Another win! AP story here. Box score here. That’s two wins out of the last three with a nice effort against the World Champion Celts sandwiched in between. With the OKC Thunder coming to town on Wednesday, its a good week to be a Bobcats fan.
1. Alright, enough already, I get it…that’s not the real Emeka Okafor. Yeah, real funny. Who is that freshly shaved bald-headed guy scoring 24pts, grabbing 10 rebounds and blocking 5 shots? We know the real Emeka Okafor would never do something like that. C’mon, cut it out. Bring everyone’s favorite Robasket-tron back out of the locker room. This is just cruel.
2. Seriously, JRICH and Okafor put on a two man show this evening putting away a bad T’Wolves team at home. Oak also played some really solid defense against Al Jefferson and was STRANGELY aggressive on the offensive end to boot. Emeka actually played up to his contract tonight. Lets hope this is a sign of more to come.
3. The Bobcats have little to no shot of winning any games without Jason Richardson. He’s the only guy on the team who can put up 25-30pts every night and can score in traditional ways. JRICH’s first half effort of 19pts put the pressure on Minny and opened up the floor for other players to score. Richardson also had two RIDONKULOUS alley-oops in the game. The first one in the 2nd quarter from DJ was highlight worthy and the second from Felton was classic. He did a 180 and then semi-tomahawked it through like he was ‘Nique. “That guy Ajinca, he needs ta eat or somethin.”
4. What to do with Adam Morrison… Adam played a lot of minutes again tonight but didn’t really add a lot to the game outside of a late three and a few fouls. The kid clearly has skills but I’m starting to think that he just needs a change of scenery. I mean, this is the guy who admitted to crying when Rage Against the Machine broke up. He’s living in a city where most people only cry when they get touched by “holy ghost power” at some mega-church. Not a great match.
5. T’Wolves are even less professional looking than the Bobcats if you can believe it. The Cats move the ball properly, rotate properly and hustle like a well coached team. You can actually see some sort of targeted philosophy out there on the court this year. The T’Wolves? Uh, think Sam Vincent-quality. Mike Miller and Al Jefferson are good pieces and Randy Foye has talent but I’m not so sure they’ll be going anywhere but down in the Western Conference from here on out.
6. MJ was in attendance again tonight looking like a stunt double for Morris Day and the Time. Apparantly there was a nice pregame courtside chat between his Airness and T’Wolves GM Kevin McHale. I would’ve loved to be in attendance for that “Meeting of the Minds.”
7. Over the last 10 days the Bobcats have proven that they can win games that they are supposed to and even win a game on the road. So what’s going to take them from passable to playoff-able?
Well, for one, they need some consistent low-post scoring and ideally this would come from Sean May because he’s cheap and convenient but if we’re going to have to wait until March for him to get into shape, we might as well forget about any outside shot at the playoffs.
I concocted the following trade in ESPN.com’s trade machine.
This deal gives both team’s what they want. The Knicks get cap space for the Lebron Sweepstakes in ’10 (Curry actually has a player option for $11 million that season and I don’t think he’ll be turning that down) and in the meantime get scorers and a young point guard to run D’Antoni’s system. Morrison would likely thrive in this scenario as the system protects guys who can’t play much defense (see Nash, Steve).
The Bobcats get big bodies. One a slightly over-priced, slightly over-weight scoring machine who doesn’t rebound and the other an under-priced, hustle-stats hero.
After this, the ‘Cats just need to add a bigger veteran backup PG and they’d put out a lineup of:
PG: Augustin/Veteran Backup
SG: Richardson/Carroll
SF: Wallace/Dudley
PF: Okafor/Lee
C: Curry/Mohammed
Now, ideally the team could weasel some other franchise into taking back Mohammed’s or Carroll’s ridiculously long and expensive contracts but my guess is that that is not going to happen. At any rate, the above squad would be fun to watch and would better fit Coach Brown’s vision of a defensive minded-half court team.
Any thoughts?
Enjoy the win. 5-11 WOO HOO!
-ASChin
6-11, actually.
Bonus in-arena notes: attendance was dismal (as would rightfully be expected for a Monday-nighter against the T-Wolves).
J-Rich's second alley-oop was unreal, and thankfully resulted in the biggest pop of the night from the crowd (up until that point it had been when they showed Maake Kemoeatu and DeAngelo Williams in the crowd).
Agree that the T-Wolves look even worse than last year's Bobcats squad. They were dismal – more turnovers. It was especially fun to watch Rashard McCants pretend to be some kind of star. Dude, you come off the bench for the T-Wolves.
It was especially quiet in the arena for most of the game, particularly early. All the better to hear Larry Brown ride Sean May mercilessly. "UP SEAN! BACK SEAN! GET OUT SEAN!!!" I don't think he stopped the whole time May was in. It's all warranted, too. May does a particularly lazy job of showing when defending the high pick and roll. Couple times he didn't get out to show at all, allowing Foye to turn the corner and proceed unabated into the lane. Thankfully, Foye is Foye and not D. Wade or Chris Paul.
Well, we may have found some insight about Sean May from a couple of fans sitting ahead of us last night. They claim to have seen him at an uptown gentleman's club on Sunday night. Likely, one that features a late night breakfast menu.
The Timberwolves are pretty bad, but they are still an NBA team. My girlfriend asked me if the Bobcats were going to get thrown out of the NBA a few weeks ago. Fortunately, it looks like Minnesota would be ahead of the Cats on the cut list as of last night.
The win was also a pretty good exercise for the team to straighten out their offense. I think this game might prove to be an extremely valuable outing for the guys to understand how the Larry Brown "system" is supposed to operate. The all around execution from every position should help the team's confidence as they're tested throughout the rest of the season.
Jared Dudley and Dwayne Jones put in good minutes to solidify the defense. Dudley was involved in several scrambles for the ball and competed for a Jump Ball 3 or 4 times. Raymond was incredible against the Wolves. He knew where to be and where the other guys would be a few steps ahead of them. Fourteen assists and fourteen points is an incredible showing for a Cats point guard. D.J. Augustin couldn't get it going last night. He heaved up several questionable shots, and had a tough run playing defense. He may have had his first professional foul-out. Still, he hit a couple of big threes at key moments of the game.
Lastly, a tired argument/myth was settled last night. Faux fans have been grumbling that Michael Jordan doesn't show up to the games. These fans claim that if Jordan were around to show his face, the arena would see a huge increase in ticket sales. Well, MJ was their last night and the place was maybe 25% full. I'm not sure this will be recognized, but I think that weak argument for Jordan's appearance has been rendered useless.
Check out our boy! Future ROY!
http://dimemag.com/2008/12/qa-with-dj-augustin/