The Hornets may have lost both games of that tough back-to-back, but here's the super-happy-fantastic news: at least they kept it interesting for us loyal fans and lost them in very different ways.

The Dallas game, they were never really in it, and the Mavs delivered a good old-fashioned blowout. In San Antonio last night, the Hornets were actually on top by 12 points in the third quarter, and even held the lead at the two-minute warning. But then they stopped kidding themselves and regressed into basketball mediocrity by allowing the Spurs to take it.

Notes? Ok then…

• Linkage: box | recap | video
• Damn you, Brent Barry and your ridiculously open three pointers! Remember you're only in San Antonio because the clock in Jeff Bower's office stopped 13 months ago.
• David West has lost his clutchness, if that's even a word. He missed a baseline 15-footer that would have tied the game with a tick or two remaining. At least he didn't throw it at the back of Tyson Chandler's head this time, though.
• Chris Paul bounced back from that atrocious showing against the Mavs, going for 20 points and 9 dimes in this one. Having said that, he didn't shoot great, turned the ball over four times, and played pretty bad in the fourth quarter.
• Some rumblings about Byron Scott's coaching last night in the comments here and on the boards there. I think everyone's being a wee bit harsh on the poor guy. Don't you know that the Princeton offense is so damn complex that Byron himself has yet to grasp it?

  Postgame, Byron was quick to identify the real reason the Hornets lost…

  "We were just playing not to lose the game instead of playing to win it."

  Hey, I'm all for not losing.

• Tim Duncan led the Spurs with 31 points on 13-20 shooting, schooling Tyson Chandler a couple times down low. Just to be a complete prick, Duncan nailed his first three of the season at the shot-clock buzzer in the second quarter.
• Gregg "Two-Gs" Popovich left the game in the second quarter, having been T'd up for bitching about a foul called on Timmy D. But you need two techs to get ejected, right Pop?

  "I saw two different referees call a technical and I quickly added that in my head. It came out two. That means you're gone. If you hang around, you get fined thousands of dollars, so I walked out the tunnel."

  I bet if you dumped a bunch of toothpicks on the court Pop could tell you within a second that there were 246 total, and you'd be like "HA! Dumbass, there's 250 in a box," and then a waitress would say "There's four still left in the box," and you'd just be all amazed and stuff.

• Other side: some dude over at MySA.com posted a quarter-by-quarter recap of the game last night.
• The Clippers lost to the Rockets last night and the Warriors were idle, so the standings haven't changed much. We remain 2.5 games out of the Playoffs, with ten games left, two of which are against those Clips. As much as the Hornets have been losing, they still find themselves in a position to control their own destiny.

The brains upstairs have come up with a foolproof plan to divert our attention from the Hornets on-court struggles: Honeybee videos! Nothing like a bunch of hot, scantly-clad ladies to take your mind off the guys in shorts. Loved the part in that second video where the computer artist guy says something like "The poster really brings out their individual personalities."

Ah yes, we perverts love us some personality.