20 years ago today: Peja Stojaković opens with 20 straight points and finishes with a career-high 42 as the Hornets beat Charlotte in Oklahoma City

Twenty years ago today, on Tuesday, November 14, 2006, Peja Stojaković did something no NBA player had done before: he opened a game by scoring the first 20 points for his team, and he did it in 6 minutes 24 seconds. The New Orleans/Oklahoma City Hornets went on to beat the Charlotte Bobcats 94-85 at the Ford Center, now called Paycom Center, in Oklahoma City, and Stojaković finished with a career-high 42. The game tipped at 8 p.m. local time, which was already 4 a.m. on Wednesday in Cairo.

It was a strange setting for a record. The Hornets were in the second of two seasons spent in Oklahoma City after Hurricane Katrina displaced them from New Orleans. Stojaković was a new arrival, and the night showed why the team had spent so much to get him.

The newcomer and the slump

In July 2006 the Hornets agreed to a five-year, $64 million contract with Stojaković, who had been an All-Star three times with Sacramento, in 2002, 2003 and 2004, and had won the three-point contest in 2002 and 2003. He had split the 2005-06 season between the Kings and the Pacers, and he had opted out of the final year of his contract to get a long-term deal. The Hornets wanted a shooter to play alongside Chris Paul.

New Orleans had started 4-0, then lost three in a row. Charlotte arrived with a 1-5 record and a first-year starter in Adam Morrison, the No. 3 pick of the 2006 draft. Neither team had much momentum, which made what happened in the first six and a half minutes even more unexpected.

The first 20

From the opening tip, every Hornets possession seemed to end with Stojaković. For the first 6 minutes 24 seconds, every point the Hornets scored was his. The streak ended at 20.

He finished the quarter with 22 points on 7-of-7 shooting, including 4-of-4 on threes, plus 4-of-4 at the line, in 10 minutes 58 seconds. That broke the franchise record for points in a first quarter, set by Baron Davis with 21 on October 31, 2001, when the team was still in Charlotte. Charlotte did answer: Emeka Okafor had 15 points in the first quarter and the Bobcats shot 14-of-21, so the game was tied at 34 after 12 minutes.

A game that had to be won twice

• First half: Stojaković added one free throw in the second quarter, missing both of his shots, and the Hornets led 55-52 at halftime with 23 of those points his own.
• Third quarter: He scored eight on 4-of-7 shooting and New Orleans led 72-68 going into the fourth.
• Fourth quarter: He scored 11 points on 4-of-6 shooting in a 22-17 quarter for the Hornets, and chased down three loose balls. Late in the period he made a fast-break layup and a jumper that put New Orleans up 87-82 with just over two minutes left.
• Final line: 42 points on 15-of-22 shooting, 5-of-10 on threes and 7-of-8 on free throws, with eight rebounds and two steals in 37 minutes 44 seconds.

The numbers behind the headline are lopsided. Stojaković made 15 of the Hornets’ 35 field goals, which is three times as many as the other four starters combined (5). The team shot 35-of-86 overall. Charlotte shot 35-of-77 but committed 18 turnovers and made only 13 of 23 free throws and its bench scored 27 points.

Paul’s quiet night, and what they said

Paul, then in his second season, did not make a field goal. He went 0-for-8, but he handed out 10 assists, took three steals and made both free throws, which meant the Hornets’ point guard scored two points and still finished a plus-10 in 33 minutes. Bobby Jackson added 14 points off the bench and Jannero Pargo 10.

“I came in aggressive, and our guys kept finding me,” Stojaković said afterward. “I tried to keep a shooters’ mentality, get open and make shots, that’s what I do, and luckily for me and my team, those shots went in.”

Paul said Stojaković did a lot more than shoot. “He did everything for us. He rebounded, he came off screens, made steals,” Paul said. “He had an unbelievable all-around game.”

Hornets coach Byron Scott said he could see it from the first possession. “He came out on fire from the start, and you could see the determination in his face,” Scott said. “He just picked it up big time for us.” He added: “That’s why we brought him here, to get open and make big shots.”

The other side

Charlotte had its own big numbers. Okafor finished with 25 points, 16 rebounds and a career-high seven blocks. Morrison had 21 points on 9-of-18 shooting, matching his career high at the time, and Sean May had 18 points and 11 rebounds off the bench. It was the Bobcats’ fourth straight loss, and it left them 1-6.

The records, and the cost

• Quarter record: 22 first-quarter points passed Davis’s franchise mark of 21 from 2001.
• Franchise ranking: At the time, 42 points was the third-highest single-game total in franchise history, behind Jamaal Mashburn’s 50 and Larry Johnson’s 44.
• The 20 straight: The run of 20 consecutive points to open a game is credited as a first in NBA history, and 42 is still the most he ever scored in the league.

The night was also close to the end of his season. Stojaković played five more games for the Hornets, and back spasms then kept him out. He missed nine games before undergoing surgery on December 17, 2006, to remove a disc fragment from his lower back, and he did not return that season. He had played 13 games, scoring 17.8 points per game, and New Orleans/Oklahoma City missed the playoffs without him.

What came next

He came back healthy enough in 2007-08 to start all 77 games he played and make 231 three-pointers, the second most in the league, while shooting .441 from deep, fifth best. The Hornets won a franchise-record 56 games and their first division title, and beat Dallas in the first round before losing a seven-game series to the Spurs in the second. In the first two games of that series, both Hornets wins, Stojaković averaged 23.5 points and shot 63.7 percent on threes.

He was traded to Toronto in February 2011, was waived, and signed with the Mavericks, where he came off the bench for the team that won the 2011 championship, averaging 7.1 points and shooting 37.7 percent on threes in 19 playoff games. He finished his career with 13,647 points and a 40.1 percent career mark from three, and the 42 he scored in Oklahoma City is still his career high.