Paul could not get help from his teammates (AP)
The last skit of the 1985-86 Saturday Night Live season had the entire cast caught in a fire. Executive producer Lorne Michaels ran on to the stage, saved Jon Lovitz and left everyone else behind to burn.
It had been a really bad year for SNL, which was canceled briefly by NBC before getting a reprieve.
Hornets owner George Shinn might consider re-enacting that scene after his injury-riddled, overmatched team’s inept performance against the Denver Nuggets in the first round of the NBA playoffs. With an inferno raging on the court, he could have one of his underlings rescue point guard Chris Paul while everybody else fends for themselves.
It was a shockingly disappointing season for the Hornets, who canceled out everything positive from 2007-08. You can make a legitimate case that Paul is the only guy, including the coaches, who deserves to survive the carnage.
A year after coming within one game of reaching the Western Conference finals, New Orleans came within one game of getting swept in the first round. Denver is deep and dangerous, but a team has to be almost unimaginably bad to win once and get humiliated four times with Paul on the roster. The Hornets lost by 29, 15, 58 and 21 and won by 2 against the Nuggets, getting outscored by 121 points. It is the worst margin of defeat in any NBA series ever.
Paul, one of the five best players in the NBA, deserved better. Everyone else on the team let him down.
Power forward David West gave ammunition to the critics who suggested he was a third option forced into a role as a second option despite his breakout performance in 2007-08. His regular-season numbers were close to his stats from a year ago, but he shot below 40 percent in the playoffs and was a no-show defensively.
Small forward Peja Stojakovic, bothered by a bad back, averaged fewer points (13.3) than in any season since 1999-2000, shot worse (.399) than in any season since his rookie year in 1998-99 and was under 38 percent from 3-point range for the first in nine years.
Center Tyson Chandler, limited by an assortment of foot injuries, was useless in the playoffs before sitting out the series clincher. After averaging 11.8 points and 11.7 rebounds in the regular season a year ago, he produced 8.8 points and 8.3 rebounds.
Shooting guard Rasual Butler had a career year (11.2 points), but he would be a role player rather than a regular on a championship-caliber team. Consider: his lone assist against Denver in game 5 was his only one of the series.
James Posey, a free-agent signee who was supposed to put the Hornets over the top after winning championships with the Miami Heat and the Boston Celtics, was the only live body off the bench but fell short of expectations. He shot 15 for 40 against Denver when New Orleans needed his playoff savvy the most.
The rest of the reserves were pathetic from start to finish – hopelessly outmatched by their opponents in every department. The Hornets might have had one of the worst benches of any playoff team in NBA history, as Denver’s 23-2 run at the start of the fourth quarter in game 4 indicated. Everyone deserved blame for that stinker, but the rout reached historical proportions when the Hornets’ scrubs could not be bothered to try.
Julian Wright, athletic but clueless as a rookie, was equally clueless in his second year, barely improving from 3.9 points to 4.4 points while his shooting percentage dipped to .466 from .533 in another wasted year under coach Byron Scott.
Morris Peterson, a full-time starter a year ago, fell completely out of the rotation. If Peterson had felt free to make a shot all year (field goal percentage: .399), he might have been freed from his restraints on the bench.
Ultimately, Saturday Night Live kept three cast members from 1965-86, with Dennis Miller and Nora Dunn joining Lovitz.
If contracts did not get in the way, Shinn might jettison everyone around Paul but West and Posey. The Hornets looked sloppy, slow and unathletic against the Nuggets.
SNL became a hit again in 1986-87. Somehow, the Hornets’ brain trust needs to find the NBA equivalents of Dana Carvey, Phil Hartman, Kevin Nealon, Jan Hooks and Victoria Jackson while operating on a shoestring budget.
Otherwise, next year will be as unrewarding as this season.
For more info: go to Hornets247.com for an entertaining, passionate look at the Hornets
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