New Orleans Hornets Interested In Nick Young, Shannon Brown, Jamal Crawford

The New Orleans Hornets and Dell Demps are hard at work, using the phones to plug into free-agents and express their interests. Among the free-agents mentioned in the title there are others including Glen “Big Baby” Davis, Jason Smith and the much higher priority of resigning both David West and Carl Landry.

Demps clearly knows that he has to renew optimism among the team, that it truly can contend. The question will be, how many players think that it’s an actual possibility?

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Nick Young

Young is a Restricted Free-Agent, meaning that the Washington Wizards can match any offer sheet he signs therefore retaining his rights. Young possesses a number of skills, most notably his scoring ability, a big priority for the Hornets. He is not the efficient offensive player you might think, over his four year career Young has averaged a 104 O-Rtg and a 114 D-Rtg, not all that spectacular. However, the guy brings the Hornets something they need desperately. A guy who can score and take the load off of Chris Paul and whoever else.

"“Anybody loves interest and when somebody recognizes your game,” Nick Young’s agent, Aaron Mintz, said in a telephone interview. “Obviously, he’s worked his whole life to get to this stage. It’s exciting for Nick, it’s exciting for his family and I think the interest is great. For Nick, being able to have options is nice. He wants to win. The good part of it is, with him being restricted, the Wizards can keep him.”"

Jamal Crawford

A shooting-guard, premier scorer in the league is something that many teams find difficult to find, other than centers. Jamal Crawford is such a player winning last years sixth man of the year award. Crawford is 31 and looking for the payday to end his career. A danger signing like West and other ageing free-agents, Crawford would add significant on-court value to every team.

Playing on a number of mediocre teams, Crawford apparently wants to go to a contender. Whether that can happen with the contract he wants (a big, fat one at that) remains to be seen. All I know is that the

Hornets chances of landing Jamal are very slim.

Oops maybe not (Check out tweet below).

"One player that came up often in conversations was Jamal Crawford. He’s arguably the best shooting guard in this year’s free agent class and one of the best pure scorers available. After averaging 14.2 points off of the Atlanta Hawks’ bench last season, Crawford is receiving plenty of interest around the league.A number of teams made calls to Crawford’s camp on Wednesday including the New Jersey Nets, New Orleans Hornets, Chicago Bulls, Miami Heat, Los Angeles Lakers, Dallas Mavericks, Phoenix Suns and Portland Trail Blazers, according to sources close to the situation."

Shannon Brown

Yet another shooting-guard comes up on the list, which is no surprise. Shannon Brown is a big-time bench player for the Lakers and is looking not only a big pay-day, but also to “step out of shadow of Kobe Bryant.” While I think Brown is a terrific basketball player, there’s no comparison to be made between him and one of the greatest to ever play the game.

Brown’s last two years with the Lakers he averaged a 105 O-Rtg and a 105.5 D-Rtg, right around league averages.

"Brown, who won titles with the Lakers in 2009 and 2010, has played for the past three seasons behind Lakers guard Kobe Bryant, and apparently wants to move out of Bryant’s shadow. The Lakers’ financial situation — a league-high $91 million payroll with a more stringent luxury tax in the coming years — makes it likely they would not match an offer sheet."

Glen Davis

A player that has expressly made it known that he wants to join the Hornets is Glen Davis. This is in some ways great news as it means in some ways the Hornets can be an attractive team to free-agents. Though, Davis did play at LSU and is from Baton Rouge.

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We’ll discuss more on the other free-agents in tomorrow’s new addition of the Hornets Free-Agent Big-Board, join us then!