“— If I fail to mention that Stephen Graham played 10 minutes of wholly ineffectual basketball, will that work some sort of reverse jinx on Larry Brown and get him to give Gerald Henderson more than 5 minutes?”

Please David, I hope you have some sort of wizardly magic to make this true.

I think it’s time to stop sweating the loss of the first round pick and start accepting it as the reality. There has been a trend with the Bobcats of late that hasn’t been mentioned much. We’ve been in it with a chance to win it as the 4th gets past the halfway point. One of the things that separates a truly strong team from the losers and also rans is the ability to finish a game strongly. The Bobcats have managed to either stay with or come back to within range in almost every single game that didn’t involve a team wearing green uniforms. For the Cats as a team the next stage of development is to start winning more of these than they lose. A game lost in the final 2 minutes shows up in the same column as a 35-point blowout and the latter is starting to become more rare. Coaching has a lot to do with how many games are won at crunch time, but the players have to execute as well. Tonight the Nicks got executed and our win was a hell of a lot closer than the 7-point margin indicates. As the season wears on (and I’m telling you, there’s a power forward preparing to change from a dark blue to a lighter blue with pinstripes in the next 3 days) the Bobcats are going to start winning more of these games instead of losing them in heartbreaking fashion like we did with the Mavs.

There are a few things that are going to have to improve if we want to stomp into the playoffs instead of backing in through the misfortune of other teams at our level. These are as critical as our need for a PF and a final answer to our Point Guard questions for next season.

1. More often than not we still have more turnovers than Pepperidge Farms. We were improving in this area for a while (largely thanks to a complete reversal by Raymond Felton) but not only did we crest 20 turnovers again tonight, most were unforced, unnecessary, and very ugly. Chandler coughed it up twice in a row early on and if the man’s hands aren’t made of rock, they are at the very least adobe. You can count on him to bobble any ball arriving to him at below the little NBA emblem on his jersey. He redeemed himself overall and played what for him is a decent night but for anyone else would raise a couple of eyebrows at the starting center spot. I think tonight we also saw a pretty clear example of what dubsfan and other Warriors fans were warning us about. Jackson made some heinous pass attempts early in the 4th and unless he has at least a full second to set his feet and shoulders, his can’t drop a 3-pointer into a land fill. If he can improve the turnovers he causes with his pass selection I don’t care about anything else. The rest of his game has been our salvation this season.

2. Free throws aren’t really free. They get expensive as diamonds when you miss them. On nights we do well at the stripe we win. On nights we don’t we wind up screwed.

If you pay attention to my next sentence you’ll be more likely to agree with me than not;
Fixing those two problems is the difference between the 6 seed and the 4 seed for this team at the end of the regular season.

Sunday’s game is going to be interesting assuming the cast are all still in the same roles. Comparing the adjustments these two coaches make in preparation is going to be a study in advanced basketball techniques.

I noticed that your point guard comments were kind of hypothetical. Well he had 5 turnovers tonight, but he also had 4 steals, 6 assists, 3 boards, 6 of 13 from the field, and perfect from the line. He is one of the best on the ball defenders in the league. He hit clutch buckets and got a hand on an eventual steal at crunch time. He locked Chris Duhon down in the second half, holding him to 7 points. So your hypotheticals are interesting, however, the Charlotte Bobcats will offer Raymond Felton more than 6 million dollars, probably 7.5 – 8 million if he continues to bring the game he has been bringing the past 12or 13 games. The reason they will do it is because he deserves that and they know if they don’t some NBA franchise will. My goodness they are paying Diop 6 million now.

so tonight was the barometer. after 30-odd years of received Knicksdom, several-odd years of wanting for a team to which i could both geographically and psychologically relate, and a solid month of reading this blog religiously, i’m in. maybe i just needed the face-to-face matchup to confirm what i thought needed confirming. well that’s done.

so, one Sic Semper Tyrannis foot on the throat of my UVA instincts, i’m stepping into N.C. with a clear mind and a bad smoking habit.

at least i’ve got d.j. around from my master’s-era austin years.

d.c. FAIL. new york FAIL. tradition FAIL.

go cats!!!

6 mil for ray-ray seems like plenty. otherwise, give d.j. an honest shot and save the cap space for, i don’t know, someone familiar with the three-ball. or, hell, even the long two.