Staturday: Leaving New Orleans

by Rohan on Jul 31, 2010 2:30 AM CDT in Analysis

For now, it appears that Chris Paul will not be leaving New Orleans. But for the Hornets, a star player's departure would be nothing new. The loss of Chris Paul would obviously be huge since he's not only the best player in the franchise's New Orleans tenure, but also in team history. Let's take a look back, though, at the biggest names the Hornets have lost in the past, and how accomplished they were, prior to departure. .

Random bullet-thoughts, because I started this post way back a few hours ago, but am now hilariously sleepy:

It's interesting how closely Mourning, Johnson, and Paul all started. Johnson missed more than 30 games due to injury during his third year, and Mourning missed about 20 during his second season.
The pace at which Paul accelerates away from Mourning and Johnson is pretty astounding (especially given that he, too, missed ~20 games as a sophomore). He took over the all-time franchise lead in win shares (from Muggsy Bogues) in just his fourth season.
It's surprising to me that Baron Davis was only around as long as Johnson was (and as long as Paul has been now). For some reason, I recall his tenure being much longer than it actually was. Davis' departure almost directly led to the Hornets' acquisition of Chris Paul.
Paul's current WS value is actually better than Johnson's and Davis' combined values with the Hornets. So even though the Hornets franchise has seen quality players leave before, if Paul left, it'd be totally unprecedented.

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I’m surprised to see Baron Davis not have a bigger impact on this chart. To be fair, he was the only “project” out of the four that you mentioned here and he did spend the first couple years of his career being brought along very slowly. He was starting by his second season, but he wasn’t “starring” until his third season. It did seem as if his stint with the Hornets was a lot longer than this indicates though.

Honestly, a lot of players that have left the Hornets haven’t really left on the best of terms. Larry Johnson is the only one I can remember where he was traded without bad mouthing either the city, the team, the ownership or whatever other variable an NBA squad can be linked to.

"You play to win the game."

by MrWayneKeller on Jul 31, 2010 4:13 AM CDT reply actions

It's interesting

That when we got rid of Baron that we slumped and wound up getting CP. I think if we are to trade away CP I honustly think blowing up the roster and starting again would be the best thing because then we could try and get a top 3 pick. I don’t want to get rid of Chris and keep on being an 8th seed when we should start over and try to become a championship team. I’d rather be building towards something than just be a team like the Hawks, or the Rockets over the years.

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by Grayson on Jul 31, 2010 8:39 AM CDT reply actions