I’m giving credit to the Bobcats for their loss to the Heat on Wednesday night. I had no expectations for that game, only fears. Playing Miami with these Bobcats is like locking a bunch of 8-year-olds in a room and forcing them to watch The Shining; all I could hope for was that nobody wet their pants and got traumatized for life. And indeed, Miami still shredded Charlotte like a classified document, but we worked a 19-point deficit down to 2 and would have potentially taken the lead if Bismack Biyombo could ever figure out how to finish a dunk.
It’s really amazing, actually—somebody should supercut this. Biyombo went 3-for-8 last night and you could sum up the total distance of his misses and not equal the range of a tick fart. He has the 8th highest turnover rate among power forwards (those with at least 10 MPG), according to hoopdata.com, and a TS% that was last seen touring Brandon Bass country. He’s probably cost Kemba Walker, Ramon Sessions, and Gerald Henderson dozens of assists; although on the flip side, he’s probably given Michael Kidd-Gilchrist dozens of offensive rebounds. He’s at least able to throw some D on that—he’s 9th in the league in total blocks/steals/charges per game and he’s holding opponents to a non-execrable 17-18 PER. But my word, you give him the ball from zero feet out and the results are more fruitless than a cheesesteak.
But this is a positive article! It’s not even supposed to be ambiguous, like play-by-play man Steve Martin’s comment with about 45-seconds left in the first half and the Bobcats trailing by 19: “Doesn’t feel like a 19-point lead, but there it is,” opined Martin opaquely. While I spent the next 30 minutes puzzling over what that meant (was the lead more or less than what it felt like?), the Bobcats made it less than a 19-point lead in reality by cutting off the turnovers (just six in the second half after 11 in the first half) and clamping down on LeBron James like a nipple. Bron-Bron still did his damage (27-12-8), but he only had three field goals in the second half. We also got gutty performances from Walker (as usual) and Sessions, who not only went for 19 points, 5 assists, and just 1 turnover, but also bounced back from a literal kick-in-the-balls from Dwyane Wade on a play that was dirtier than a subway floor (I’ve never quite figured out why Wade is not seen as more of a dick, or a flopper, for that matter, because he’s both—he’s a floppy dick).
Lastly—and boy, this pains me—it should be noted—maybe on the side of a condom dispenser in a Nebraska truck-stop—that Gana Diop has lately been doing something on the court other than look like a chunky 7-foot Snickers bar. I’ve made no secret of despising his complete lack of professionalism and his corpulent incompetence, and it’s not like he’s morphed into Djimon Hounsou circa “Love Will Never Do (Without You)”—in fact he didn’t even score a point last night (let alone spin shirtless in his speedos on a human wheel traversing the desert). But he had 4 blocks and was the only one on the team to finish with a positive +/- over 12 minutes. He even handled his defensive assignments well, hanging with Chris Bosh and Joel Anthony like I haven’t seen him do since he weighed 290 lbs. The team is actually a net +3.5 with him on the court on a per 48 minute basis (not that he could ever physically play 48 minutes—at least, not without a bazooka-sized syringe of dermorphin). So thank you, Gana, and try to keep it up—the blocks and defense, that is, not the dermorphin.
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