Grizzlies 115, Bobcats 107

Hey, did anyone notice that both Timbaland AND Rick Rubin had birthdays yesterday? That’s a pretty amazing coincidence, in my opinion—two superstar music producers having the same birthday….huh. What does this have to do with the latest Bobcats lost to Memphis? Nothing, except that I noticed it while flipping through the newspaper while the game was on…because there was no television coverage of it!! This now marks the second Cats game I’ve missed all year, but I don’t feel guilty, because on both occasions it was because there was no broadcast—even on League Pass. I’ve been thinking about calling up Time-Warner and using this as grounds to get my money back, but I’m afraid of the operator not believing me when I say there’s a team in the NBA called the Charlotte Bobcats. I suppose if I were really loyal I could actually go to the game, but, dude, it’s a long way. Some people insist it’s only 3 hours, but hey, that’s what they told Gilligan.

Plus, why bother going when you already know the outcome? This is why I have no interest in seeing movies like 300 or Hog Wild. I’m positive that 300 is a bunch of lines like, “Without loyalty, there is no honor, and without honor, there is no victory” (followed by someone getting very artfully decapitated); meanwhile, I’m fairly certain that Hog Wild is mostly a series of gag-injuries to Tim Allen’s crotch. Thanks, I’ll pass.

And speaking of “hog wild,” it looks like Pau Gasol went just that last night, steamrolling us for 31 points and 15 rebounds (even though he went just 13-20 from the FT line). “I thought they pulled up their straps and came to play tonight,” remarked Memphis head coach Tony Barone. More like they pulled out their straps, as the relentlessly unstoppable superstar that is Hakim Warrick gunned us down with 18 points and 6 rebounds. And Rudy Gay, noted for getting shut down last year by perennial powerhouse George Mason, was apparently too much for us to handle with 16 and 10.

Same old, same old for us. Out-rebounded, just 67% from the line (I love how the one guy who consistently gets to the line for us, Gerald Wallace, is of course our worst foul shooter), a disastrous 3rd quarter (16 points!?) that opened too big a deficit for us to overcome in our typically valiant but futile 4th-quarter surge…Whoa, I see we only had 9 turnovers, so that’s a little plot twist for you, but not exactly The Crying Game, now, is it? Wallace had another furious 24-point, 17-rebound performance, and congrats to Raymond Felton for a season-high 24 points of his own. Congrats also to Adam Morrison, for finding his way to the arena, because that’s about all he did (3 points in 15 minutes??). And congrats to Primoz Brezec for keeping it under 4 PF’s—oh wait, I take it back, he only played 8 minutes.

The Bobcats at least got Sean May back. May, who’d been missing in action longer than Chuck Norris, had 13 points and 3 boards. “I still got some time before I get some time before I get my rhythm back and my timing back,” May said after the game. Nice, but unfortunately time is not on our side before time runs out on the season, time-wise. Perhaps this is just as well, what with this “deep draft” I keep hearing about. I think ESPN.com's Chad Ford has used the words “Oden” and “Durant” more times in the past few months than the word “the.” My question is, who’s after them? Joaquin Noah, FSU’s Al Thornton, Wisconsin’s Alando Tucker, UNC’s Brandon Wright, a bunch of guys from Kansas—are any of these guys going to make that big a difference?