http://www.nola.com/hornets/t-p/index.ssf?/base/sports-1/1083662853260510.xml Odds stacked against Hornets Visiting team rarely has won a Game 7 Tuesday, May 04, 2004 By Jimmy Smith Staff writer MIAMI -- It happens in the NBA about as often as Shaquille O'Neal has a perfect night at the free-throw line. Call it rare. In the history of the league, only 15 of 85 times has a visiting team won the seventh game of a playoff series. Hornets forward P.J Brown knows what it feels like to be on the wrong end of the score. As a member of the Miami Heat, Brown watched as the New York Knicks won the decisive game in the 2000 Eastern Conference semifinals. Brown would like to experience the euphoria this time around as the Hornets and Heat face off tonight in the final game of the last first-round playoff series still undecided. "It's a tough feeling, losing on your home floor, it's something you never forget," Brown said, resurrecting a bitter memory. "It's very disappointing to do that in front of your home fans. You just know that it's basically do or die. There is no Game 8. "It's tough. There's a lot of intensity. . . . It's the most crucial game. It's everything. Everything that has happened in the first six games culminates in that Game 7. Both teams are fighting to stay alive and advance. They're going to give everything they have. They're a team that'll never give up and quit, and we're going to do the same. We expect it to be another nail-biter." This is the 86th time since the NBA was founded in 1946-47 that a seven-game series has gone the limit. Not only will the Hornets be facing a Heat team that has won 15 straight games in its home arena, in front of a raucous crowd, but New Orleans also will be attempting to stare down history as well. The Hornets never have won a seven-game series, losing their only previous effort at Milwaukee in the Eastern Conference semifinals in 2001. Only seven times previously has a team started a seven-game series down 0-2 and come back to win the series. And the Hornets have lost five straight games to the Heat at AmericanAirlines Arena, two in the regular season and all three playoff games in this first-round affair. "Things are definitely in their favor," Brown said. "They're on their home court. They don't have a reason to feel scared. They've accomplished a lot the last couple of weeks, but, hey, the odds have to change somewhere. They got to lose one. The odds say they can't keep winning at home forever. Why not now?" New Orleans had two excellent opportunities to halt that Miami winning streak in Game 1 and Game 5 here, wrapped around a 30-point blowout victory by the Heat in Game 2 of the series. But neither time could the Hornets close out the Heat. "We've got to finish this time," Brown said. Yet point guard Baron Davis is aware that history isn't exactly on the Hornets' side. "But this is not an easy proposition at all," Davis said. "We've had a Game 7 before in a tough environment in Milwaukee and came up short. Obviously, that's still in our head. "So we're really motivated for this one, going into the game with the utmost confidence. You don't want to not go to practice the next day. I know everybody on this team has been in this situation where we've been eliminated. "We don't want to have to wake up and say if we'd have gotten one more rebound, or one more block out, or taken a charge here. . . . We know everything we have to do and lay it all out there." Brown, 0-3 in his career in seventh games, said the Heat discovered Sunday in New Orleans Arena just how difficult a task it is to shut the door on a playoff opponent. "Closeout games are the hardest games to win in a series," Brown said. "I don't care if you're up 3-0 or 3-2 or 3-1, that fourth game is the hardest game to put away. They learned that lesson (Sunday)." . . . . . . . Jimmy Smith can be reached at [email protected] or (504) 826-3814. --

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