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Written by William Guillory | Sunday, 22 November 2009 01:40 | Hornets News
Things can change pretty fast in a week.
A week ago, the Hornets season looked to be spiraling downward at an incredibly fast pace.
They were fresh off of having their coach, Byron Scott, fired after a 3-6 start. They lost Chris Paul, the heart and soul of the team, the night before to an ankle injury that has sidelined him for the past week—and most likely, will continue to sideline him for another week or two. The Hornets were in Atlanta and the team’s morale was at an all-time low.
And it showed in their performance on the court.
The Hawks destroyed the Hornets, 121-98, and things seem like they couldn’t get any worse.
Fast forward a week later to Saturday night, and New Orleans returned the favor to the Hawks, beating them in the New Orleans Arena, 96-88.
Just as fast as things seemed to go bad for the Hornets, they have turned around just as quickly and now their record stands at 6-8--not outstanding, but a lot better looking than the team’s 3-8 record from a week ago.
“I couldn’t be more pleased with their effort and their conversion of effort into results,” Hornets currents coach Jeff Bower said, after improving his record as a head coach to 3-2.
But it hasn’t just been effort or trying harder that has turned what seemed to be a lottery-bound team a week ago into a team on the rise. It has been the play of two Hornets, in particular, that have turned the morale and the record of this team around.
Rookies Darren Collison and Marcus Thornton.
Both achieved career-highs in Friday night’s win—Collison with his 22 points and 11 assists and Thornton with his 21 points. Both have taken over leadership roles for this Hornets team, despite the fact they both are so young. And both have impressed the rest of their team immensely with the way they have stepped up their game ever since Paul was hurt on a Nov. 13 game against the Portland Trail Blazers.
“They just play like they’ve been in the league for so many years,” said forward Peja Stojakovic, who scored 17 points in Saturday night’s win. “They’ve really stepped up and have shown a lot of responsibility.”
Ever since Paul’s injury, the Hornets have played four games—three win and one loss. Not counting the Atlanta loss from a week ago—which came a night after the Hornets lost that emotional game to the Blazers and Paul to injury—the Hornets rookies have carried this Hornets team on their back in a way that is rarely expected from two guys who didn’t even go in the top-20 picks in this year’s draft.
Collison has averaged 16.3 points and 7.3 assists per game and Thornton has averaged 17.3 points per contest off of the bench.
Not bad for a second-round pick and the tenth point guard taken in this year’s draft, huh?
“This is a game I’ve been playing for a long time,” Collison said. “Just because you get to the NBA doesn’t mean you should freeze up. The most important thing out of all this is that we got the win.”
Thornton added, “Our confidence is rising every game. The players believe in each other, and when we have that chemistry with each other, everything is good.”
That’s one thing Thornton does have right, as long as they are performing this well, and the team is winning, everything is on the up and up.
A week from now, all of this can change. That is the nature of professional sports.
But as long as these two rookies are playing like this, Hornets fans can look forward to a lot more celebrating and the morale this had a week ago can be the same thing it is now.
A thing of the past.
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