原文出自nola.com http://www.nola.com/hornets/t-p/index.ssf?/base/sports-1/1104562939254380.xml A REASON FOR OPTIMISM Recent moves, play give Bristow hope for turnaround in 2005 Saturday, January 01, 2005 By Jimmy Smith Staff writer On the penultimate day of the year, Hornets general manager Allan Bristow sank into the cushions of his office sofa, restless yet encouraged. His team's performance on the third-to-last-day of the year, the final game of calendar 2004, had given him something that the season's first 28 games had not. "Hope!" Bristow exclaimed Thursday morning at the Alario Center. Hope for a team that finds itself 20-1/2 games out of first place, with the worst record in the NBA, mired in last place in the Southwest Division with virtually no hope of anything other than the most number of Ping-Pong balls in the lottery machine come June. Despite Wednesday night's 107-96 loss to the Phoenix Suns, and the Hornets' 2-26 record, despite the continued refusal of recently acquired guard Jim Jackson to report, Bristow doesn't yet want to raise the white flag of surrender on a season that at the outset of November had such hope. "Sure, if you look at (the numbers), you don't have any hope if you just look at the record by itself," Bristow said. "And sometimes it's hard not to do that. You get eight or nine hours sleep and you open the paper up and you look at the standings, you can't help but think that. The bottom line is you've just won two games. If you just look at that isolated alone, you can get very, very depressed." But what Bristow, along with 16,905, saw Wednesday night at New Orleans Arena allowed, in Bristow's eyes, some reason for optimism that when the New Year dawns, fortunes could change. "We had a good crowd (Wednesday) night, and I thought we played our best game," Bristow said. "I'm not trying to sell. I'm trying to be a realist. "I really enjoyed watching our team (Wednesday) night. The coaching staff did a great job; we played well. Did we come up short-ended? Yeah. But it was the best -- and you have to look at it this way -- it was the best loss we've had. We would have won a lot of games last night. Now that gives you hope." Yet the transformation of the Hornets' current roster compared to that of opening day is stark. Three players who participated in the opening-night loss to Dallas are gone: Darrell Armstrong, David Wesley and Alex Garcia. Four more are out with injuries: Jamaal Magloire, David West, George Lynch and Rodney Rogers. There were four players who played Wednesday night who weren't here in November: Dan Dickau, Matt Freije (both starters), Bostjan Nachbar and Corsley Edwards. Jackson, who continues to refuse to report after being traded to New Orleans on Monday, would have been the fifth. And Junior Harrington, who opened the season on the injured list but is now active, makes six. Bristow said that Jackson seems to "have dug in his heels." Jackson's agent, Mark Termini, did not return phone calls Thursday. Still, Bristow refuses to acknowledge the Hornets are rebuilding. "Rebuilding means so many different things to so many different people," he said. "Certainly, the No. 1 thing is to try to get your team competitive. But you've also got to realize you're dealing with human beings and personalities and people's livelihoods. "For whatever reason, I really am concerned about each position, how they feel with each move, each loss. What are they thinking? And when you're talking about rebuilding, what does rebuilding mean to Baron Davis? Or P.J. Brown? Or Jamaal Magloire? Or Jimmy Jackson? "That word can mean something very negative. I like to think we're trying to avoid that word by saying we haven't had open -heart surgery yet. And I don't mean that 'yet' it's going to happen. Yet meaning it just hasn't happened. I don't think we want to do that. Right now we've done a couple of bypasses. Hopefully, that's going to work here." Nevertheless, Bristow said while he doesn't like to make trades -- "I don't like what trades do to the psyche of our team" -- tweaking continues to be a possibility. "I think you've got to," he said. "I get calls every day from teams that are from .500 to eight games over .500. And they're talking about tweaking. Why wouldn't a team that's only won two games continue to tweak? "We have to." . . . . . . . Jimmy Smith can be reached at [email protected] or (504) 826-3814. --

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