NO PLACE LIKE HOME

The goal for the Hornets in Friday night's regular-season home opener against the Sacramento Kings was simple: improvement.

Specifically, Coach Byron Scott wanted to see better play from his team on the defensive end, where in Wednesday night's opening loss to the San Antonio Spurs, they seemed to become demoralized after numerous misadventures on the offensive side that, in turn, created stagnancy on defense resulting in a 113-96 loss.

If the last 1:26 of the game was any indication, consider it mission accomplished. The Hornets shut down the pesky Kings over that stretch, forcing a 24-second violation and getting two huge blocked shots from center Emeka Okafor as New Orleans took a hard-earned 97-92 victory in front of a noisy sellout crowd of 17,306.

"That was huge, that was big for us," guard Chris Paul said of the team's defensive resurgence down the stretch, which complemented his 13 points in the game's last 5:47, including a critical three-point play following that shot clock violation that erased a three-point Kings' lead.

"I just tried to be a little bit more aggressive," Paul said. When the game gets tight, you've got to sort of force the issue."

No player came up as big as Okafor, the newly acquired post presence.

Not only did he swat two shots in the final 7.6 seconds, his emphatic follow slam dunk of a Paul miss with 43.9 seconds to go gave the Hornets the lead for good at 93-91, setting the table for a frenetic finish.

"It just came to crunch time, and I just had to make a play," said Okafor, who finished with 11 points, 13 rebounds and four blocks. "I was just happy I was able to contribute considering I didn't have a preseason. It was on my mind. I wanted to have a decent first impression."

It wasn't the all-encompassing breakthrough for which Scott hoped: The Kings outrebounded New Orleans 52-43 and had 21 offensive rebounds. They hung around with a chance to at least send the game into overtime had the Hornets' defense not shut them down in the final seconds.

"We won," said Scott, "but how we played wasn't good enough. We allowed them to come in here and dominate. If we expect to be a good basketball team, we have to be a good defensive and rebounding team, and tonight we weren't. We got lucky and got a win."

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