原文出自nola.com http://www.nola.com/hornets/t-p/index.ssf?/base/sports-1/1099727826146190.xml N.O.'s hopes shattered on the glass Saturday, November 06, 2004 John DeShazier Of course, it came down to rebounds. Why wouldn't it? Rebounding had been the Hornets' most glaring weakness against the Orlando Magic on Friday night, an area where they'd been bludgeoned for the first 47 minutes and 55 seconds, a place where they again faltered within the last five seconds, costing them a victory. Steve Francis grabbed the last one, off the offensive glass, and kissed it off the window before touching down with 2.7 seconds left, giving Orlando a 90-89 win against a Hornets team that played appreciably better than it did in the 106-91 loss to Dallas on Wednesday night, but won't taste victory consistently -- if at all -- if it keeps forgetting how to execute elementary parts of the game. Against Dallas, the Hornets (0-2) played defense as if they never had heard of the word. On Friday, they improved in effort and execution, but seemed a little confused as to how to rebound missed shots, of theirs or Orlando's. The Magic finished with a 53-45 advantage on the glass, 16 off the offensive glass, including the most important one. Francis bounced up and scored the game winner as the Hornets appeared to be spectators. "I thought we did a lot of good things," Coach Byron Scott said. "We just weren't able to close it out. We needed one rebound, and we weren't able to get that." Actually, the Hornets needed a few things besides that rebound. Still, it would have masked their poor play the rest of the game. For instance, it might not have been so glaring that New Orleans again was worked over like a heavy bag at small forward. After the Mavericks rolled to about a 15-point scoring advantage at the "3" spot on opening night, Magic small forwards Grant Hill and Hedo Turkoglu combined to outscore Hornets counterparts George Lynch and Rodney Rogers 31-10. The Hornets are being sliced up like deli ham at the position. Jamal Mashburn might be a headache, but his absence has been glaring because 20-point-a-night scorers are rare commodities. Many players believe they can score. Few actually can. And it might have escaped unnoticed that the Hornets desperately are in need of offensive balance and aggression. Baron Davis scored 36 of the team's 89 points and, if you toss in his seven assists, accounted for 50 of them. Not good. The Hornets attempted 14 foul shots; the Magic made 26. Not good. Things like that negate the fact that Orlando committed 18 turnovers, and that the Hornets had 24 assists and 12 steals. Things like that keep a team from Victory Lane and sends it today to Minnesota, where New Orleans faces the Timberwolves, one of the favorites to win the Western Conference. Things like that, and failing to rebound, keep teams from winning at home, or on the road, or at the YMCA. "(Rebounding) is a mindset more than anything," Scott said. "When that ball goes up, your mindset should be that my guy is not going to get the ball. Somebody else might, but my guy is not going to get the ball." And that, obviously, didn't happen enough against Orlando. "We feel it's coming around," Darrell Armstrong said. "We've got to cut down on the errors. You don't win a championship overnight. You don't win a championship in two games, three games, four games." You don't even get to think about winning one if you don't figure out how to rebound throughout the course of a game or, at least, in the clutch. . . . . . . . John DeShazier can be reached at [email protected] or (504) 826-3410. --

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