Charlotte Bobcats vs Hornets, 2/6/10
No Chris Paul? No Probl– Oh Hey Darren Collison
The Charlotte Bobcats fell 104-99 to the New Orleans Hornets on Friday night at the Cable Box to fall back under .500. AP recap here, box score here.
The Bobcats came in on a couple of days rest after a modestly successful (3-3) West Coast road trip. The Hornets came in a night after dropping the first game of a back-to-back and with major injury problems. With Chris Paul already out for several weeks after arthroscopic knee surgery and pleasant rookie surprise Marcus Thornton on the shelf with a sore back, the Hornets had to sign former Bobcats and all-around NBA journeyman Jason Hart to a 10-day recently.
It was a perfect opportunity for the Bobcats to get back on track after the road trip and post another home win — and the Bobcats acted like it was just going to happen. But the defensive effort was rather lacking, no one could get it cooking on the offensive end, and Darren Collison did a pretty good Chris Paul impression to give the Hornets the unlikely win.
Collison was rather impressive in setting a new career high with 24 points on 9-17 FG, 5 rebounds and 4 assists. He was frequently able to get by the Bobcats’ perimeter defenders and finish at the rim. And after Stephen Jackson had cut the Hornets’ lead to 102-99 with 30 seconds left, it was another driving layup that secured the win and gave Collison his career high.
Never mind the questionable strategic call to not start fouling to extend the game at that point, the fact that the Bobcats didn’t defend or play with energy for the entire game is the more concerning issue here. Let’s hope it was a one-game aberration and not a trend.
Bullets
- I didn’t get to the game in time for the “town-hall meeting” for season ticket holders, but was just in time to snag a Gerald Wallace action figure — pretty boss.
- The real life Gerald had a quiet game — maybe still bothered by the hamstring?
- The Cats missed 9 free throws (Flip missed 4 in the fourth quarter alone). If we’d hit half of those, we might be talking about how the Cats scrapped their way to a win even on an off night instead of this gloominess.
- The Hornets were resplendent in their alternate “Mardi Gras” uniforms — seriously, those things are cool.
- Emeka Okafor got a nice hand from the Cable Box crowd, and had a pretty Emeka kind of game: 16 points on 6-10 FG with 7 rebounds.
- Poor game from Boris: 2-9 FG and looked timid as hell on the offensive end, passing up shots and committing turnovers. Someone needs to show him some tape of Magic Johnson taking and making big shots.
- Decent night for DJ: 13 points on 5-6 FG and 5 assists off the bench.
- DNP-CD for Derrick Brown tonight — strange, when we could have used a spark out there. Maybe LB was worried about him having to guard David West?
- Next game is Tuesday night, hosting the Wiz at 7 PM ET.
Sorry. Iron Butterfly was the dog's name. I think the wook's name was Dandelion (or something equally heady).
Why sit Nazr in the 4th?!?
And dude, those Hornets uniforms were ridiculous–and not in a good way. I’ve seen better patchwork skills in a Phish lot from dreadlocked wooks with names like Iron Butterfly.
Guys, Naz not getting much 4th quarter burn is nothing new. Maybe it's especially troublesome this game given how well he played early and how much we appeared to need an offensive spark (and how poorly Boris played) — but if you look around the league, only the most dominant and athletic centers in the league play in crunch time. Most teams go small because the game gets faster and stopping the high pick and roll gets even more important.
Naz wouldn't have helped us get any stops on Collison.
Yeah I thought the NOLA unis were pretty horrendous.
Felton & Jax were both sick and Crash was obviously slowed by his hammy. The burning question for me tho…why no Nazr in the 4th?
Well, I do agree Felton is getting older…but that was the only time during the whole game that Collison beat Felton off the dribble (that I remember).
Either Crash or Jax said this team isn't made up of great defenders but great TEAM defenders. By the opponent's FG % as well as the 3 pt % the team D was sorely lacking. If there's one weak link the whole defense suffers.
Not saying this takes away Felton's responsibility at all. Just saying that none of the guys were defensive stalwarts.
At the least we should have inserted Nazr when NOLA brought in Okafor. I still maintain not playing Nazr was what ultimately cost us the game.
Either way…I'm ready for our stellar defense to come back.
It’s crazy that the Bobcats would choose to go small with Diaw playing so poorly. This has happened the last three games and Diaw at the center spot isn’t even the biggest problem.
When the Bobcats go small in the 4th, they insert Flip Murray into the two guard spot. Flip plays the worst defense of anyone on the Bobcats roster, yet he’s always there during crunch time to heave up shots from the perimeter (or miss 4 straight free throws).
It looks like the Bobcats are very tired right now. Diaw is in a serious funk, and playing 40+ minutes a night hasn’t seemed to help him re-energize his game. Watching Collison shake Felton for that easy lay-in really illustrated the difference in the speed of those guys. Felton may be playing his best ball right now, but he is getting older while the new breed of point guards are all very young.
tempted by the fruit of another