Hornets247.com

-- John Reid, The Times Picayune

LOS ANGELES – With their playoff hopes virtually a long shot now with 14 games remaining, the New Orleans Hornets were in jeopardy of losing eight consecutive road games for the first time since the 2004-05 season when they won only 18 games.

Desperate to avoid another setback, forward David West scored 24 points and the Hornets’ 17-4 spurt in the fourth quarter put away the Los Angeles Clippers 108-100 on Monday night before 15,617 at the Staples Center.

It was New Orleans’ first road victory since a Feb. 6 game at Charlotte. The Hornets defeated the struggling Clippers for the 13th consecutive time.

Read the complete article »

-- John Reid, The Times Picayune

LOS ANGELES - Despite playing with only eight players again Monday night against the Los Angeles Clippers, New Orleans Hornets Coach/General Manager Jeff Bower said they have not explored the possibility of signing a player from the NBA Development League or offering a 10-day contract to a veteran free agent.

The Hornets entered Monday night’s game against the Los Angeles Clippers trailing the Portland Trail Blazers by 7 1/2 games for the eighth and final playoff spot, but they have not been mathematically eliminated from the playoffs.

Read the complete article »

-- John Reid, The Times Picayune

LOS ANGELES - The New Orleans Hornets ended a seven-game road losing streak by defeating the Los Angeles Clippers 108-100 Monday night before 15,617 at the Staples Center. It was the Hornets' first road victory since Feb. 6 at Charlotte.

It was the Hornets' 13th consecutive victory against the Clippers. David West led the Hornets with 24 points, and rookie point guard Darren Collison had 18. Rookie Marcus Thornton finished with 17 despite starting the game by missing 12 of 15 attempts.

Read the complete article »

-- Chris Palmer, ESPN The Magazine

Collison is averaging 18.6 points, 8.3 assists and an exhausting 38.5 minutes in the 23 games he's started while Paul's been out for injuries. He set a franchise rookie record with 18 assists on Jan. 30 and chalked up a triple-double eight games later. And it surprised no one when he was named Western Conference Rookie of the Month for February. "He's lucky I got hurt, isn't he?" jokes Paul.

Collison has been so Paul-like, in fact, that some court whisperers suggest he has made his discontented teammate expendable in New Orleans. Collison, wisely, treats that kind of talk like a good rook should. "I don't think people should be saying that kind of stuff," he says. Were Paul to leave, no one would miss him more than Collison would.

((Sigh. Discontented teammate? Why ruin a good article like that?))

Read the complete article »

-- John Reid, The Times Picayune

New Orleans Hornets Coach Jeff Bower was in a deep discussion with his assistants during a third-quarter timeout, trying to come up with an effective plan to stop the Phoenix Suns from exposing his team’s interior defense flaws.

The Hornets defended well for a quarter, but Bower could not come up with anything to keep it going once the Suns regained control of the game midway in the third behind power forward Amar’e Stoudemire, who scored a game-high 36 points.

Giving up too many layups, dunks and putbacks were the contributing factors that sealed Hornets’ 120-106 loss to the Phoenix Suns on Sunday night at the US Airways Center.

The Hornets suffered their seventh consecutive road loss – tying their longest road streak since the 2005-06 season.

Read the complete article »

-- Paul Coro, The Arizona Republic

The Suns avoided consecutive losses for a sixth consecutive time Sunday night, dominating shorthanded New Orleans 120-106 at US Airways Center with Stoudemire continuing his post-All-Star break tear.

Stoudemire recorded his seventh 30-point game since the break, with 36 points, making all 14 of his free throws and 11 of 17 shots, and 12 rebounds. That, along with Steve Nash's 13 points and 12 assists in his 1,000th career game, led the Suns' 57.5 percent shooting against the fading Hornets, who had eight available players and are 11-18 this season without Chris Paul.

Read the complete article »

-- Jim Eichenhofer, Hornets.com

The Hornets (32-35) hung around for much of the first three quarters, but the Suns built a 20-point lead in the final stanza. The loss continued a recent run in which New Orleans has seen the gap between it and Portland rapidly expand. Consider that on Feb. 27, the Hornets were only two games out of eighth place. Two weeks later, after New Orleans has gone 1-7 and Portland conversely has gone 7-1, the two-game margin has quadrupled to eight games.

Even if New Orleans were to win all of its remaining 15 games, it still would not be able to overtake Portland unless the Blazers finished worse than 7-6 in their final 13 contests.

Read the complete article »

-- Associated Press

Hornets forward James Posey did not travel with the team to Phoenix on Saturday and will miss Sunday night's game against the Suns.

Posey sat out Friday night's loss to Denver with flulike symptoms. Hornets spokesman Dennis Rogers says his status for Monday's road game against the Los Angeles Clippers is uncertain.

Meanwhile, Rogers said reserve center Sean Marks will undergo right shoulder surgery on Tuesday morning and will be out the remainder of the season.

Read the complete article »

-- Jim Eichenhofer, Hornets.com

After New Orleans (32-33) overcame a 21-point deficit and prevailed in overtime at Memphis on Jan. 30, it was easy to wonder if perhaps the Hornets could withstand the injury absence of Chris Paul. Following that record-breaking performance by Darren Collison, New Orleans was actually above .500 this season in games missed by its three-time All-Star point guard.

Over the ensuing six weeks, however, reality has begun to set in for the CP3-less Hornets. Although Collison has been outstanding more often than not and done about as well as you could possibly imagine in his unexpected role, New Orleans is just 6-12 over the past 5 1/2 weeks. The Hornets are 11-16 overall in the 27 games that Paul has not played in 2009-10, not terrible given the way many NBA teams might fare without their best player, but a record that has dropped New Orleans to 5 1/2 games out of eighth place in the Western Conference.

Read the complete article »

-- Jimmy Smith, The Times-Picayune

When small forward Peja Stojakovic was declared out for at least two weeks with a lower abdominal strain, Wright once again became the New Orleans Hornets' starter at the position Wednesday night. It was the first time since the seventh game of the regular season, the last in Byron Scott’s misguided attempt at utilizing Wright’s abundant, yet unrefined, attributes in the starting lineup, that Wright was a starter.

In November, when it was obvious the experiment wasn’t working, Scott reinserted Stojakovic as the starter, and Wright again was relegated to spot minutes in and out of the rotation, even after Jeff Bower took over as coach on Nov. 13.

Read the complete article »