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Baton Rouge Chat dot com :: View topic - New Orleans Hornets Beat Portland Trailblazers
Posted: Sat Jan 15, 2005 2:46 am Post subject: New Orleans Hornets Beat Portland Trailblazers
Hornets collect third win in four games
Quote:
NEW ORLEANS (AP) -- Dan Dickau's breakout season and Baron Davis' return to form have suddenly made the New Orleans Hornets a much tougher team to beat.
Dickau made six 3-pointers and scored a career-high 25 points, leading the Hornets to their third victory in four games, 112-106 over the struggling Portland Trail Blazers on Friday night.
"I never consciously decided" to start taking 3-pointers, Dickau said. "A couple open ones popped up. I just knocked them down. Then I got left wide open a few more times, and if you're a shooter you've got to take it."
Davis, who returned from a back injury in late December, scored 22 points, including seven key free throws in the final 1:03, to help New Orleans overcome Damon Stoudamire's 54-point performance.
Stoudamire set a career high and broke Geoff Petrie's franchise record of 51 points. The Portland star was 20-of-32 from the field and made eight 3-pointers (tying the team record Van Exel set Monday in Philadelphia), including one with 8 seconds left to make it 110-106. That came after Stoudamire was fouled on a 3-pointer and made all three free throws.
Lee Nailon added 22 points for New Orleans, while Chris Andersen had a season-high 15. P.J. Brown had 10 points and 12 rebounds as the Hornets outrebounded the Trail Blazers 46-30. The Hornets had 19 offensive rebounds, leading to 25 second-chance points. New Orleans also outscored Portland 30-12 on free throws.
Nick Van Exel scored 23 for Portland, which has lost six of seven and eight of 10.
But like the Hornets earlier this season, the Blazers have been plagued with injuries of late. Leading scorer Zach Randolph (right knee) was the latest scratch, further hurting a front court that had already lost Shareef Abdur-Rahim (right elbow) and Darius Miles (left knee).
That left the scoring burden on Stoudamire and Van Exel, who had little help as no other teammate scored more than eight.
"I sure wish we could have had an inside scorer today so we could have got a win," Stoudamire said. "We've just got to find somebody to throw that ball down low to who can take a little pressure off. In that second half especially, they were really guarding me and Nick and saying, 'Hey, let other people beat us'."
The Hornets, who trailed by 17 after one quarter, had their largest lead at 87-75 when Davis found Brown underneath for a dunk late in the third period. Portland trimmed it to 91-85 on Van Exel's 3 early in the fourth quarter, and New Orleans' lead was down to 98-93 when Stoudamire drove inside and scored in traffic with under 4:20 left.
But Andersen hit a free throw after being fouled on an offensive rebound. He then tipped in Davis' miss to put the Hornets up 101-93 with 3:20 to go. He made two more foul shots to give New Orleans a 103-96 lead with 1:32 left.
"Baron's getting healthier ... He's just doing a great job of distributing the basketball and leading the team right now and we're all falling in and hitting shots," Brown said. "After all the hard times we had closing out games in the fourth quarter we're doing a better job of that. We've got young guys maturing. We're just growing as a team and it's going to get better and better."
The Hornets (5-30) still have the worst record in the league, but they are no longer on pace to set a new mark for NBA futility, a distinction that currently belongs to the 1972-73 Philadelphia 76ers, who were 9-73.
The teams combined for 28 3-pointers, one short of the NBA record of 29 set in 1997 by Denver and Seattle.
And the game looked more like a 3-point shooting contest in the first half, when the teams combined for a 23 3s -- an NBA record for a half -- in an exhibition that drove the crowd wild.
Portland was 7-of-8 on 3s in the first quarter alone and shot a whopping 76.2 percent from the field in taking a 40-23 lead.
New Orleans responded by setting a franchise record for second-quarter scoring with 43 points and for 3-pointers with nine, opening the period with a 10-0 run that included 3s by Dickau and Davis.
Stoudamire, who had 30 points in the first half, kept Portland ahead most of the quarter by hitting three of his five first-half 3s.
Then, fittingly, the Hornets tied it at 56 on Dickau's fourth of five first-half 3s. Bostjan Nachbar's 3 gave the Hornets their first lead, then Dickau's fifth 3 put New Orleans ahead 64-61. Nailon's 18 footer in the final second made it 66-63.
Game notes
Petrie had two 51-point games for Portland in the 1972-73 season, both against Houston. ... Portland's 12 first-half 3 pointers tied an NBA record that had been matched five previous times. ... Both teams shot better than 50 percent on 3s in the first half, with Portland going 12-of-21 and New Orleans 11-of-19. ... Stoudamire's previous career high was 33 points this season against Milwaukee. He also broke the New Orleans Arena record of 50 set by Jamal Mashburn. ... Jim Jackson, suspended by New Orleans since he refused to report after being acquired in a trade on Dec. 27, missed his eighth game. He has forfeited about $220,000 in salary.
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