Bobcats Thoughts, 12/7

This latest week has been like the HBO series Tell Me You Love Me: mostly terrible, but also occasionally interesting. On Monday the Bobcats took on a Toronto team that lacked Chris Bosh, TJ Ford, Andrea Bargnani, and Jorge Garbajosa. Their injuries forced Coach Sam Mitchell to throw out a starting five of Jamario Moon, Joey Graham, Rasho Nesterovic, Anthony Parker, and Jose Calderon, and against such a devastating arsenal, the Bobcats didn’t stand a chance. It was a debacle right from the tip, as we found ourselves down 16-4 in less time than it takes for Primoz Brezec to mishandle a pass. Speaking of which, in an inspired move, Coach Vincent sat the Big P and played Jared Dudley instead. And Dudley responded; in fact, early on, he was the only one producing at all, causing commentator Henry Williams to wonder aloud—somewhat hilariously—“Where would the Bobcats be right now without Dudley?” Good question, Henry! 18-4, 20-4? You’re right, it could’ve been bad.

However, Coach Vincent, after watching us blow up on takeoff, apparently decided that the one thing this fire lacked was some more grease, and decided to sub in Jeff McInnis and Primoz. And then things really got ugly, with the Toronto B-listers putting up numbers like sudoku. Carlos Delfino was deadly, hitting 4-of-6 3’s for 17 points. Kris Humphries can’t even spell his first name correctly, yet he scored 17 and grabbed 6 boards, plus hit 7-of-8 free throws. The most terrifying of all was Calderon, who was slinging assists like crack and driving to the hoop with such ferocity that the Raptors actually quit even bothering to set picks after awhile. On one play Calderon blasted past McInnis so fast it straightened his dreadlocks; I actually thought Jeff was going to go spin out in a jet-wash.

Meanwhile, the Bobcats shot with about as much accuracy as a villain on TJ Hooker. Raymond Felton went 0-of-8 from the field. Mr. Third Quarter, Jason Richardson, went 3-of-17. Meanwhile, I’m still trying to figure out what’s more disturbing: the fact that Gerald Wallace went just 4-of-13 or that he only took 13 shots in 40 minutes. God help us, McInnis led the team with 5 assists. Dudley was arguably the best player, shooting 8-of-14 for 16 points and grabbing 10 boards and 3 steals--it was the one shining diamond in this pile of feces. Maybe Dudley needs to play much, much more, and it took an event this horrible and calamitous to bring forth his talent and ability, just as it took the Spanish Civil War to produce Guernica.
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In the interlude between Monday’s Catastrophe in Toronto and Wednesday’s Homecoming from Hell against Chicago, we managed to sign but not get the services of disgruntled Clevelander Anderson Varejao. We sure could have used the big lug. Jared Dudley’s a great kid, but replacing Brezec with him is like replacing gasoline with corn-based ethanol: it’s a highly imperfect substitution. Varejao has got 3 inches on Dudley (in height, that is) and about 3x the annoyance capabilities. Playing against him automatically puts teams in a putting-together-a-piece-of-IKEA-furniture mood, and the irritation factor alone is probably worth a few victories. But forget it, he’s gone, and I hope the marketing department didn’t put too much money down on the “Varejao Wig Night” promotions.

As for the PF/C front, I’m sure something will get done. As GM Rod Higgins put it in one of his always highly-informative quotes, “We’ll continue to look for possibilities to hire another quality player. That’s our job.” Ooookay. Apparently his job doesn’t include realizing the blindingly obvious in any sort of timely fashion, which is that Primoz Brezec is quite possibly the worst center in the NBA and the NBDL and probably several South American leagues, and Higgins probably would have gotten a more quality player if he’d conducted one of those Kevin Bacon, “Air Up There”-style scouting trips to Chad or something during the offseason. Seriously, this hasn’t been a closely kept secret. “Primoz Lacks Talent” is not exactly “Iran Lacks Nuclear Capabilities” in terms of stunning headlines. So whatever. Now that the staff has hopefully recovered from the shock, go get 'em, Rob, you’re just in the nick of time. And if you ever get tired of this gig, I’m sure FEMA’s got some openings for you.
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As for the Wednesday nighter: Johnny “Red” Kerr for the second time in a week! Joy to the world! Christmas has come early this year! Fortunately of my sake, the Kerr Effect was somewhat muted by a 3rd commentator in the Bulls booth, the increasingly annoyed Stacy King. First of all, King sounded like he was coming in on a walkie-talkie, so one of the techs over at WGN needs to look into that. Second, King is such a hoot to listen to that I actually wouldn’t mind tuning into future Bulls broadcasts. This guy gets legitimately angry during the broadcasts, and with the Bulls trailing most of the way against us, I honestly was waiting to hear the sound of something breaking and the screen suddenly switching over to a test pattern. The height of his fury came toward the end of the 3rd quarter, when Walter Herrmann hit the second or third of his "Dr. J"-style finger rolls, after which King fumed—without any trace of irony—“If I see that move one more time, I’m GOING TO SCREAM.”

Sadly, we’ll never know if King would have kept his word, because shortly thereafter the Bobcats collapsed and blew an 11-point lead they held as late as the end of the third quarter. This was pretty upsetting, because—and this isn’t exactly news, except possibly to Rod Higgins—the Bulls are really, really bad this year. And in this one they played, really, really bad. They missed a stupefying number of easy shots, turned the ball over 20 times, looked thoroughly disinterested for most of the game, and were pretty much asking to be put away.

Unfortunately, this is a Bobcats team that couldn’t defecate in a toilet if you held the seat up for them. We were outscored 38-22 in the fourth quarter and mainly began taking our anger out on the poor, innocent 3-point line, hitting just 1-of-6 in the fourth (and 6-of-26 overall). Considering we’re the 4th-worst shooting team in the league, I have no idea what was behind all the long-distance shenanigans, although part of it was because Emeka Okafor was limited by foul trouble. The Dudley-as-starter experiment also apparently went through a sophomore slump, as he went 0-of-6 from the field. The team also missed ten of its fourteen free-throws, including some critical ones down the stretch when we still had a chance.

It was a pretty terrible night, capped off by the sting of watching the Bulls celebrate at the end like they just beat trial. Scott Skiles was reduced to the role of Michael Keaton in Herbie: Fully Loaded, cheering along like a pathetic dad. We’re definitely in a serious malaise right now, and we can only hope there are no reports of Sam Vincent getting attacked by a rabbit.