The Hornets are assured of their first sellout of the season for tonight's game against Michael Jordan and the Washington Wizards, with a crowd of more than 23,000 expected at the Charlotte Coliseum.

That brings about mixed emotions from guard Baron Davis.

Davis said he'll be excited to play in front of a full house, but he knows why the stands will be full.

"Basically, everybody's coming to see Michael Jordan, nobody's coming to see the Charlotte Hornets," Davis said. "So it's going to be like a road game for us."

Davis said he hopes that the electricity in the air will bring out the best in the Hornets, who have lost four of their past five to drop to 12-15 and tied for ninth in the Eastern Conference standings.

"That should bode well," he said. "We'll be focused a lot more, and we play better in front of bigger crowds. Hopefully, there'll be a lot of energy in the place and we'll come ready to play."

Davis doesn't subscribe to the notion that the Hornets could go a long way in winning fans back with a good performance tonight. The Hornets have averaged 10,180 through their first 10 home dates, and Davis said that nothing the players can do tonight will change that drastically.

"No, I don't think that's going to happen this year," he said. "But it's to the point where I don't care anymore, man. If they come, they come. If they don't, they don't. The ones who do come, we really appreciate it. Those ones who are loyal to us, those eight or nine thousand who come every game, we definitely got to play hard for them and give them a show before we lose them."

Winning, he said, is a bigger issue than the crowds, anyway.

"We're three games under .500, we need a win, this is the hottest team in the league right now, and it's important for us to snap this skid at home," he said. "We gotta start winning games. In order to be a good team, you've got to win no matter what, and we haven't found a way to win at all this year. That's why we're three games under."

? The Wizards will bring a nine-game winning streak into tonight's game and have climbed all the way to third in the Atlantic Division and seventh in the Eastern Conference at 14-12.

That's quite a turnaround for a team that was 2-9 through its first 11 games.

"They've got good chemistry right now," Coach Paul Silas said. "They've got shooters, they've got rebounders, and they've got Mike. That's not all that bad. Everybody's playing their role right now, and you can just get on a roll when that happens."

Jordan will come into tonight's game averaging 23.1 points a game. That's down a bit from earlier in the season, but he may be having an even bigger impact now than when he was scoring more.

"He had to find his niche with the rest of the guys and I think he was taking so much on his own shoulders early that the other guys were not stepping up," Silas said. "Now, they're stepping up more. He doesn't have as big a role now but when they need it he's still there.

"You have to have a guy on your team that just won't let you lose, and right now he just won't let them lose.