FanHouse TysonChandler

FanHouse previews the first round of the NBA Playoffs.

Expectations were sky high for the Hornets the season after crashing the conference gates, but injuries and a still-weak bench sunk N.O.'s hopes for true Best of the West contention. Denver meanwhile, picked by many to watch the postseason from the couch, pulled off a coup by landing Chauncey Billups and the No. 2 seed ... a spot where New Orleans expected to land. Can Denver confirm its regular season, or will the Hornets renew their status as elite?

On Friday morning, Tim MacMahon of the Dallas Mavericks Blog penned over 700 words explaining how the Mavericks might be able to trade for Chris Paul this summer:

Rumor has it the Mavs brass let the powers that be in the Big Easy know before the trade deadline that they'd take the Hornets' two worst contracts off their hands in a package with Paul.

Sippin' Haterade is our weekly anti-look at the league we love.

Chris Paul is overrated. Not in a "he's really not that good of a player" kind of way, because he absolutely is that good, even if I'm not a fan. But anytime the guy does anything remotely above average, the NBA world stops to bow down and worship at his altar.

Exhibit A: that bounce through Jason Terry's legs that Paul pulled off on Thursday night.

NBA Essentials provides the must-see links, quotes and videos of the day.

-- "I want every single person that comes here to my blog to sign up for my Twitter feed (http://twitter.com/tysonchandler). I'm only 149,500 people away from Shaq! I was thinking about dissing Shaq on his Twitter. Something to make him come back to mine. That's how it happens on the street. I feel like when rappers start a beef that their album sales go up. So I'm going to start a beef with Shaq and maybe I'll get more Twitter hits." -- Tyson Chandler on NBA.com (via BallerBlogger)

Every night there are some stupendous, silly, stupid, or downright outlandish individual lines from around the "lig." Doing Lines lets you know which one tops the list.

Tony Parker knows his role. With attacker-man Manu Ginobili out for a bit and Tim Duncan's slow steady burn doused by a nagging malady, Parker is the Spurs offense. Following his sulfur burst of a Tuesday, T.P. again immolated. This time, the Blazers got the show.

For the last couple of years Baltimore Orioles second baseman Brian Roberts has made it clear he'd love to get a contract extension that would keep him in Baltimore for possibly the rest of his career. Yet, no matter how much Brian wanted to stay, neither he nor the team could ever come to terms, which led to a whole lot of trade rumors.

In fact, I'm pretty sure that Roberts had been theoretically traded to the Chicago Cubs or White Sox about 32 times over the last 24 months, but time and again, any possible deal always fell through. Well, it looks like all the Brian Roberts trade rumors are about to come to an end, for now anyway, as the Orioles are close to signing him to a four-year extension.

As Brett Pollakoff told you early Thursday morning, the Thunder slapped a "Return to Sender" stamp on big prize Tyson Chandler.

That leaves New Orleans in worse financial shape than before it made the cap-cutting trade. Dropping Chandler for expiring contracts began as an unsavory idea ... but it was a passable idea. Chris Paul didn't revolt or anything. But now the options are slimmer and far more likely to draw serious fire from within.

With the trade deadline closing in at 3 PM ET on Thursday, we've seen all kinds of deals in the past couple of days; some bigger than others. The one between the Hornets and Thunder seemed to fall under the "bigger" category, simply because it sent New Orleans' best defensive player out of town, albeit in a move widely condemned by the players as purely financial instead of one meant to improve the team.

Well, the players can relax now and pretend that this deal never happened. Because it didn't -- the Thunder have rescinded the trade, and Tyson Chandler has returned to the Hornets. The best alley-oop in the game has been resurrected.

The Tyson Chandler Derby has been much more muted than the Amare-geddon (credit B-a-B), but the results might be as important. Marc Stein of ESPN.com reports that Oklahoma City has landed Chandler for (apparently) Chris Wilcox and Joe Smith, whose contracts happen to expiring this summer. (Just a coincidence, I'm sure.)

Chandler can be considered a defensive version of Stoudemire, with little offensive impact beyond his beautiful and famous alley-oop connection with Chris Paul. If Amare could turn a team without scorers into a good offense, Chandler can potentially make a bad defense (OKC qualifies) respectable.