Displaced from New Orleans because of Hurricane Katrina, the Hornets were playing the Bucks that night in Oklahoma City. Andersen went back alone to the Big Easy, a man without a team, without a league, without a future and without his brand new $14 million contract.

What he did have was a lot of free time.

"I came back to New Orleans," Andersen said at the team's nearby practice facility last week, "and I'd say probably on the third day after I got the news that I was suspended, I kind of picked myself up, because I had fallen back in that hole and was drinking again. And I was like, 'This ain't right. What did I do?' And it just got worse, and I was like, 'You know what? I can't live like this anymore.' "

That was the day Andersen decided he couldn't be the Birdman anymore - the high-flying, hard-living, inked-up player who'd become a fan favorite both in Denver, where Andersen broke into the NBA in 2001 as the first-ever D-League callup, and in New Orleans.

But Andersen was gradually spiraling out of control. When things went wrong in his life, he'd go party.

"I always had control over [drinking]. It was just when everything hit me all at once it was just like, 'What do I do? I'll find the answer at the bottom of a bottle,' " Andersen said. " 'That one didn't have the answer. Maybe I'll go to the next one. That wasn't there, try cans.' There wasn't no answers at the bottom of no cans."

Andersen wasn't suspended for drinking, which, of course, isn't illegal. And since Andersen had never previously been suspended by the league or been fined, he could not have been kicked out for one-time use of marijuana, steroids or diuretics.

The only conclusion is that he used what the league terms "drugs of abuse" - either amphetamines, cocaine, LSD, opiates such as heroin or PCP. Andersen still refuses to say what drug he used or how often before the suspension.

After sitting out the minimum two years before he could apply for reinstatement to the league, Andersen has convinced the NBA, the Players' Association and the Hornets that he's sober. After a meeting in which Andersen was so nervous he sweated through his suit, he was reinstated and signed a prorated $3.5 million deal with New Orleans 10 days ago.

"You get to a point where you change your life, and you're doing it for good now," Andersen, now 29, said. "It was not a difficult process at all, really. It was more of a challenge."

He had to say goodbye to the Birdman, who could miss 13 dunks in the 2005 All-Star dunk contest and shrug it off. He could show up for a 2004 playoff game with his hair spiked like he was wearing the crown of the Statue of Liberty.

The Birdman would regale listeners with tales of his growing up on the back roads of Iola, Texas, where he spent many of his formative years shuttled between a father who appeared intermittently and a mother who, after initially keeping her children following a divorce, ultimately let them go with their father, who put them in the Cumberland Children's Home in nearby Denton.

Andersen says he hasn't spoken to his mother in more than four years and is now just making peace with his father.

After the suspension, Andersen went through treatment at a Malibu, Calif., rehab facility. He was a volunteer coach and counselor at the Mount Saint Vincent Childrens' Home in Colorado, and he moved into a home up in the Rockies in suburban Denver, where he feels more anchored. He worked out in Las Vegas with noted trainer Joe Abunassar.

He has a new girlfriend he met at a local gym and a support system including his old high school coach, Rob Stewart, his agent, Steven Heumann, and his attorney, Mark Bryant, who has become a father figure to him.

"The Birdman has a heart," Hornets coach Byron Scott said. "A big-time heart. He's a big-time competitor. He's made it in this league with his athleticism and his toughness. If anybody can get back and have a major role on a team, I think it's him."

Anderson says he now solves problems with a much better idea of what would happen if he chose to face them by drinking instead of being clearheaded.

"In that two-year frame of my life, you really grow up tremendously," he said. "Some of those things, they were just stupid, what I was doing. I look at it now, I don't see how I got away with some of those things. But I'm grateful I did get away from them."

He is trying to do it now in New Orleans, a city not known for temperance when it comes to drinking. The Hornets will have all the support available that Andersen wants or asks for, but they will not hold his hand or babysit him when the games are over.

Andersen swears he's going home after big wins and losses, not to Bourbon Street.

"I don't have to drink to have a good time," he said.

The Hornets - whose first preference was to sign veteran P.J. Brown, who opted instead to go to Boston - kept tabs on Andersen's actions during his suspension, though they weren't allowed to contact him directly. Face-to-face talks with Andersen once he applied for reinstatement convinced them he was worth taking a risk.

Bringing Andersen back won't hurt the Hornets in the community, either - not an unimportant consideration considering the team has to average 14,735 fans between now and the end of next season to keep from being able to exercise an escape clause from its lease with New Orleans Arena after the 2008-09 season.

But general manager Jeff Bower says the only consideration was what the 6-foot-10 Andersen brings to the court, not the bottom line.

"He was a popular figure on an 18-win team," Bower said, referring to the 2006 Hornets. "This team that he's coming back to is a team that's fighting for a playoff spot, that has already captured the excitement and the enthusiasm of the community. We didn't need that."

But Andersen still has some fence-mending to do with teammates. He has to re-earn their trust.

"And you've got players who are probably torn right now, because you have some guys who felt that he let us down. So they are probably going to make it harder on him," Scott said. "[But] like I told the guys, everybody deserves a second opportunity. So we'll see how it goes."

Andersen is also a gamble for the union, which signed off on his return. The league does not usually grant reinstatement so quickly after a player is eligible - and has only reinstated a handful of players after two-year suspensions - and is always looking to add more substances and harsher penalties to its lists.

"It's going to be much harder the next time around if [Andersen] messes up," a union source said.

Andersen knows there are a lot of people looking at him and a lot of people counting him out. He hasn't played in his first few games back with the Hornets, trying to get his wind and re-learn the New Orleans playbook. But he's determined to fit in, determined to forge a new life in a city also trying to get back on its feet.

A life without the Birdman.

"Basically, I've been there, and I've seen myself in those situations, and I could very well have been one of those people who killed someone or hurt someone's family or even hurt myself so bad to where I could have been a vegetable," Andersen said.

"I try to keep that in strong perspective because I don't want to hurt anybody's family. You see it in the news a lot, a lot of DUI drivers, hit and runs, killing families, killing themselves. So it was just a big wake-up call. . . . It's time to do bigger and better things."