Well, it had to happen sometime. I suppose it was slightly unrealistic for us Bobcats fans to assume that the ‘Cats were going to breeze through the remaining 42 games of the schedule beating each and every one of their opponents by 40+ points all while setting a dozen or so team records each and every game. Since that didn’t quite happen, we’ll look at what occurred tonight as a one game bump in the road, just a tiny hiccup on the way to our first ever trip to the post season.
Tonight’s game showed signs of going a little sideways as early as the first quarter. The Hawks jumped out to an early double digit lead shooting 75% in the first quarter to the Bobcats 40%. The situation became even more problematic for the Bobcats when point guard Raymond Felton went down in the second quarter with a sprained ankle ( Is this “National Sprained Ankle Week” or something ). In the past we’ve seen Ray go down with various injuries that looked bad at the time, but always he has been able to gut it out and make it back on to the court that very same game. In fact here at BCP we had come to assume that Ray could take a few rounds from an AK-47 to both kneecaps but only miss a couple of minute of game time. With that being said, seeing him not make it back on the court has us concerned.
In Ray’s absence, The DJ Augustin led Bobcats did a decent job early on even managing to cut the Hawks lead down to 4 points at the half. The Bobcats were undone however by a weak effort in the 3rd quarter. They were outscored 36-22 which put them down by 18 going into the 4th, and that was all she wrote.
Looking at the numbers there were a couple of things that made me go hmmmm:
- In 22:40 of court time, point guard DJ Augustin had 0 assists… Zero!
- In 26:10 of court time, combo guard Flip Murray had 9 assists. Good job Flip!
- Boris Diaw reverted to his old ways going 0-5 from the field with 5 rebounds and 5 assists. When Ray went down we needed him to be more aggressive. He should never have only 5 shots in any game. Maybe it’s time for another Stephen Jackson pep talk.
- Speaking of Captain Jack, he was his normal aggressive self with 24 points, 6 rebounds and 2 steals. But unfortunately we can’t overlook his 7 turnovers.
So folks, lets not get too caught up in this one loss. We will move on to tonight’s game against the Magic and likely get back to our winning ways.
