Tonight’s opponent: the New Orleans Hornets.

The Hornets, led by Chris Paul, Tyson Chandler, and David West come into Los Angeles with the 2nd best record in the Western Conference at 20-10.

In the previous two meetings of the season, the Lakers walked away with easy wins and they look to do the same tonight.

To prepare for this game, I contacted the great fellas over at Hornets 24/7 and At The Hive. I sent the same set of questions to both and received interesting responses as usual. You can check out the Q&A with Hornets 247 as well.

After you look over these answers, make sure to stop by At The Hive to take a look at the answers I supplied to their Lakers questions.

LA Ball Talk: There has been a lot of talk about the Boston Celtics, Cleveland Cavaliers, and Los Angeles Lakers. These three teams are at or above a +10 and dominating most teams. Analysts are already saying that these are the only three teams with a chance of winning the title. What do you feel the realistic chances of the Hornets winning it all are?

At The Hive: At this point, slim. I’ve said all season that the only way this team makes a serious run this year is with a new addition or excellent coaching. Byron Scott’s a great coach, but he simply hasn’t been creative enough this year. That’s especially true on the offensive side of the ball, where the top defenses consistently destroy our offense. Running a simple pick and roll offense will be highly effective against 25 or so teams in this league when you have Chris Paul initiating. Unfortunately, it’s too simplistic and easy to defend for the top defensive teams. By year’s end, I expect that the Hornets will be right there on the doorstep again. But it’s totally reasonable that the three teams you mentioned are the ones being talked about most.

At The Hive: Sure- Chris Paul has simply taken his 2007-2008 season (the best by any point guard in NBA history according to a variety of measures, including PER, WP, WinShares etc.) and improved on it. He’s shooting a lot better from the floor and from the line, and rebounding as well as any point guard in the league. But nobody really cares since he doesn’t play in Boston or L.A. At this point, my vote goes to LeBron, but overall, MVP voting is cartoonishly stupid anyway. It’s sad how often voters are caught up in things like scoring averages and flashy MVP “moments,” but it is what it is.

At The Hive: Like I mentioned above, it has to start with coaching. This team has to start playing smarter offense against good defenses. All the tools are there, really. I know many people say this team needs a creative SG to take over when the offense stagnates. That’d be nice of course, but it’s not going to happen this year. The team has an elite point guard, a pretty good power forward, great shooters to spread the floor, and a good defensive center. There’s definitely more than enough talent; it just has to be used more effectively.

At The Hive: Eh, I’d say partially true. He hasn’t adapted well to opposing defenses this year, but last year’s playoffs kind of dispels the notion that he can’t produce “big wins.” New Orleans destroyed Dallas in the first round, a series that everyone thought would be close. They almost knocked off San Antonio, and I think their chances would have been much higher if David West hadn’t been hobbled in the last two games of that series.

At The Hive: Haha, if I had to keep things realistic, I would go with someone like Richard Hendrix of the D-League. Or Rod Benson. Some big along those lines who could come in and play a good backup role. Moving a little bit into the video game realm, I’d love to get Corey Maggette from the Warriors. They’ve seemingly soured on him real fast, and he could solve a couple of our issues- the lack of a creative scorer alongside West and Paul and the general inability of the team to get to the line. And moving into full-on, wacky, rules-bending mode, I’d have to snatch LeBron off the Cavs.