By Melva N. Lloyd
After a rough start to the season, the New Orleans Hornets have made the decision to relieve Byron Scott of his duties as head coach. Scotts’ dismissal comes after a somewhat dismal 3-6 start and last night’s lackluster performance against the Phoenix Suns did not help the situation.
New Orleans Hornets general manager Jeff Bower will replace Scott as head coach, bringing on Tim Floyd as assistant coach; the team will make a formal announcement at a press conference later on today.
The Hornets will have to get back on the winning track without their former Coach of the Year and hope that the team can find the cohesiveness that they possessed just a season ago.
Byron’s Scotts’s sudden release from the Hornets organization comes as a surprise to some, but does this not sound all too familiar to the rest of us? Let’s not forget when Scott was brought into coach the struggling New Jersey Nets back in 2000. Despite a poor first season as the Nets’ head coach, he turned the team around and the led the squad to back-to-back NBA Finals appearances; once against the Los Angeles Lakers and once against the San Antonio Spurs. Although the team lost both times, he set a franchise record for games won in a single season but that still was not enough to keep his job. During the beginning of the 2003-04 season, the former Laker was fired and then replaced by Lawerence Frank. This season, Frank’s Nets are off to a horrendous 0-8 start but yet, he still has his job.
Sources say that Hornets owner George Shinn has been in talks with Bower about firing Scott since the summer and that discussion probably began to heat up when the Hornets suffered a 58-point loss to the Denver Nuggets during the first round of last season’s playoffs.
Now that Scott is gone, many are left to wonder what direction the team is headed in this time, and more importantly what effect will this have on their star point-guard, Chris Paul? Shinn feels that this change in leadership is only for the betterment of the Hornets as a whole, stating that “…this is our best opportunity to reach our goals this season.”
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