Charlotte Bobcats vs Spurs 1/15/10

6 Straight Wins At Home

The Charlotte Bobcats defeated the San Antonio Spurs, 92-76, on Friday night at the Cable Box for their record sixth straight home win.  The Cats improve to 18-19 overall and 15-4 at home.  AP recap here, box score here.

This game was close and rather ugly for two-and-a-half quarters.  In a role reversal, though, it felt as if the Spurs were the team that was really working hard to stay close, while the Bobcats seemed to be sizing their opponent up.  Tim Duncan, who I expected to be fresh after sitting out the second night of a back-to-back earlier this week, might as well have sat out again tonight.  He looked to be playing at about 60%, and looked so slow and unengaged at times that I have to wonder if there isn’t some undisclosed injury.  Or is Duncan just running on fumes in general?

Anyways, midway through the third quarter, the Bobcats stepped up the defense.  Check out the play-by-play: after a Tony Parker layup with 6:16 left in the third quarter, the Bobcats would hold the Spurs to just 3 free throws and no field goals for over 9 minutes — well into the fourth quarter.  Over that stretch the Cats were able to get to the rim and open up a double-digit lead that they wouldn’t surrender the rest of the way.

It was truly an impressive stretch, with the Cats forcing turnovers, blocking and harassing shots, and generally dominating things.  It was shocking to watch the Spurs lose their composure as the game slipped away from them.  At one point early in the fourth quarter, Popovich furiously called a full timeout after a Boris Diaw layup.  Less than 90 seconds later he was furiously calling another after a Gerald Wallace layup.  With 5:28 left and the Bobcats up 15, Pop pulled his starters and conceded.

Boris Diaw had one of his best games of the year with 26 points (10-14 FG, 4-4 3PT), 11 rebounds, 2 assists and 2 steals.  Boris’s lack of production this year has generated much wringing of hands among Bobcats fans, with some wondering whether Stephen Jackson’s arrival had rendered Boris’s strengths superfluous.  But Larry Brown has made it a point recently to get Boris involved, and it seems to have worked.

Though Boris was the big story and high scorer, I actually thought that Gerald Wallace dominated the game.  He went for 21 points (9-14 FG), 7 rebounds and 3 assists; on the defensive end he tallied an insane 4 steals and 5 blocks.  He was the main fly in the ointment (or glitch in the matrix, if you’d rather) for the Spurs’ offense tonight.  Tim Duncan, in particular, couldn’t be blamed for seeing Wallace in his nightmares for awhile.

Bullets

• Decent crowd tonight that got pretty loud during the game-clinching stretch run.  Get on the bandwagon, everybody!
• Cable Box WiFi was on point tonight, so my Twitter game was pretty strong.
• Gerald, just kinda talk about how awesome you were tonight…
• The Bobcats will get a chance to get to .500 on Saturday night (7PM ET start) against the Phoenix Suns, who will also be on the second night of a back-to-back.  There’s no TV, so get down to the Cable Box.

-Dr. E