One to grow on

• By LES EAST
• Special to The Advocate
• Published: May 25, 2008 - UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.

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NEW ORLEANS — Though the New Orleans Hornets surprised just about everyone in the NBA with their success this season, they figure to be hanging around the elite teams for some time to come.

Most considered the Hornets to be a borderline playoff team before they won a franchise-record 56 games, captured their first division title, earned the No. 2 seed in the Western Conference, won a best-of-seven playoff series for the first time, and had the defending champion Spurs on the brink of elimination before losing the final two games of their conference semifinal series.

All of New Orleans’ key players are under contract and young enough to expect that their best years — and those of the franchise — are ahead of them.

Point guard Chris Paul, voted the second-most valuable player in the NBA, behind the Lakers’ Kobe Bryant, just turned 23. Center Tyson Chandler is 25, and Paul’s fellow All-Star, power forward David West, is 27. Forward Peja Stojakovic, the elder statesman among the key players, is 30 and just completed the most prolific shooting season of his career.

“Obviously I feel the future of this franchise is headed in the right direction,” said Byron Scott, the NBA Coach of the Year. “I think the best compliment after the San Antonio series came from (Spurs coach) Gregg Popovich. He said in the hallway, ‘Your time is coming. It’s going to come a lot sooner than you think.’

“Because of the young guys we have and their development, we’re very excited about the future of this team. We made some gigantic steps this season.”

Scott said he expects the Hornets to get better just by the young core continuing to mature, though he realizes some pieces need to be added to make this a championship team.

“I think David West said it best by saying that each individual needs to improve,” Scott said. “That’s absolutely true. We’re a very young basketball team. I think Game 7 (a 91-82 loss to the Spurs last Monday) was probably the only game that we showed our youth a little bit.

“We’ve got a core of guys who are going to continue to grow together and get better. But we’ve probably got to add another piece or two, and we have a draft pick. If we sit still, which a lot of teams do every now and then, you could slip from (No. 2) to 8 real quick. So you’ve got to try to get better as a group. We put a lot of onus on our players to get better individually.”

Owner George Shinn said the organization’s top priority in the offseason is to sign Paul, who has one year left on the contract he signed after being drafted three years ago, to a long-term maximum contract.

“We feel very confident about getting that done,” Shinn said. “Our goal is to keep this team together and intact.”

General Manager Jeff Bower said the organization has positioned itself to sign Paul to an extension and be active in free agency without going over the salary cap, though additional maneuvering might be needed. West has three years left on his contract, and Chandler and Stojakovic two each.

“We’ve seen this coming for a while,” Bower said. “We’ve tried to put ourselves in a position to be able to take whatever steps to keep together a core that was growing and improving.