Basketball New Zealand

Former Tall Black Sean Marks has gone to the brink of elimination with the New Orleans Hornets

Kiwi Sean Marks got a bitter taste of the other side of NBA playoff basketball on Tuesday as he was unable to do anything to prevent his New Orleans Hornets crashing to an embarrassing blowout defeat to the Denver Nuggets.

The record-breaking 121-63 loss at the New Orleans Arena puts the Hornets in a 1-3 hole in the opening round of the Western Conference playoffs with the Nuggets having a chance to close the series out back in the Mile High City on Thursday (NZ time).

The 58-point margin tied for the worst playoff defeat in NBA history while it was the worst by a home team.

And coming off a career-high performance in game three of the series, when the former Tall Blacks star had eight points and six rebounds in a 95-93 Hornets victory, Marks would have been hopeful of repeating the dose in game four.

Instead he, like pretty much all of his New Orleans team-mates, was largely ineffective against a Nuggets side that had its way with the Hornets.

Marks had no points (0/3 FG) and pulled in three rebounds in 17 minutes as the Hornets were flat-out embarrassed by Carmelo Anthony’s Denver outfit.

“I’m not sure there were too many words to describe that,” Marks told Radio Sport after the game.

“It was a terrible game all-round. It’s a very tough one to bounce back from, but we have to. We’ve got another one coming up in two days’ time and we’ve got to try to make the most of that.”

The Hornets got just four points and six assists out of All-Star point guard Chris Paul who was once again outplayed by Nuggets veteran Chancey Billups (17 points, eight assists). They had just three players in double-figures, with forward David West notching a team-high 14 points.

“We basically let the fans down tonight,” added Marks of a home game the Hornets had targeted as a must-have. “We didn’t put in much of a performance. You’ve got to give the Nuggets credit but at the same time the performance we put out there was absolutely shocking.”

Marks said it was the worst defeat of his long hoops career.

“In games one and two they manhandled us and we had no answer to them. Tonight went the same way. They played like they wanted it much more than we did.”

Marks, who is usually a spark for the Hornets off the bench, admitted he had even failed to provide that.

“I was lacking in that deaprtment, and so was everybody else. We all fell short,” he said.

The Hornets shot a woeful 31.5 percent from the floor (17/54 FG), while allowing the Nuggets to blaze a stellar 56.6 percent (43/76 FG). It looks a long, long way back for Marks and his team-mates now, with the Nuggets the shortest priced of favourites to close the series out in Denver.

Marks said the Hornets wouldn’t give up despite the extent of the task in front of them, with only a select few teams in NBA history having overcome a 1-3 deficit, let alone bounced back from a 58-point defeat.

“You never want to give up, you never want to say you can’t do it. It has happened before, and we’ve just got to focus on one game. The NBA motto is ‘Win or Go Home’. So we’re one loss away from our season being over.

“We’ve just got to focus on game five in Denver and leave it all on the floor.”