Bobcats fall to the Celtics in the season opener tonight 59-92.
1. It is often said that a good defense beats a good offense but tonight the Bobcats added a new wrinkle to that old chestnut: An ATROCIOUS OFFENSE will eventually infect your great defense and render it moot.
When five players who should be either THIRD or FOURTH OPTIONS play hot potato with the basketball for 24 seconds, NOTHING good can happen. Players who aren’t naturally turnover prone BECOME turnover prone and that is what happened to the Bobcats tonight. The Bobcats 18 turnovers don’t even tell the whole story. Bad or errant shots also lead to long rebounds, fast breaks and easy points for the opposing team and there were plenty of bad shots against the Celts. The ‘Cats went 23-74 from the field and shot 50% from the charity stripe. Everyone played horrible save for a few solid minutes from 2nd Rounder Derrick Brown and little-used center Nazr Mohammed. Yes, it was that bad.
2. BRIEFLY in Celtics news:
Paul Piece is awesome, Ray Allen is still the best shooter in the game, Garnett’s “INTENSE” Act is TIRED, and Rasheed Wallace has the easiest job of his entire career: Stand around the three point line and launch trifectas over the arms of smaller defenders. With Cleveland looking bad thus far, it’s gotta be Boston and Orlando as the top teams in the East without a doubt.
3. Remember how everyone was saying that Stephen Graham was the next “George Lynch?”
What they meant to say was that he was the next “David Lynch,” a surrealist who believes that just because he wears Michael Jordan’s number, he deserves as many offensive opportunities. Graham is a player who at most should be playing 5-8 minutes in spot defender duty. Tonight he played 29 minutes, taking 11 shots, making 2 and, as a “defensive-ace” is often to do, registered a whopping -33 plus/minus. He also started.
4. Remember how everyone was saying that D.J. Augustin should be the starting Point Guard?
Yeah, we’ve all said it and he looked like a starting PG tonight: A PG who should be starting for an Offensively-Disabled team. One point, four assists, 0-5 from the floor. Raymond-fanatics can take a little solace in the fact that Felton’s -1 plus/minus easily ousted D.J.’s -30 but that’s largely unfair because while Augustin was suffering on the court through the Celtics 3rd Quarter DEMOLITION, Raymond was enjoying a comparatively peaceful time in the locker-room having 15 stitches sewn into his mouth.
5. Was Larry Brown using this as a statement game?
Remember that this kind of thing happened last season too. Bobcats begin their season on the road in Cleveland and get blown out by the Cavs. They continue to start slow, Larry whines to the front office and eventually gets his wish for a roster overhaul and the team finishes strong. So as it is VERY clear that this team can’t score (and before you start with the “It’s only one game” rhetoric, I’ve watched a lot of basketball in my life and this monstrosity didn’t strike me as a “bad game” so much as it did “this team isn’t built properly”). I’m still optimistic about the season but Coach Brown is going to have to go into full persuasion-mode in order to bring in a FIRST OPTION like a Monta Ellis or whoever else is out there. Wonder if Bonnell still thinks that a healthy Iverson would’ve ruined the team?
