New Orleans Hornets 100, Miami Heat 89

Not much to complain about this one. Miami played reasonably well on the second night of a road back-to-back, coming off an impressive win over a likely contender, and facing a very, very good team that presented some extremely difficult matchups. The Heat competed and did a lot of things right, but couldn't overcome Chris Paul's typical brilliance and the rebounding edge provided by Tyson Chandler and David West. C'est la vie. I didn't see anything in this game that discouraged me in the wake of Friday's win over San Antonio.

I was happy to see Dwyane Wade play so well on the tail end of a back-to-back and veteran Chris Quinn pick up some slack for the clearly overmatched Mario Chalmers. Quinn wants those minutes, and the last couple of games indicate that he deserves them. Marcus Banks might be out of the rotation when he's healthy. It's pretty sad that Joel Anthony couldn't get into this game - his energy would have helped mitigate Chandler and West a little. If he didn't play last night, I don't know that Erik Spoelstra sees him as a plausible option for meaningful minutes at all.

Back to .500. I have a feeling we'll be in this neighborhood for a while, so let's get comfortable.