League Presents Promise That Return Is More Than Symbolic

The NBA came back to the city with the slogan laissez les bon temps rouler, where few good times had rolled recently, to be greeted like liberators.

Wednesday night’s game sold out. Rookie Chris Paul, making his New Orleans debut, put on a show with 22 points and 10 assists. The Hornets came from 11 points down to go up by six in the fourth quarter....

“Oh yeah, oh yeah, I could really feel it,” said Paul. “Starting with the starting lineup, they were really behind us. They booed Kobe [Bryant]. Man, it really hurts to know we couldn’t bring them this win....

“[But] It’s still basketball.”

Actually, it was Kobeball. Bryant dropped 18 points’ worth of his routine-for-him-impossible-for-anyone-else shots on the Hornets’ heads in a 113-107 Laker win, but it still qualified as a great night. After what local fans have been through, a close loss in basketball hardly qualifies as heartbreak.

The league showed up here in force Wednesday, with Commissioner David Stern heading a legion of his legends with emphasis on those with local ties, such as Bob Pettit and Willis Reed.

Stern and several players hammered nails with Habitat for Humanity. The commissioner met with civic leaders, was assured the area is coming back -- the words “$100 billion worth of investment” kept coming up -- and bristled when asked about Hornet Coach Byron Scott’s recent suggestion the area can’t support the team.

“I would say to Byron, let me make that decision and he should focus more on basketball,” said Stern as he and his players pounded nails in a floor. “And if you see him, tell him that. We’re going to be back....

“Yes, there will an NBA team here.”

That was news: Stern’s first unqualified commitment. Before that, he had carefully avoided saying more than they hoped, expected or had every intention of coming back.

Unfortunately, Hornet owner George Shinn didn’t get the memo.

“Well, that’s the question I get all the time,” said Shinn before the game. “I’ve been saying from the very beginning our plan is to come back and I haven’t changed that. That’s still our plan, to come back.”

A local reporter noted that using the word “plan” could be interpreted as Shinn leaving himself “wiggle room”

“What I’m trying to do is to make it very clear that our objective is to come back,” said Shinn, leaving himself more wiggle room. “I can’t forecast. What if another Katrina hits this summer?”

Let’s just say it’s hard for basketball people, who are used to being treated like royalty, to adjust to this situation in which, for a change, their problems are not paramount.

A few days ago, the New Orleans Times-Picayune re-ran Laker Coach Phil Jackson’s remarks when he learned this game had been moved here from Baton Rouge. Jackson also questioned the shrunken city’s ability to support a team and joked, “Hopefully they’ve drained the mud out of the building and the termites aren’t going to eat the building away by the time we get down there.”

Before the game, Jackson said the amenities were up to par. As he put it, “Toilets are flushing there in the locker room.”

Of course, there were questions about New Orleans’ ability and inclination to support the Hornets before Katrina. However, if it also occurred to Stern it wouldn’t look good to go into court against New Orleans and Louisiana, this trip may have convinced him.

This game was originally scheduled for Baton Rouge but the Hornets, dismayed at the small crowd in their first game there, a Dec. 16 loss to Phoenix, asked if New Orleans Arena might be ready by March.

The Hornets were just thinking about playing somewhere they had a home-court advantage. What they found when they got here was a folk movement.

“I didn’t quite appreciate that folks would place so much symbolic importance on this very game,” said Stern. “OK, we agreed that we were going to have three games here and this is the first game.

“But this is a big deal and I think it’s symbolic because it’s a sort of been adopted as a symbol that some normalcy has returned.”

Just so Shinn got the point that they want his franchise back, Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco attended the game, sitting next to the owner courtside. New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin was a few seats down.

Last summer Shinn could have put his franchise on a rocket and shot it into space without anyone objecting. Now two cities are fighting over him. As people here can tell you, when it rains, it pours.