"For the Hornets, and the announced crowd of 14,421 who witnessed the scoring explosion from Portland Trail Blazers shooting guard Jamal Crawford, it was a bittersweet reminder of what might have been.

Call it the one who got away.

Crawford, who signed as a free agent with the Trail Blazers on Dec. 15, scored a season-high 31 points in helping Portland overtake the stubborn Hornets 94-86 Friday night at the New Orleans Arena.

Crawford scored 20 points in the second half, including a run overlapping the third and fourth quarters in which he scored 14 of the Trail Blazers' 16 points, as Portland rallied to take the lead for the first time since the opening minutes of the game.

Last December, before the start of the season and as the Hornets attempted to trade Chris Paul, Crawford was keeping a watchful eye on the situation with the very strong possibility that he could have signed a deal in New Orleans.

"That was kind of the hold-up," Crawford said of his decision to sign with Portland instead of New Orleans one day after the Paul trade "because they wanted to pair me with Chris Paul. If the trade did go through and they didn't get a shooting guard back, I was definitely in the mix.""