Bobcats Beat the Slumping Knicks

Think of Lloyd riding up to Harry and introducing him to the “hog” that he traded the van for “straight up.” The Bobcats are the scooter, with Gerald Wallace, a healthy Jack, Tyrus and several Centers, they’re the van, but right now, they’re the scooter.

Just when I thought you couldn’t disappoint me more….you do something like this and totally redeem yourself!  Bobcats burst all kinds of bubbles Wednesday night when they lost to the Pacers, their man rival for that final playoff spot in the East.  It was such a disappointment, people discussed shutting Stephen Jackson down for the season, tanking the rest of the way and hoping for at least one lottery pick (the other might come if Phoenix can get their stuff together and bump New Orleans out of the Playoffs).  I have been back and forth to Charlotte 3 times this week, from my home north of Raleigh.  342 miles round trip, and I just got that new Droid X that I tweeted about (soooo sweet) and I haven’t grown to trust the voice to text just yet.  So, I didn’t get to do a post-mortem on that Indy loss.  It was bad.  It was shockingly, disturbingly awful.  Your direct competition to say whether this season was decisively good or bad and you lost to them head to head, in your house.

To add salt to the wound, Jackson was in, played well, then was decidedly out.  I tweeted photos of him in the tunnel and as I made my way to my upgraded seats, he was walking up towards me, our eyes met and he could tell I was concerned “Ugh, Ugh, Jack.  You alright?!” was my excited/pained question.  He said yeah, just had to keep it moving.  Then later, after his beginning stint in the third quarter was over, I took this pic:

I know!  The Nascar Night Uniforms!  Arg!  But Stephen Jackson was getting it wrapped up, yet again and he was laboring, and he was pained.  Then as he made his way back to the huddle to see what was going on I saw this:

Excuse the poor image quality, that was with my sad and pathetic old Blackberry, but it’s Tyrus Thomas with his knee wrapped!  What in the world were we to do now?  All we wanted after that 6 game losing streak (streak seems like the wrong word but skid reminds me of sloppy people’s tighty whities), all we wanted was for Stephen Jackson and Tyrus Thomas to sweep the team up and get us to the playoffs.

It was not to be however.  The games against Portland and Toronto…flukes?  But then the losses to the Rockets, Thunder and Spurs….disappointment.  As the national media and super cool, NBA-hipster bloggers all quipped, likely at the same time “Ha!  Doesn’t anyone want to get into the 8th spot in the playoffs in the East?  Har Har.”

It was bad, and it looked like things were in a tailspin or slow death march for not only the team’s playoff chances but for player’s health.  It was like the Bobcats would lose out and be fielding a starting lineup of Najera, DMac, Cunningham, Matt Carrol and Diaw at the point guard.  It would be ugly.  But then the Bobcats traveled to Boston, got serious in the fourth quarter and won that one by outscoring the Defending Eastern Conference Champs 15-30, becoming the only East team this year to beat the Celtics at home.

That’ll buoy your confidence.  I mentioned in the post-game on the Boston game “Tomorrow, if these guys have bought in, if they are unburdened by the removal of Stephen Jackson (hush, what’d I just say) and if they can turn it on like they did tonight, the Bobcats stand a tremendous chance against the slipping Knicks.”  My point with the comment about Jackson is, if the players left can play offense without thinking about Jackson, and he’s said himself he’s a liability on defense, maybe they will play better without Captain Jack?

Well, Jack was back.  He played well but he wasn’t the focus.  It was such a refreshing thing, to me anyway, to see a team with balanced scoring and focused, team defense.  The Bobcats finished with 8 guys in double figures.  EIGHT!  If they had only gotten 10 each, that’s 80 and basically the same total as they had to beat Boston.  But no, it seems as if the Bobcats, in this stretch anyway, are willing to play to whatever the other team gives them, which makes for an interesting and close game, but the results may be mixed.

The Knicks think they’re better.  A) because they’re New York, center of the world, Madison Square Garden, greatest arena in the world, all that.  and now, most shockingly B) they have stars.  Carmelo Anthony, Amare Stoudemire, even Chauncey Billups “Mr. Big Shot” is a former Finals MVP.  Good for them.  I think that the league is better when New York is good.  Better still, I think the attention drawn is that much better when the Knicks are relevant.  But for right now, they kind of blow.

According to Mike Cranston, the ubiquitous writer from the AP, and single most important follow for any Bobcats fan on Twitter, Carmelo said “For the most part, these are teams we should be beating,” Anthony said. “We talk about that among each other — that some of these teams shouldn’t even be on the court with us. But they’re winning games and it’s just something we have to figure out.”

Maybe the problem, if you’re reading this, Mr. Anthony, is that you assume you should beat people and don’t figure out the way to do it and you don’t work hard enough for it.  Yeah, 36 points is great but wouldn’t you rather have the win?  Get over yourself, get Amare involved and figure it out this year, so a good coach doesn’t lose his job over it and so the naysayers don’t say “I told you it wouldn’t work.”

Anyway, awesome win, awesome energy in the arena.  The Knicks fans, especially the ones in jerseys that were less than a year old, completely over ran the place.  When it got close, with Carmelo hitting back to back three pointers in the fourth, they got loud.  That, accompanied by however many drinks my group had consumed, made Bobcats fans get loud, which ended up being great.  I think in the off season, when I get good and pissed and I’m missing basketball badly, I’ll write something about frontrunners and how it ruins a normal fan’s experience.

On to the next game, this time against the Bucks, who are coming up from the rear in this chase for the 8th.