Hornets.com postgame: Warriors 103, Hornets 96
By: Jim Eichenhofer, Hornets.com, @Jim_Eichenhofer
Warriors (17-8), Hornets (5-19)
It was over when… Golden State’s Stephen Curry drained a pair of free throws with 25 seconds remaining, giving the Warriors a three-possession advantage at 103-96. Curry, the son of Hornets all-time leading scorer Dell Curry, helped Golden State turn back a New Orleans comeback in the fourth quarter. The Hornets trailed for virtually the entire game before they methodically sliced into a 10-point deficit in the final period. New Orleans dropped to 0-2 on the current four-game road trip, which continues in less than 24 hours against the Clippers, and has lost eight in a row.
Hornets MVP: Anthony Davis again showed some of what the Hornets had greatly missed during his absence due to an ankle injury. The No. 1 overall draft pick totaled 15 points and 16 rebounds, including five offensive boards. He was also disruptive on defense, using his length to come up with four steals and one block. The Kentucky product went 7-for-7 from the foul line, improving his season rate to 49-for-58 (84.4 percent). He shot 70.9 percent on free throws in his championship-winning collegiate season.
Hornets Sixth Man of the Game: Ryan Anderson was ultra-aggressive on offense, firing 22 shots in an attempt to keep New Orleans within striking distance all evening. In his return to the reserve unit (replaced by Davis in the starting group), Anderson scored a team-best 28 points, while going 4-for-14 on three-pointers. He scored exactly 14 points in each half.
The buzz on… another narrow loss on the road. In one revealing statistic, among the 30 NBA teams, the Hornets rank 19th in average scoring margin during road games. At minus 4.4 points per away game, New Orleans is ahead of several highly-regarded teams in that category, including Boston, Portland, Houston and Dallas. Yet the Hornets have only a 2-9 road record to show for being consistently competitive on the road. Along with impressive victories at Chicago and the Clippers, New Orleans has already dropped agonizing, what-could-have-been games in Houston, Milwaukee, Indiana (in OT), Phoenix (in OT), Oklahoma City and Portland. Chalk it up to inexperience (the Hornets are the second-youngest team in the NBA) or having so many new faces in new roles (only six players returned from last season), but arguably the most frustrating aspect of 2012-13 has been regularly coming up a play or two shy of winning games in hostile environments.