With the advantage of hindsight and more than 36 hours of reflection following Wednesday night's haunting fourth-quarter meltdown in a 108-102 loss to the Lakers, New Orleans Hornets Coach Monty Williams admitted Friday he'd do things differently if he had the chance.
And one thing Williams said he might do would be to play rookie power forward Anthony Davis a little more than the 25.5 seconds Davis logged as Los Angeles outscored New Orleans 33-9 in the period and closed out the game on a 20-0 run over the last 6:47.
"I would do things differently in the third quarter, when it started to snowball," Williams said, mindful that his team had a 25-point lead at one point in that period. "Any time you lose a game like that, hindsight is 15/20. You feel bad about everything you did. I probably would do some things a little differently.
"Probably (playing Davis more). I know that's what you're getting to. I probably would have played him more. But I'm still torn between taking Ryan (Anderson) out because he spaces the floor, and I don't care what anybody says: I'm not putting Anthony on Dwight Howard in that situation. Now in a pinch, I probably could have done it a couple of times, but hindsight is always a lot clearer. And when you have the lead you don't expect to lose it the way we lost it. Yeah, I'm sure I probably would have done some things differently."
After taking an unscheduled day off from practice Thursday, the Hornets hit the gym hard Friday before their flight to Memphis where Saturday night they'll face the Grizzlies, before returning to New Orleans for a Sunday night game against the Portland Trail Blazers.