[外電] A win would ease Hornets' pain, but not for very long
原文出自nola.com
http://www.nola.com/hornets/t-p/index.ssf?/base/sports-1/1100591812126820.xml
A win would ease Hornets' pain, but not for very long
Tuesday, November 16, 2004
John DeShazier
While one of New Orleans' professional sports franchises,
the Saints, managed to temporarily Band-Aid the bleeding
Sunday, it continues for another.
The streak of opposing shutouts pitched against the Hornets
is at six, with seven or eight staring the team squarely in
the face Wednesday and Saturday when much-improved Phoenix
makes its first appearance at New Orleans Arena this season
and when Minnesota, which could win the Western Conference
and NBA titles, takes its chances three days later.
Simply, there's no easy route out of the rut and into a comfort
zone. The Hornets still are breaking down in too many areas, if
not all at once, then at enough critical times to have made
victory unattainable so far.
What to do? Nothing new.
"Keep preaching and teaching," Coach Byron Scott said. "You
continue to do the things you've been doing."
But, obviously, they'd better start doing them better.
Scott speaks with the ease and calmness of a psychiatrist,
partly because he oversaw a similar struggle (New Jersey was
26-56 in his first season as a head coach), partly because he
knows what he and his staff are teaching has worked.
But "has worked" and "is working" are different matters
altogether. The pressure is building, even for a team that
most figured would struggle this season and had no chance
of reaching the playoffs. It'd be nice, but would be a lie
to say all the Hornets need is one win to ease it. Right now,
they need six straight just to get to .500.
"As a staff, (we) have to have patience, just like everybody
else," Scott said. "It's going to happen."
The players, Scott said, seem to be getting "a little more
comfortable" with what the team is doing, and a little more
bothered that the Hornets have yet to win a game.
As well they should be. At least four of the six games have
been winnable, but coughed up because the Hornets haven't
always played smart, defended like a game was on the line or
rebounded as if it mattered.
Perhaps it's as simple as making a roster move. But there
always is a price attached, and the Hornets can't afford to
lose any value. In fact, there's not much to dangle outside
of their two All-Stars, Baron Davis and Jamaal Magloire. And
if another team can't be snookered into giving up two starters
for one, New Orleans is no better off for having made a move.
Trades can't be made just for the sake of making a move. Teams
get better when there's addition by addition or addition by
subtraction, but never via subtraction for somebody else's
stiff or cancer.
Forget the idea of moving Davis, or even the consideration of
it, because it would be ludicrous as long as he's playing the
way he is. No, he hasn't moved off his stance of wanting out,
a posture he should regret having made public a couple of weeks
prior to training camp. But there's no questioning the effort
he laid down before injuring his back in the fifth game; in that
regard, he has shown himself to be nothing less than a pro, a
few wayward jumpers here and there notwithstanding.
As long as he plays hard and muffles whatever discontent he has
on the court, he's too much of an asset even to consider moving.
And competent centers are the exception in today's NBA, so
Magloire's a keeper.
Thus, if there's no assurance that equal or better value can be
extracted for either, the Hornets have what they have and are
what they are.
"Like I say all the time, you've got to work with what you've
got," Scott said.
But what he's got has got to work better.
"I would be frustrated real bad if we were still playing like we
did in the first game of the season," guard Darrell Armstrong
said. "(But) I really feel good about this team, still. It's
going to be fun down the line when we look back on this, (seeing)
how it taught us how to win games."
Perhaps it will be then. Right now, there's not much fun to be
had, not while the bleeding hasn't been stopped.
. . . . . . .
John DeShazier can be reached at jdeshazier@timespicayune.com
or (504) 826-3410.
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