Without any doubts, coach Byron Scott was a substantial part of New Orleans’ impressive run to the second place in the Western Conference in 2007-08. In fact, the Hornets made it all the way to the Conference Finals that year before falling to Tim Duncan and the San Antonio Spurs in an intense seven game series. Thus, Scott was awarded the Coach of the Year award for leading the formerly struggling Hornets back to the post-season.

Unfortunately, the franchise from Louisiana was unable to repeat their success and experienced a frustrating 7^th place finish followed by a first round playoff exit last year. Albeit the Hornets acquired Emeka Okafor during the off-season, the team around Chris Paul did not get off to a good start as they lost three out of ten in the first weeks of play. Even though Chris ‘CP3’ Paul has been spectacular with 23.8 points, 9.8 assists, 3.4 rebounds and 1.7 steals per contest, New Orleans continued to struggle and seemed out of sync. Ultimately, the Hornets’ front-office opted to fire Byron Scott who will temporarily be replaced by assistant coach Tim Floyd and GM Jeff Bower. Albeit there is no doubt about the mediocre performance of the team, it remains to be seen whether a coaching change will solve the issue. More specifically, New Orleans still lacks depth at the wing positions and has no interior defense when Okafor is resting on the bench or gets into foul trouble. Especially the shooting guard tandem of Peja Stojakovic and Mo Peterson is a constant liability at the defense end of the floor since neither player can consistently keep opposing 2-guards in front of him. Therefore, Bower and Floyd are about to face a tough challenge as they will have to try to implement systemic changes in order to compensate for said issues.

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