http://www.nola.com/hornets/t-p/index.ssf?/base/sports-1/108374933199090.xml Hornets go down in flames against Heat New Orleans' season ended with Game 7 loss to Miami Wednesday, May 05, 2004 By Jimmy Smith Staff writer MIAMI -- It was, Steve Smith said, the cleanest look he got at the basket all night. No one between the right wing, the 3-point line and the goal. No hands flailing at his face. No obstructions. Just a shooter alone with his thoughts, his team trailing Game 7 of the Eastern Conference playoff's first round by six points with 44.5 seconds remaining. "It looked very good to me," Smith said. "It felt good. I thought it was going in. It didn't." That miss certainly wasn't the primary difference in the Hornets' 85-77 loss Tuesday night to the Miami Heat. But it still didn't reduce the sting of being eliminated, four games to three. The Hornets having fought back out of a deep, turnover-aided hole, it was up to a 35-year-old shooter who has endured this season through aching knees to keep New Orleans' hope of advancing alive. And it was the Hornets' last gasp, the final opportunity for an aging team to turn back an upstart, young club with a bright future. "Smitty makes that 3," David Wesley said wistfully, "and maybe it changes the whole outlook." But as Smith, who had a game-high 25 points, pointed out, "it shouldn't have come to that." Not when the Heat scored 17 points off 21 New Orleans turnovers, or had 13 steals to the Hornets' two, or 18 fast-break points to the Hornets' five. Not when Miami ran out to a 14-4 lead in the first 3 ½ minutes, seized control of the tempo and brought a strident sellout crowd of 20,286 into the mix. "The energy we came out with was incredible," Miami coach Stan Van Gundy said. And the Hornets couldn't match it, losing virtually all chance to do so when their leader, guard Baron Davis, went down with a bruised tailbone with 3:06 to go in the second quarter after drawing a charge from the Heat's Lamar Odom. Davis' backside slammed hard against the floor. After treatment at halftime, he attempted to play in the third quarter, but his mobility greatly was impaired. He started the second half on the bench, came into the game with 9:39 to go in the third, went out with 6:11 remaining and did not return. "If I could have played, I would have played," said Davis, who scored five points in 20 minutes. "That's all I can say. We played as hard as we possibly could. They had the tempo. They got that lead and controlled it down the stretch." In fact, were it not for Smith's three consecutive 3-pointers to offset Caron Butler's 11 first-quarter points (Butler finished with 23), it might have been a blowout after 12 minutes. Smith's 3-pointer from the right wing with 5:01 to go in the first tied the score at 15. That was as close as New Orleans would get. Miami never trailed. "We couldn't get any rhythm," said Wesley, who was 1-of-10 from the field. "We couldn't make any quick runs. We didn't get anything easy and they played a heck of a defensive game. But we were still there, gave ourselves a chance. "We expected them to make a run, expected them to possibly get a lead. It was our job to just keep it close and make sure we had a chance at the end. It would have been nice to cut into that lead a little early, maybe get it tied up, and made it a little more interesting. But I don't think this game would have gone much different." Perhaps not when your team's total offensive reliance was laid upon the shoulders of Smith, a guy who had played 19 minutes in the previous six games. Or when the opponent for the past 17 days has listened every day to comments about its postseason inexperience, despite the fact that the Hornets had never won a playoff series that went to seven games. "We have a whole locker room full of guys now," Van Gundy said, "who have won a lot more Game 7s than them." . . . . . . . Jimmy Smith can be reached at [email protected] or (504) 826-3814. --

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