Hornets Owner Expects More Bang Since He's Given the Bucks

New Orleans Hornets owner George Shinn has taken a lot of guff for his ownership habits. Notable decisions have included moving the Hornets to New Orleans from Charlotte, making noise about the required attendance threshold to tether the team to the city, and trying to offload Tyson Chandler for peanuts to save a few bucks.

Most NBA experts and pundits (and yahoos like me) will murmur about Shinn's thrifty disposition and hint that he's itching to bust out of New Orleans for a more profitable market. But this summer, he's put his money where his mouth is and wants some return on that investment.

The Hornets tried to offload Chandler to OKC last year before the trade deadline for money-saving acquisitions like expiring contract Chris Wilcox. When that fell through, the Hornets were stuck with a player they had tried to trade, and they were criticized for making a purely financial deal while the team was still in the thick of the playoff seeding race, not to mention dumping salary not long after Chris Paul had committed to the team.

After that, the Hornets got beat down in the first round by the Nuggets and generally looked like a mess, only a year removed from a very impressive playoff run that ended in a seventh-game letdown against the Spurs, one game away from the Conference Finals.

The Hornets have been busy this offseason, and Shinn was pretty open with the Times-Picayune at a recent charity event regarding what he expects from those moves.

This offseason, the Hornets finally moved Chandler. Only instead of moving him for expiring contracts and useless pieces, they upgraded with Emeka Okafor, who is younger, healthier, and has a potentially higher ceiling than Chandler. Along with the offensive upgrade, the Hornets had to absorb the higher payroll. Shinn is excited about the move, and hopes that maybe he can change his reputation now that he's ponied up the dough. From the Picayune:

"I think in some way, it helped them. I think it helps us. We've got a guy who can score, a guy who can rebound and run, and he's never had the privilege of playing with a superstar like Chris Paul who'll make him better. The goal is to get better. I hope people will quit (grumbling) that we're cheap. The goal is to use good judgment in the business. Obviously, we'd like to be below the luxury tax. But we made the comment before if we can get below it and get better, that would be great. But if you can't, you don't shoot yourself in the foot and make yourself worse to get under the luxury cap."

Later this summer, the Hornets traded one of their few dependable offensive players, Rasual Butler, to the Clippers, for a pick. Now, that's the Shinn we know, right? Well, even if the argument can be made that Shinn's still pinching pennies, he's got a basketball reason for the move that actually makes sense.

The Hornets have done an adequate of building around their talented veterans without completely giving up draft picks. They've added explosive young talent like Julian Wright and this year grabbed Darren Collison and Marcus Thornton.

But Shinn told the Picayune that he's concerned about how the coaching staff has developed young talent. He specifically mentioned Brandon Bass, who flopped with the Hornets before becoming a standout performer for the Mavericks and who just signed a monster deal with Orlando.

Additionally, Wright has shown flashes of talent but has never been consistent enough to earn playing time. In his quotes, Shinn squarely put increased expectations on head coach Byron Scott and his staff to improve on developing young players.

There have been a lot of questions about Byron Scott since he won the 2008 NBA Coach of the Year award. There have been discussions of him taking the Lakers gig when Phil Jackson calls it quits, and given how the team struggled and was run over by the Nuggets, some have wondered if Scott has "lost" this team. Well, now you can throw George Shinn to the list of people who will be paying a lot of attention to how the Hornets perform in a yet-again upgraded Western Conference.