Eye on the Classics: The Most Ferocious Cat (3OT, 2007)
I've always thought of the Bobcats as the most ridiculous and arbitrary team in the entire league. Their logo haunts my mind - I just picture a kid trying to draw a ferocious cat but after the outline realizes he has only two depressingly drab crayons to shade it with. And all of this haunting happens before we even touch how funny the word "Bobcats" really is. It's especially awkward to enunciate quickly. It was a team destined for tongue-twisters and hilarious sentences like "Welcome to the Bobcats' sports network" or "In short, despite Kobe Bryant scoring 58 points, coach Bernie Bickerstaff's Bobcats beat Kobe's scrub Lakers in triple overtime, thanks to D by Crash and caroms by Emeka Okafor." Strangely, that last sentence is an accurate summary of the game we're going to be covering today. Weird.
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INTRODUCING... THE CHARLOTTE BOBCATS!
The Bobcats joined the league in the summer of 2004. The Bobcats didn't have much to be proud of their first two seasons: They won just 44 total games (.268) and suffered countless hilarious buzzer-beaters. But in their third season they went hard*, with a core of Raymond Felton, Gerald Wallace, and Emeka Okafor, all good players. And on December 29, 2006 - in Charlotte's Time Warner Cable Arena (est. 2004), the Bobcats took down Kobe Bryant and the Lakers in triple overtime, despite Bryant's incredible 58-point night (on an insane 45 fg attempts) and despite Luke Walton's six 360 dunks (okay, only four). In a couple of seasons seemingly filled with one ridiculously swag performance after the other, Kobe Bryant - his powers at their zenith and his teammates' at their collective nadir - produced another great one. But locking arms and weathering a storm they could not stop, the Bobcats finally won when Kob-Icarus flew too high and fouled enough times to disqualify himself according to the rules of flightsketball, and the Bobcats won by 9.
*The Bobcats actually fought to a quite-solid 33 wins in 2006-2007, actually splitting their season series with each of the eventual conference finalists (Cavs, Jazz, Spurs, Pistons).
INTRODUCING... JUST A REGULAR SEASON GAME! AND KOBE!
Yes, title, thanks for the clarification. Let's be clear: it was just a regular season game: the first half (beyond the Crash-Kobe duel) was actually exceedingly dull. But something about Gerald Wallace and Kobe fighting for every inch of space brought the best out of every Bobcat. Felton, Wallace, and Okafor all were showstoppers in this game, seriously. Matt Carroll even had a solid shooting game with a swag 27-8 on 16 shots off the bench. But it was the trio of stars that did most of the work: Felton made the kinds of great point guard decisions that leave a defense guessing constantly. Wallace was in his franchise-player, do-everything-on-both-sides mode. Wallace had so much intelligence and tenacity as a defender that he bears almost no fault at all for Kobe's performance, and in fact, Wallace made a number of crucial defensive stops on Bryant twice at the end of regulation. And then there was Emeka Okafor, doing everything a center should as an inside presence.
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