Bob Licht

Consistency

It’s not just being down two games to none. It’s not just watching Iverson put up 55 one night and 29 the next. It’s the ill feeling all Hornets fans got when not one but two stars were knocked out with injuries.

Let’s be honest about the Hornets first season in New Orleans. As well as things have gone operationally, it has been far from a cakewalk on the floor.

Point in case: the Hornets ad campaign, “Get Buzzin’ With The Hornets”, featured all five projected starters on billboards across town. The group - Baron Davis, Jamal Mashburn, Elden Campbell, PJ Brown, and David Wesley – never played a single game together this season.

Let me repeat that. Paul Silas’ projected starting lineup NEVER PLAYED A SINGLE GAME TOGETHER during the 2002-2003 season.

The injuries came as fast and furious as a named storm in the Gulf. First Campbell, then Davis, and then Wesley.

Those thoughts have been floating around inside my head since the clock struck 5:15 in Philadelphia prior to Game 2 of the Hornets best-of-seven playoff series against the Sixers.

That was the time the Hornets officially ruled point guard Baron Davis out of the contest because of swelling in his left knee. Davis re-injured the bothersome knee during the series opener. Although unrelated to the first injury to his left knee this season (torn cartilage), it was a bothersome bruise that needed rest.

Then, in the third quarter of the same game leading scorer Jamal Mashburn suffered a freak injury to his shooting hand; a bone chip to his right middle finger.

Mashburn’s injury was significantly crueler.

A year ago this month, the Hornets leading scorer started Game 1 of the opening round series against Orlando and played the first 10 minutes before falling ill and leaving the game. He never returned to the court after suffering a myriad of symptoms and was ultimately diagnosed with positional vertigo.

His comeback this season was nothing short of phenomenal. He played in all 82 games for the first time in his career, earned his first All-Star berth, and was so dominant in the month of February that he was named Eastern Conference Player of the Month.

So seeing Mashburn felled by a finger injury in Game 2 is as unkind as displaying the batting averages of the Detroit Tigers on scoreboards across the country this season (for those of you who care, there are 10 players hitting below the dreaded Mendoza Line on baseball’s worst team).

Likewise, to see Davis battle still another physical malady during the post season is the worst kind of luck imaginable. Call it dumb luck. From back spasms to knee surgery to a knee bruise, Baron has not had a realistic opportunity to celebrate his breakthrough $84 million dollar contract signed last summer.

Still, I’ll bet both Mashburn and Davis would have traded part of their regular season for the promise of a healthy playoff.

That will not happen for either Hornet star this post season.

Injuries. Every team gets them. The Hornets just never stopped receiving theirs.

But injuries do help explain not only the two game deficit to Philadelphia in its first round playoff series, but also a season where New Orleans raced to a franchise-record 17-7 start, went 7-17 in its next 24 games to fall to .500 and eventually finished with the Eastern Conference’s second best record during the second half.

When the final script for the Hornets first season in New Orleans is written it should be headlined with an asterisk (*) since the thing that occurred with any consistency at all were injuries.