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Posted on Mon, Apr. 21, 2008

Hornets are bad guys, and good guys

By RANDY GALLOWAY

Star-Telegram Staff Writer

NEW ORLEANS -- It always comes down to the people you know best, particularly if you happen to have a manly fondness for those folks.

That would be Avery. That would be Dirk. Among others.

Both the General and the German desperately need basketball redemption after the last couple of springs/summers in the NBA postseason.

Heck, even Mark Cuban deserves better than what the Dallas Mavericks have become, reputation-wise, in league-wide lore:

Money-time, which means playoff-time, chokers is the franchise's current calling card. Harsh, but true. And it's not exactly an undeserved label.

So, forgive me, if I privately have the pompoms shaking in this current playoff venture for the Mavs. It's my usual fair-and-biased form of sportswriting. I offer no apologies.

Yet there was something all too familiar about the Game 1 second-half collapse. The Mavs were Paul-mauled by a 22-year-old kid with the face of a high school senior and the basketball mentality of a Mafia hitman.

We've seen it before. The Mavs have managed to make playoff heroes out of a rascal such as Baron Davis, and a he-got-every-whistle talent such as Dwyane Wade.

But this Chris Paul... Man, how can you not watch him, and how can you not spread the love?

He's a first-class, on-and-off-the-court kid, playing on a New Orleans Hornets team that has rallied a fine old town that both care and the Washington feds suddenly forgot in a time of immense need.

As a local cabbie, Sammy, was telling me Saturday: "It's damn basketball... Can you believe that? Lived here all my life, rode out of Katrina, lost everything at the house, but as long as we still had the Saints, I could survive it.

"I didn't care anything about basketball. But now... I can't get enough of it. This is a football town that is suddenly alive and well again because the tourists are finally coming back, and, at the moment, because this damn basketball team of ours has lifted up the city."

Sammy's final words:

"It's a miracle."

No city anywhere has jock kingdom passion like this one, except it was always confined to the Saints, who played this "miracle" role two NFL seasons ago with a run to the NFC title game. Sean Payton, our old friend from Valley Ranch, became a beloved coach here.

But the Saints are basically all New Orleans has ever had. When the NBA returned here four years ago, many thought it was an NBA mistake. Then when Katrina forced the Hornets to make Oklahoma City their temporary home, the whispers said they would not be back because of the hurricane wreckage. But commissioner David Stern vowed he would not allow the league to pull out. Stern didn't.

By February, however, it was still questionable if the Hornets could survive here. Despite a surprising regular season, attendance was spotty to say the least. As Sammy the cabbie said, "If it ain't football, we normally don't care."

But the Hornets did care, at least about New Orleans. The Hornets, as an organization, are building 20 new homes in the city. Plus, the team is providing financial assistance to rebuild the homes of 39 local teachers, with the aim of helping the educational system to also rebuild.

And then the crowds started to grow. Constant sellouts happened to close the regular season. Those crowds become Saints-type vocal. There was Saints-type noise when the Hornets made their second-half push Saturday night, and the Mavericks admitted they noticed it.

A couple of weeks ago, someone mentioned to coach Byron Scott, an NBA lifer, that his young players seemed to be playing inspired partly because of the needs of the city.

"Maybe," Scott told SI.com, "but I really think it's just the people we have. They've been raised extremely well. You meet Tyson's [Chandler] parents, you meet David's [West] parents, you meet Chris' parents -- you can see why they are all still very humble and you can see they've all grown up in the church. I think that has a lot to do with the way they are as people."

To put it bluntly, however, what we have here is a feel-good story the Mavericks need to destroy, basketball-wise.

In a fair-and-biased way, I thought they would, and Game 2 might tell us if they can.

But to see it up close and personal, to see what basketball is doing for an old football town that needs all the help it can get, I defer to Sammy the cabbie.

It is a jock-kingdom miracle.

Randy Galloway can be heard on Galloway & Co. weekdays 3-6 p.m. on ESPN/103.3 FM.

Game 2: Mavs at Hornets

6 p.m. Tuesday, KTXA/21, TNT

Hornets lead series 1-0