Bobcats Thoughts, 12/21

Very strange win against Utah on Wednesday night. The Jazz were (was?) up by 12 points late in the fourth and completely derailed. Usually when I’m watching a team unravel like that, a) it happens in the 3rd quarter, and b) it’s our team. And actually, I missed a lot of our run for this one. In fact, after Andrei Kirilenko sank two free throws to make the score 86-74, my personal contribution to the amazing comeback that followed was sighing dejectedly and going off to brush my teeth. Meanwhile, the Jazz went on to miss two layups, throw a horrible pass out-of-bounds (courtesy of Derron Williams), and commit 4 fouls and a shot clock violation over the next few minutes. By the time I came back for a cursory check of what I thought would be a deficit somewhere in the high teens, we were actually UP a point.

And it only got worse from there for Utah, who seemed to be on some sort of suicide mission without any upside. They were like Bruce Willis at the end of the movie Armageddon, only if his explosion didn’t blow up the asteroid and save the world but simply paid for some acting lessons for Liv Tyler. Actually, even that would have been a small upside. So I don’t know what happened with the Jazz, but what I do know is this: any of you Carlos Boozer-for-MVP campaigners out there might want to hide the tape of this game, just like Rudi Giuliani backers might want to shred any Econo Lodge and Motel 6 receipts from 2000-01 that they come across. The Booze scored a grand total of 2 points over the last 6 minutes, committed three fouls, a turnover, and had just one board.

The Bobcats, on the other hand, hit the boards like a bong, getting key rebounds from not just Gerald Wallace and Emeka Okafor, but also J-Rich, Felton, and even Matt Carroll. Crash had an absolutely Kareem-tastic block-and-steal on a seemingly wide open Ronnie Brewer layup with 90-seconds left that preserved a 3-point lead, and Felton’s subsequent free throws iced it. And speaking of which, what’s with the sudden foul shooting proficiency? I counted 20-of-22 foul shots made in the fourth. The only explanation I have is that the Knicks beat Cleveland by 18—there was just something in the NBA air tonight, and not even Phil Collins could feel it coming.

And look at Nazr Mohammed! He catches, he rebounds, he blocks, he…he…does things. With those two stuffs he had down the stretch, Nazr not only helped save the game, I think he also passed Primoz Brezec on the Bobcats’ all-time shot-block list. Sure, Nazr only had 17 points, which isn’t amazing or anything, but you know what this is like? This is like getting an appliance for the first time that most people already have. Like if you just now bought a microwave, or even better: a dishwasher. Let's say that until now you’ve just been making due by scrubbing all of your dishes with soap, and then one day you finally get a dishwasher, and it’s like magic! And then you try to tell everyone at work how amazing it is to have a dishwasher, and they’re looking at you like you’re insane, because they’ve never NOT had a dishwasher. That’s what Nazr Mohammed’s like. We’ve essentially been making due without a center this entire time, which most NBA teams have, and even though we just got the basic version, it’s completely going to transform our lives for the better. I think this is what people are overlooking when they criticize the Brezec-Herrmann/Mohammed deal.