And on the 16th day of the month, the Hornets finally won a game.

Yeah, we done beat the Knicks, 92-90 at the Garden in NYC. The hosts had three chances to either tie it up or take the lead in the final 14 seconds, but Stephon Marbury, Channing Frye and Steve Francis all took turns misfiring.

David West, this one is all yours. You may have missed 12 of your 19 shots, turned the ball over eight damn times and let Steph rip a rebound off you in the final seconds, but you also knocked down what proved to be the game-winner and you were right there with a hand in the face when Frye and Francis were trying to stab me in the heart with a pickaxe. You refused to lose this one. Nice job, man.

Diving into some other notes and stuff…

• Linkage: box | recap | video
• The Hornets didn't make it easy for themselves, missing 18-of-22 shots in the first quarter and falling into an 18-point hole midway through the second. They managed to creep within six to end the half, but didn't grab the lead until a Rasual Butler triple made it 83-82 with five minutes left.
• Chris Paul did good. 20 points, 8 assists and 5 rebounds despite the foot injury. I'm wondering if maybe he thrives as the underdog. Expectations were high for him this season and he hadn't quite lived up to them. Now that he's not expected to play great given the injury, he might just kick ass.
• Rasual Butler turned in a real nice performance. He knocked down all five of this three-point attempts and finished with 17 points in 19 minutes. It was his highest scoring game since he dropped 19 in Toronto back on Jan 24th.
• Make your own punchline: Rasual's comments on the deciding seconds…

  "I'm happy that last shot that Francis took came out. Me and Coach Gattison was over there holding each other, so that lets you know how we were feeling.”

• Tyson Chandler finished with 6 points and 11 rebounds in 41 minutes. He was 1-of-2 from the field, 4-of-5 from the line. His averages for the last three games: 8ppg, 9.3rpg.
• Steve Francis led the Knicks with 21 points and 10 dimes. Channing Frye scored 20 and Eddy Curry 18.
• The rebounding differential was huge. The Hornets had the edge, 43-32, and grabbed 18 rebounds on the offensive end alone, compared to 22 defensive for the Knicks.
• There was also a slight disparity at the free throw line. From the New York Times today…

  The Knicks, who lead the league in free-throw attempts, were awarded only 15 on Friday, to 27 for the Hornets. No one specifically blamed the officials, but it seemed to be implied by every Knick who spoke. All of them cited the absence of free throws.

  (Also note the image in that link above. Check the relief on Byron Scott's face.)

• Wrapping it up from the other side: Posting and Toasting, and Father Knickerbocker.

The win hasn't done much for the Hornets in the standings. We remain a game behind the Clippers and Warriors as they both won last night. We have however leap-frogged the Kings and T-Wolves, so there's that.

Moving swiftly on to what's next, and the Hornets have dropped a few hours down south to DC for this evening's match-up with the Wizards.

The Wiz are 35-28 on the season, 24-9 at home. They've lost seven of their last seven, but halted a three-game losing streak on Wednesday by beating the Pacers in Indiana, 112-96. Gilbert Arenas had 35 points in that one, Antawn Jamison scored 27. Those are the two big guns. Good news for us is their third big gun, Caron Butler, will miss the next few games with a knee contusion. He averages almost 20 points, 8 boards and 4 assists.

Arenas averages close to 30 a game, although we held him to 23 points on 5-of-19 shooting back on January 12th. The Hornets won that game, 104-97, despite the absences of CP, DX, Bojangles and Peja.

Tip tonight is at 6pm Central. Linkage and I'm done here…

• AP game preview
• Wizards team stats
• Washington Post
• The Wizz Nutzz