New Orleans / Oklahoma City Hornets info

The Hornets have had the roughest of offseasons. With New Orleans ravaged by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, the team has made their nest in Oklahoma City, where new fans are buying Hornets tickets at a fever pace. Oklahoma is starved for basketball and local residents are all abuzz at the prospect of having an NBA team in their backyard.

The 2004-05 season was not pretty for head coach Byron Scott and the Hornets. After trading their best player, Baron Davis, in the second half of the season, New Orleans finished the 2004-05 NBA season with only 18 wins and a whopping 64 losses. New Orleans ticket holders were not pleased. And then tragedy struck. Hurricane Katrina ravaged the Gulf Coast and the Big Easy and the Hornets were forced to evacuate inland to Oklahoma City. The Hornets are a young team and will rely on rookie Chris Paul and the athletic ability of J.R. Smith to light up the courts. Oklahoma fans have been very receptive to having a pro team in their state, and Hornets tickets have never been hotter.

The Hornets were founded in Charlotte in 1989, and quickly became a force in the NBA, on the strengths of draft picks Alonzo Mourning and Larry Johnson in their early years. Mourning, Johnson, and Kendall Gill were one of the league's top trios. They earned a playoff spot in 1993, upsetting the Boston Celtics, but were knocked out by a deeper and more experienced New York Knicks.

1996 saw a resurgence for Charlotte, as Hornets ticket holders who had been despairing over injuries to both Mourning and Johnson, were treated to a "new look" team based on the sharp-shooting of Glen Rice and the powerful center combo of Matt Geiger and Vlade Divac. Rice posted some of the best seasons of his career in Charlotte, developing from an outside shooter to an all-around superstar. The former Michigan Wolverine led the Hornets to the playoffs for two years straight.

Eventually, Rice was traded to the Lakers in 1999, but a new star arose to step into his place. Baron Davis, taken with the third pick of the draft, proved that despite his stocky frame, he had the agility and instinct to become a top-notch NBA player. Davis, along with Jamal Mashburn and P.J. Brown, turned the Hornets once again into a feared team in the East.

In 2002, the team moved south to New Orleans. The basketball-starved fans of New Orleans, who hadn't seen a professional basketball game in the Big Easy since the departure of the Jazz, twenty-three years prior, snatched up Hornets tickets with reckless abandon. The new Hornets ticket holders had something to cheer about as both Davis and Mashburn posted career seasons in the New Orleans Hornets' inaugural season.

Davis and Mashburn have since been traded, but the buzz surrounding the Hornets hasn't faded. New Orleans/Oklahoma City is rebuilding the team around the talents of Chris Paul. It will be a few years before the team starts to gel around the young Wake Forest rookie, but in the meantime Hornets tickets are your best option to see this premiere talent develop. Be it in Oklahoma City or New Orleans, this is one team that will never say die and will continue to give Hornets ticket holders an exceptional show on the court.