Bobcats 89, 76ers 83

At long last we got to play the woeful 76ers Sunday night, a team that was down and ripe for the kicking. With the football Eagles playing at about the same time, this game was probably viewed by about 200 people in Philadelphia (an estimated three of whom don’t actually work for the 76ers). Sixers coach Mo Cheeks has got to be presiding over one of the worst situations in the League right now, as his team has no go-to players at all; I can only imagine his pep talks: “Kevin Ollie, we need more from you!”, “Willie Green, you’re just not getting it done!”, “I’m looking for you to lead this team, Samuel Dalembert!” And if and when they ever do get done rebuilding, VP Larry Brown will almost certainly “pull a Riley” on Mo, down to and including leaving the next year for surgery. I’m quite possibly either the 1st or the 1,001st person to draw this parallel, but I find Cheeks’ situation comparable to Alan Trammell’s with the Detroit Tigers a few years back: 80s hero returns to manage terrible team, fails.

As for the game itself, commentator Henry Williams had the line of the night with about eight minutes to go in the fourth quarter. “If there is one mistake the Bobcats have made tonight,” Henry said, “it’s…” And I don’t know what he said after that, because I was laughing too hysterically to hear him finish. This is because the Bobcats didn’t make just one mistake last night. In fact, chances are they didn’t just make one mistake on whatever play Henry was describing. The Bobcats littered the game with mistakes, and some of them were downright creative. The stand out mistake was Jeff McInnis getting ejected in the first quarter because—get this—he wasn’t listed on the active roster!! Boy, we sure know how to make a newcomer feel wanted, don’t we? Yep, we somehow miscounted poor Jeff, the Sixers caught it (and props to whoever on their bench noticed it—is that what they’ve got Shavlik Randolph doing these days?), and he was ordered to leave the game. I’m not sure if Jeff then went back to his mansion and foiled a burglary by two bumbling robbers in a series of slapstick hijinks, but they ought to call this the “Home Alone Clause.” It’s just a darn good thing a) it happened late in the game, b) we weren’t playing back-to-backs, and c) we’ve got all those extra guards…

So that was the winner for Lead Mistake, and it was great, but it couldn’t have done it without an excellent supporting cast. Fast-forward to the fourth quarter, when we built an 11-point lead (mostly by virtue of missing much less than Philly): Kyle Korver and his knee-high black socks (Korver apparently takes his fashion hints by old men in Bermuda shorts) hits a three-pointer, Emeka Okafor commits an offensive foul, Korver makes two free throws, Bobcats turnover, Andrei Iguodala slams it, Sixers defensive rebound, Iguodala makes one free throw, Adam Morrison travels, Morrison gets a technical, the Bobcats bench gets a technical, Korver hits both technicals (this is about when Williams mentioned the possibility of a Bobcats mistake), Dalembert slams an alley-oop. 11-point lead, say hello to a 1-point deficit. Total elapsed time: 1 minute, 58 seconds. It was enough to make you splash aftershave on your face, put both hands on your cheeks, and scream.

Yet the Sixers would only score three more points and the Bobcats pulled it out, after which a graphic on the screen quite needlessly pointed out that this was the team’s first 3-game win streak of the season. Raymond Felton, who better not be complaining about not getting to play enough, had 14 points and 10 assists (technically he only had 9 but I’m giving him an unofficial one because I’m assuming he’s the one telling Walter Herrmann that those horrible “thong-headbands” sported by Mike Miller and Mike Dunleavey are a bad idea). Sean May, Okafor, and Morrison all played well, and Derek Anderson (15 points, 3 steals) has become our George Michael-ian father figure.