Washington Wizards at Charlotte Bobcats 12/26

[ziggy]

Tonight at 7pm the Wizards come to town. They're still without Agent Zero and Caron Butler who absolutely torched us the last time that we played will be a game time decision for tonight's game.

This is another good shot for us to get a win (especially if Butler is out) and a good chance for us to climb one game closer to .500

[babyj42]

Bobcats starters:
Felton
Richardson
Wallace
Okafor
Muhammad

Key Reserves:
Dudley
Carroll
Hollins
McGinnis (probable)


Wizards Starters:
Mason Jr.
Stevenson
Young?
Jamison
Haywood

Key Reserves:
Blatche
Songaila


With no Gilbert, no Butler, No Daniels, this would seem like a sure fire win but somehow they always seem to get the best of us... i would expect a big game from felton and wallace but with stevenson's defense on richardson and potential foul trouble from our big men trying to keep up with a (hopefully future bobcat) nightmare matchup in jamison it will be tough

Bobcats 95 Wizards 87

PS- i will be there

[Melanie]

Come on Bobcats! Let's win this one! For 11-15 and one game closer to passing up Washington and taking the 3rd spot in our division. 4th sucks.

[Dead_Real]

I was looking on the Wizards board on RealGM and they are saying Butler will suit up tonight. Reguardless though I'm thinking we'll improve to 11 wins. In order to do that Crash has to show up he can't have a game similar to the one he had against the Bucks a few days ago. Jamison and Haywood against Nazr and Emeka will be interesting match up's hopefully we'll win that battle down low.

PS - I hope everyone had a Happy Xmas yesterday.

[Muttley]

I hope Caron is a no-show after the last time we met. Especially since I'll be at the game with my little sis! I got the Holiday six-pack for christmas, and I can't wait to get it started.

We go to eleven...

[davcbow]

We need this win to go ahead of last years pace. Right now the way I figure it we are on pace to match last seasons record +or- 1 win. Lets at least get ahead of last season, I think we have the potental to take the 8th spot this season but we need our big 5 to show up on both sides of the ball every game to do it..... :g:

[twebb]

If Butler does go he will e trouble. Last time we played he could not miss from the field and had like 39. I hope Nick Young goes becaus I want to see him play, seeing how I wanted us to trade down and raft him last year. Haywood has been racking up the double doubles recently so hopefully Nazr can stop him, and with Nazr on the court it will force Jamison to guard Okafor. Antawn isnt known for his D so I expect Vincent to exploit this matchup.

Anyone have a link for this one like the last ones? Itried that channel surfing site and it said that the game wasnt available for live play?

EDIT: Never mind the site streams good: http://s226606444.onlinehome.us/ggh/nba.php?x=http://broadband.nba.com/cc/playa.php?content=lp&url=http://boss.streamos.com/wmedia-live/nba/9909/500_nba-league_pass_charlotte_051201.asx&gid=409

[ALong13]

Stream hasn't been working for me so I missed the first half, so on ESPNEWS we were down by 11 at one point, so glad to see we are only down by three at the half...Wallace & Richardson had great first halves, we just need everyone else to have a good 2nd half along with Richardson and Wallace continuing to do good..

[ziggy]

We're down by 8 with 7 minutes to go. We need to pull it together these last 7 minutes.

Whats up with Matt Carroll? Hes currently 1-7 from the field.

[Melanie]

108-104, we lose.... :mad:

Now we're 10-16.

Next up, another back2back.

[twebb]

they kept pulling ahead when we would come within 4

[davcbow]

Thats our teams problem right now, no one is consistant. Our defence is non-existant; if we could correct the defensive play the wins will come. Consistancy at both ends of the court is what wins games..... :g:

[ohara831]

I was pleased with our effort again; there were no signs of giving up. Great run in the 3rd to take the lead also, and keep coming back in the 4th.

I am really getting cranky with our Defense, or rather lack thereof. 4 guys go for over 20 against us tonight. They out ebounded us and had better FG%

Overall, I am much happier with J-Rich with his consistency the last several games. He is getting his FG% up on a consistent basis. I am still sorely disappointed with his utter inability to play Defense. I am really disappointed with how Okafor has been playing the majority of the season. A few scattered good games among several no shows! Also, Ray is just not showing me the ability on a consistent basis of the ability to distribute the ball. Only 9 pts and 4 assts. Those are the numbers of a 2nd string PG, not a starter. Nazr did not provide the pts tonight, but his rebounding was a major plus tonight. I cannot be too upset with his play.

Guys, we seem to be playing better offense lately, but our Defense has just disappeared. I do not know what to make of this all. In the upcoming draft, do we still aim for the big guy, or the best available player? If he is a 1,2,3 and has the potential to be a star, then one of our current starters will be going to the bench. Interesting dilemma.

Overall, I am more and more convinced that we will keep Okafor as no one is going to offer him more than $13 mil/ yr and we may actually get less if his numbers are down averall from last season. We will have to see at the end of the season how his numbers compare.

[ziggy]

Heres the stat that jumped out at me.
* Jason & Crash combined for 40 shots
* Emeka & Nazr combined for 18 shots

We have got to keep feeding the post. period.

[ohara831]

Heres the stat that jumped out at me.
* Jason & Crash combined for 40 shots
* Emeka & Nazr combined for 18 shots

We have got to keep feeding the post. period.


__________________________________________________ __

Oh, I agree almost completely, The problem is, who is going to do the feeding? I mean tonight, we have Crash doing busting his hump scoring, rebounding and getting assists. He had 8 tonight, while Ray had only 4 and McInnis 2. Our two PGs cannot match our F in the most important stat for a PG.

The reason I said "almost" is that I believe of imability to play any type of solid Defense is just as much a killer to this team. None of our starters seem to be as strong as Defense as I would have thought, including Okafor.

[Keetch]

Observations on tonights game....this could be a long one.

We can and should beat teams like the Wizards. These are the games/matchups that matter the most and we should fire all the guns; leave it all on the floor.

But this was once again the worst and the best of the Bobcats.

And frankly I'm so p-o'd at Vincent I could spit. I hear he was mad at the refs at the end of the game and had to be restrained a little. Good for him. Too bad some of us had been screaming at him to get into the *&^% game for about 10 minutes up until then. I hope it wasn't a show for us folks. Naw it couldn't be.

Way Too Much 3 guard offense...we give up our advantage with that. At the start of the 4th Q with the PA booming the Wiz trot out their starters; Haywood, Jamison and Butler up front, while Vincent sits with his 3 guards and not sure but maybe his thumb in his mouth (couldn't tell he has his back to me) and I'm thinking OH CRAP only not "crap". With 3 guards, we force the Wiz to play Butler on JRich instead of a smaller guy like Stevenson or Mason or whoever they can pull off the bench.

JRICH was ON tonite. I swear I would have burned that candle until it was completely burned out. Boxscore shows 34 minutes...*shrug*..

41 Wizard points in the 1st Q then they scored only 2 more for the first 5 and a half minutes of the second. Sweet. The Bobcats were like completely MIA on defense from the get-go. Standing around. Did I say they were standing around? I watched Wallace and Mohammed both get blown by....totally flat footed. Screens? NO problem; really NO problem. How can Sam watch that without getting into those guys..like HARD.

...and the Wizards really don't have a point guard right now; but did we press them? If we did I didn't see it. We don't play pressure defense on the dribble, though we do a nice job stepping into the passing lanes.

Wallace was his usual strangeness...at times totally off the wall incredible, then the next awful. Too many jumpers; too many bad decisions - bad passes.

Felton is so essential to this team, but he still is forcing his way inside too much; badly emphasized tonite in the second half when he drove in and Roger Mason timed him so well that when he blocked Ray it was so strong that Ray's knees almost buckled. Yes, Roger Mason.

After the game on the radio post-game show Sam said that the team needs to learn how to maintain momentum...how about Sam learn how to give them a chance to do that? Vincent also said we should realize that guys like Butler and Jamison are all-star caliber players....whatever that means...so Okafor and Wallace and Felton are inferior? Hmmm....

I think McInnis is not playing as hard as he was earlier in the season, or with as much intensity; and I don't think its just the injury.

I'd like to see Hollins more in the rotation with Mohammed and Okafor so that we rarely need the 3 guard thing. Better balance.

No Dudley tonite at all. I'd also like to see Duds in the rotation with Wallace at SF. Is that so difficult? We're not developing Hollins or Dudley fast enough in my opinion.

Sorry to be so negative; obviously there was a lot of positive tonite; most of it involving JRich and Crash. Felton DID have one SWEET pass to Okafor for a dunk and yes OK caught it!

But I just don't buy that these guys are that young anymore and have higher expectations than (apparently) even the coaches do....hmmmm I also don't look for excuses like they do.

[dnbman]

I pretty much agree with everything Keetch said.

One other thing: we looked terrible trying to score in transition, especially fast breaks. I'm not sure if Vincent stopped expecting them or what, but we looked like we didn't know what to do. It was pretty frustrating, as those should have been fairly easy buckets AND the difference in the game.

[Mustachio]

Raymond Felton killed us in this game. box score says 2 TO's but i had the count at like 8. crazy circus shots at bad times... just a terrible performance.

Im a Felton fan, but he needs to play better than he did last night to be the guy for us at PG.

[Dead_Real]

Damn the Wizards always seem to have our number and it's crazy because they're playing without there best man on the floor.

[Muttley]

It seemed like we couldn't stop Mason in the 1st half, and Caron in the 2nd. They got out to a big lead by hitting whatever 3 point shot they wanted, and we didn't start clawing our way back into it until it was too late.

[spectre]

It seemed like we couldn't stop Mason in the 1st half, and Caron in the 2nd. They got out to a big lead by hitting whatever 3 point shot they wanted, and we didn't start clawing our way back into it until it was too late.


There's going to be games like that...it'd just be nice if they happened for us instead of against us more often. Mason normally doesn't do that, and I think the gameplan we originally went with had us cheating off him. Thing is, when we adjusted and started playing tighter D he was STILL hitting them. He didn't come back down to earth til the 2nd half.

Butler...damn. Crash was all in his grill for a lot of those shots and he still hit nothing but net. What I was proud of was that we weathered the 1st quarter storm (something like 42 1st quarter points?) and pulled to 3 at the half. After we jumped ahead by 5 I thought we had it...but so much for that.

We HAVE to do better on the boards. Jamison had 10 rebounds in the 1st half. A lot of that is the same problem we had with Yi...no guys who can play a perimeter 4 very well at all. IMO V should have been looking for that this game; he did adjust and we saw just one of either Mek or Nazr the 2nd half (or at least it seemed that way) but once again he fails to use Duds who I'd think would do decent against those type of guys.

I could bitch about a couple of guys...mainly Mek & Felts...but 2 GREAT things are JRich seems to be acclimating himself and is playing like a lot of us felt he could, and Crash playing point forward...8 assists!!! BTW, this is why Felts didn't get as many assists; we were moving the offense thru Crash a lot of the night.

And he was pretty darn stellar at it.

[Muttley]

Can't say enough about JRich and Crash offensively and Crash defensively. Also, I thought DA looked good out there.

[Edrow]

You guys pretty much touched on all the things I was going to point out, mainly with the lack of defense and getting burned by four players over dub last night.

My question is this, why wasn't Matt Carroll trying to pass the ball off at all last night when it was blatantly obvious that he was going to have an off game? I wanted to run onto the court and scream "THERE IS A REASON NOBODY IS GUARDING YOU RIGHT NOW! DON'T SHOOT!"

On the up and up, like you guys said, JRich was playing like a superstar last night. Dear God don't let him dribble though, hehe.

Anyways, we have a HUGE game in my opinion tomorrow night against the hated Hornets. I can't wait for this one. What a perfect opportunity to turn the slight skid around!

Hope you all had a Merry Christmas!

-Edrow

[Keetch]

Not sure about Crash as a point forward. He's great on the break and getting better at dishing off; but he still often will just stand there with the ball in the half court waiting for someone to do something...and normally they don't until the shot clock has almost expired.

Not worried though; Crash is a stud.

One more point about JRich; when he returned after sitting for a while in the second half; he missed a couple shots and seemed to disappear a little. I was worried that maybe his rush was over. But Jason then went to work on defense and made some truly great plays to inspire himself and the team. I guess that's how you work your game! The offense returned soon enough.

[spectre]

Not sure about Crash as a point forward. He's great on the break and getting better at dishing off; but he still often will just stand there with the ball in the half court waiting for someone to do something...and normally they don't until the shot clock has almost expired.

Not worried though; Crash is a stud.

One more point about JRich; when he returned after sitting for a while in the second half; he missed a couple shots and seemed to disappear a little. I was worried that maybe his rush was over. But Jason then went to work on defense and made some truly great plays to inspire himself and the team. I guess that's how you work your game! The offense returned soon enough.


He's been doing it off and on; Felts a lot of time will cross the line and throw it to him at the top of the circle (he hit Mek at least 2 times doing that). Nazr also does it. Point forward probably isn't the right term, but that's different then when he gets it at the angle and fakes the shot trying to get his defender to bite so he can drive. I agree he holds it way too much and sometimes tends to stagnate the offense, but getting Crash passing is a very good thing. I would really like him to look for others on those drives.

JRich will never be an above average man defender, but he does things that is within in his ability...sort of like BK and the helpside steals. So far he's seemed to have really took the Jordan thing to heart; hopefully it'll make him consistent with the effort from now on.

[Keetch]

Agreed Spectre good points. Looking at the boxscore Wallace really had more of a monster game than I realized. Really big numbers across the board.

And JRich had 4 steals!

Amazing we couldn't win with that.

[davcbow]

Agreed Spectre good points. Looking at the boxscore Wallace really had more of a monster game than I realized. Really big numbers across the board.

And JRich had 4 steals!

Amazing we couldn't win with that.


Its a consistancy thing; sure we have 1 or 2 players have a good night then we have players that have bad nights like Carroll's performance last night, Mek's performance a couple games ago. We 're not consistant at all on offence and defence? do we have some of that? ..... :g: