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This game was bad. Oh my goodness, was it bad. I want to make the excuse that they were on the road in a back-to-back, but no, that's not an excuse for how bad this was.
Where to even begin. First, the team can't shoot. Their best shooters are Anthony Tolliver and Ben Gordon. The only reason those two even played tonight was because after a five-second violation, Steve Clifford got so pissed he pulled every guy on the floor. Yes, every single player got pulled for a brand new 5. It was like that the majority of the third quarter. Tolliver must have impressed Clifford because he saw continued minutes after this. Taylor went 1-for-9. Henderson couldn't do much shooting either with 3-for-10 shooting and oh god don't make me relive it. PLEASE BEN WHY DO YOU DO THIS TO ME!?
Blocks at the rim, so many blocks at the rim. The Pelicans set a franchise record for blocks with 18 and a good chunk came at the rim. This led to another problem the Bobcats had: they couldn't shoot so obviously their solution was to attack the basket. Unfortunately that didn't work cause they kept getting swatted or swarmed by defenders that were just daring the Bobcats to shoot. So many shots were over double-teams.
Speaking of the interior, the Bobcats interior defense couldn't stop anything. If they did get a stop on the inside, it didn't happen again for another five possessions. The majority of interior defense permitted easy layups or were forced to foul. Zeller especially struggled in this regard. He had a few moments where he was okay on defense but in the pick and roll he was destroyed constantly over-pursuing leading to late rotations back.
Free throws: The Bobcats shot 58% on free throws. That is simply unacceptable for an NBA team. Yes, you're averaging over a point per possession there but you have to make the opposing team pay for sending you to the line. The only reason the percentage was that high was cause Ramon Sessions shot 17 free throws and made 12 of them. He was the lone bright spot in this game.
Sessions was fast, he scored okay, but his defense was shoddy and, hell, even his offense wasn't lights out. As a sixth man, he played his role to perfection. Everybody else laid an egg. Kemba Walker shot 19 times and I don't even know if I should be complaining about that or not. Nobody on the team could shoot so you might as well have your best shot creator shooting the most because nothing was working. The passing was sloppy, movement was lazy, it was bad.
This game was so horrible that during the third quarter I was mad that the team wasn't down more so I could start my recap because I knew there wasn't a snowball's chance in hell that they were coming back. They weren't moving off the ball, they weren't shooting, and their defense was putrid. It was infuriating to watch. Hopefully Al Jefferson will come back, but oh, who am I kidding. With the team shooting like this he wouldn't have been much help. Bright spots are Anthony Tolliver and Ramon Sessions and that's not saying a lot. What a pathetic game. I'm probably overreacting to their third game of the season but the amount of bad the Bobcats were deserves this criticism.