets.com makes it official.) A few things running through my mind:

• Why did the Hornets do this? The big and obvious answer is money, as Wojnarowski stated. If the Hornets can now dump the contract of someone like Bobby Brown or Ike Diogu, they're under the $69.9 million luxury-tax threshold and won't have to pay the dollar-for-dollar penalty.
  
  
• Not only do the Hornets get that $2.8 million off the books immediately with this trade, but they also save themselves the $3.85 million qualifying offer Armstrong would have been owed next season. No other team would have offered Hilton more than that as a restricted free agent in the summer, so the Hornets would have been stuck with him. Update: As noted in the comments, this is incorrect. "If the Hornets didn't want Hilton on their roster next year, they simply need to NOT extend the Qualifying Offer to him next year. The QO applies only if a team wants to make a player coming off a rookie contract a Restricted Free Agent instead of an Unrestricted one. If Armstrong is not extended a QO, which is the team's right, he merely becomes a UFA."
  
  
• Armstrong had clearly fallen out of favor with head coach Jeff Bower, racking up eleven consecutive DNP-CD's despite being one of the few healthy bigs available with Sean Marks and Ike Diogu out injured.
  
  
• When Armstrong did play, he didn't play well. His averages this season: 2.8 points and 3.4 rebounds in just over 13 minutes per game. He's currently ranked as the fifth worst center in the entire NBA with a 7.75 PER (and look who's three spots above him). According to PER, Armstrong's best season was 2006-07, his rookie campaign, and even then he was worse than average.
  
  
• As we saw from the near-trade of Devin Brown a couple of weeks ago, the Hornets were desperate to shed salary. Thankfully that deal didn't work out, because today's trade of Armstrong works out better for them in almost every way possible. The only downside I can see is that Amrstrong was a big body who could step in and at least deliver six fouls per game if another of the Hornets bigs were to suffer an injury.
  

Overall, this trade doesn't make the Hornets any better or worse right now, but it saves George Shinn some money and avoids Bower having to resort to trading someone like David West to shed salary. Whether that's a good thing or just a delay of the inevitable is up for debate.

From the Twitter account of Yahoo! Sports' Adrian Wojnarowski:

The Hornets have agreed to trade Hilton Armstrong to the Kings, an Eastern Conference exec with knowledge of deal says.

More details will be posted here as we hear them.

12:10 p.m. UPDATE:

More from Wojnarowski on Twitter:

The Hornets have traded forward Hilton Armstrong and cash to Sacramento for a future conditional second rounder, sources tell Y! Sports...

Obviously, the move is a salary dump on Armstrong's $2.8 million salary. This gets Hornets within $500K of luxury tax threshold.

For about 20 minutes of that game, the Hornets weren't even competing.  Lazy passes, terrible rotations, constant miscommunications on defense, too much watching Paul dribble, and some of the worst transition defense I've ever seen.  They would brick shots, Paul would get back, and three Timberwolves would follow him in for a layup as Devin Brown tried to decide if he could catch one of them.  You look at the box score and its hard to figure out how the Hornets win.  The Wolves had a 20 rebound advantage, shot 52% from the field and had twice as many free throw attempts as the Hornets.

The Hornets, however, were bailed out by three things:  a furious three-point assault, the rookies playing well, and a quick-moving small-ball lineup that had Songaila playing center and Posey playing power forward.(and getting the benefit of some 50-50 calls)

Going Small

Jeff Bower recognized something as the game wore on.  Their bigs were tearing up our bigs.  West and Okafor held their own against Jefferson, but when Kevin Love entered the fray, the Hornets started getting crushed on the boards.  Since our bigs couldn't handle the boards, outlet passes were flying, and the young Wolves were out and running, scoring easily in transition en route to a 16 point lead.  It got so bad that even Chris Paul started giving up defensively.

So Bower rolled the dice, sent Songaila out as the center, Posey as the power forward, and loaded up with Thornton, Collison and eventually, Chris Paul on the perimeter.  The Hornets continued to get crushed on the glass, but their pressure on the perimeter and energetic defense inside made it impossible to feed Jefferson and Love in the post.  They stayed home on Sessions, Ellington, and somewhat on Flynn and begged Corey Brewer to shoot.  15-2 run and the Hornets were back into it.  They didn't go back to the starting lineup until 3:30 was left in the game - at which point they immediately gave up a three point lead and had to struggle to finish out.

One thing is clear from that game, though, Posey is not a small forward any longer.  His foot speed is so drastically reduced, he cannot cover anyone on the perimeter.  As a stretch four, he still has possibilities, however limited they may be.

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Now THAT was a barnburner.  When West got that technical in the fourth, with the Hornets down 3, I was certain that game was done.  Then, Wow.  Three missed Dallas free-throws later, Peja, drills a slightly off-balance three, his first and only made shot of the night, West moves his feet and gets a steal, and the Hornets do their usual unstoppable act in overtime.  Lots to talk about in this one:

• First the Chris Paul Insane Shooting Update:  He went 14-23 tonight, and 3-4 from three.  Incredibly, that lowers his shooting percentages for the season to 64% from the field and 75% from three. 
  
  
• Tonight we got to see the difference between Bobby Brown the point guard, and Bobby Brown the shooting guard.  He had some of the best cuts I've seen by a Hornet player in years, and he's starting to get more comfortable with his teammates.  He still has a too-quick trigger finger at times, but tonight something huge happened:  Early in the second quarter, Bobby was getting out of control - he had already had two bad posessions dribbling the ball too much and was about to launch into another one when a piercing whistle cut the air.  Bobby stopped, looked up, and Byron yelled out instructions, gesturing furiously.  Moments later, the ball was in Songaila's hands, the play was being run, and Bobby never looked out of control again.
  
  
• Byron also made some other important moves tonight.  He had Posey on the floor to start the fourth - and when Posey couldn't even stay in the same area code with Jason Terry on two straight posessions, he put in Chris Paul, shifted Mo Pete to Terry and went with that.  Now, that may seem like no big deal - but for Byron, that's a HUGE deal.  He's always been one to settle on rotations, and try to stick with them, even when things start crapping out.  Tonight, he yanked Posey quick.  He yanked Armstrong quick after a couple bad offensive and defensive lapses, and went with Songaila.  When Peterson couldn't harass Terry, he yanked him and went  with Bobby, who could at least stay in front of him most of the time.  Can we hope Byron is turning the corner? 
  

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Before you get to the preview, be sure to watch Niall's excellent first stab at video analysis as he reviews the pick and roll being run by Okafor and Paul.

Game Preview

Matchup: Mavericks(3-1) @ Hornets(1-3)

Dallas has opened the season in impressive fashion, falling in their first game to a hot-shooting Wizards team, but then winning their next three against the Lakers, Clippers and Jazz by an average of 10 points.  Dirk Nowitzki has been tremendous so far, pouring in 30 points a game and contributing everywhere with assists, steals, rebounds and even a good number of blocks.  Last night, he led a comeback against the Jazz and dropped 29 points in the fourth quarter alone.  29 freakin' points in 12 minutes.  Hopefully that tired him out for tonight's game.

For a team that has a reputation for being all offense, little defense, Dallas has been getting their wins done by riding Nowitzki's scoring, and shutting the other team down.  Opponents have shot 42.5% from the floor, and 32.8% from deep.  The Mavericks are also managing to draw 28 free throws a game(12 from Nowitzki alone), while only giving up 19 free throws a game to their opponents.

The Hornets have been riding a big gun as well, as Chris Paul has so far averaged 28 points a game.  Strangely enough, Paul has managed to score that much on one less shot per game than he took last year, compensating instead with other-worldly shooting percentages of 66% from the field and 82% from three.  The dude is crazy.

Unfortunately for the Hornets, Paul may be on fire, but their interior defense has been terrible, allowing opposing players to shoot 52% inside the three-point stripe.  They've also been unable to control the boards, giving up a two to one advantage on the offensive glass.(6.8 orebs for Hornets, 12 on average per opponent)  Since rebounding is a particular strength of the Mavericks, as Dampier, Marion, and Kidd are above-average rebounders at their position and Nowitzki is no slouch, things could get ugly tonight if the Hornets don't clean the glass.

Injuries:

Mavericks: Josh Howard and Tim Thomas remain out.  Drew Gooden is Day-to-Day but did not play last night against the Jazz.
Hornets: Diogu's knee has healed enough to allow him to practice.  No word yet if he'll be able to play.

Positional Analysis

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