Hornets running out of time to reach their promise

[NJNJ]

As Yogi Berra might have said if he'd ever dribbled a basketball through the French Quarter: It's getting late early for the New Orleans Hornets.

 

The brand new year has just begun and already the Hornets' season is on the brink. Even after Monday night's 91-87 win at Utah, New Orleans is just 3-13 on the road. That doesn't bode well for a team that is still facing 10 of its next 15 away from home.

 

"It's the hurdle that we're going to have to get over, finding a way to win road games," point guard Chris Paul said recently. "It's usually the measure of being a good team."

 

What the Hornets have become since coach Byron Scott was fired on Nov. 12 after a 3-6 start is a thoroughly mediocre team, treading water and getting by on a steady diet of home cooking. New Orleans has just three home losses, the same as the L.A. Lakers, Cleveland, Orlando and Denver, all considered championship contenders.

 

"It's about developing a toughness and a consistency and always doing the right things that we have to do late in games," Paul said.

 

The Hornets did all of those right things at home on Saturday night when they trailed Houston by seven with three minutes left to play and then practically ran the table to win the game. With Paul controlling the ball and game, the Hornets got good shots on seven consecutive possessions to finish the game.

 

Then Paul took the final minutes into the palm of his hand against the Jazz, scoring buckets, dishing a big assist to David West and sealing the win with a critical steal off a pass from Deron Williams.

 

"You can talk about new players getting adjusted to a new team and everybody trying to learn their roles, which might be different from before," said center Emeka Okafor, who came from Charlotte during the offseason in the trade for Tyson Chandler. "But we're more than 30 games and more than two months into the season now and that phase is over. We should be comfortable now. It's time to click."

 

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