Hornets Roll Over C's: Charlotte 136-Boston 109

[wfcooper@tiac.com (Bill Cooper)]

	With Rick Fox and Eric Williams out of action for tonight's
game, the Celt's depleted bench was a large (non-)factor in the game.
As long as M.L. Carr kept the remnants of his core group of players on
the court the Celts were able to stick with the Hornets (who, like
many of the Celt's recent opponents were having a hard time taking the
C's seriously).   At the start of the second half, though, the Hornets
came out with much greater intensity than they had played with in the
first, and put the Celts away in businesslike fashion.
	The game started out with an 11-4 Hornet run, but the Celts
came back with a 7-0 run of their own to tie the game.  The C's even
briefly held the lead in the first half at 18-17.  Towards the end of
the first period, the Hornets began to widen the margin.  Tony Delk
came into the game and provided a spark for the Hornets as he led them
on a 11-4 run, to end the period with a 39-30 lead.
	The Celts still had some fight left, though.  The C's put
together a 10-2 run of their own to cut the lead to 1 point at 41-40,
as the Hornets put on a turnover fest of epic proportions.   Cowens
got some of his starters (Bogues and Rice) back into the game, and
they were able to stabilize the situation.  With about 4:00 to go in
the half the C's were still hanging tough at 50-47.  With all the
Hornets starters back in the game, the Charlotte offense began to
function with some efficiency.  They outscored the Celts 14-6 over the
remainder of the period to take a 64-53 lead into halftime.
	Apparently Mr. Cowens had some words with his players about
the level of their effort in the first half.  They came out with much
greater intensity, especially on defense.  Unfortunately the C's
didn't match them (if they were capable of it), as the Hornets started
the half with a 23-9 run (took about 5:00), to make the score 87-62.
Whatever resistance the Celts were capable of putting up, went out of
them, and the rest of the game was garbage time.   The quarter ended
with the score at 100-75.
	The 4th quarter was marked by spirited, but technically
incompetent play, by the denizens of the far end of the Celtics bench
(Szabo and Driggers).   Tony Delk was hitting everything he threw up
towards the basket, as the Hornets reserves took their turn hammering
the Celts also.   The lead peaked at 119-86.  From there the Celts
were able to whittle down the margin to just 27 points, to make the
final score 136-109.
	Despite the Hornet's only playing defense seriously, for about
10 minutes in this game the Celts only shot .410.  Meanwhile the
Hornets were hitting at a .593 pace, including 15-21 on three's.   The
Celts did have a meaningless 24-14 margin on the offensive boards
(meaningless, because they couldn't put any of their offensive
rebounds back into the basket), and caused (?) the Hornets to commit
27 turnovers (the C's had "just" 19).   So the Celtics took 105 shots
to the Hornets 81, and still made 5 fewer!

Lineups- Celts- Wesley, Day, Walker, Conlon, Hamer
                Hornets- Bogues, Pierce, Rice, Mason, Divac

Players- Walker- Wasn't interested in doing much of anything except
shooting.  He took 31 shots (15-31), hit for 32 points, had 4 boards
and 4 assists in 45 minutes.  Somewhat to his credit, part of the
reason that his rebounds were so low, is that in the first half, he
tried to stick very close to Rice, which kept his far from the
backboards.  Although Walker tried to hard to stay with Rice, I don't
think that the quality of his defense would have contained Glenn if he
had been of a mind to score.  One thing I don't think that I've
mentioned is that Walker has been shooting his jumper off the dribble
a great deal lately.  He actually seems to shoot better, if he
dribbles the ball at least once before he lets it go.

Day- Scored a lot early, But was held in check in the second half.
Ended up with 24 points on 7-19 shooting,  3 boards, 5 assists
(several brilliant passes in this game), and 3 steals.

Wesley- Tried to take Bogues down low a few times, but really didn't
have much luck.  He scored 17 points and had 4 boards and 4 assists in
32 minutes.   Mugsy came close to outscoring him with 13.

Conlon- Had a very good first quarter, and then disappeared for the
rest of the game.  Scored 10 points on 3-7 shooting, with 5 boards and
4 assists in 31 minutes.  Several times, when he got the ball in the
low post the Hornets double teamed him. =20

Hawkins- Was looking for his shot in the extended garbage time and
ended up with 10 points, on 5-10 shooting, 5 assists and 2 turnovers
in 24 minutes.  Probably the closest thing the Celts had to a
competent looking player off the bench.

Driggers- I'm pretty sure this was a new NBA high for Nate, as he
scored 8 points (3-10) in 24 minutes.

Lister- had 8 offensive rebounds in just 14 minutes of playing time.
Unfortunately he couldn't convert on anything, as he shot 1-4 and
scored 3 points.

Szabo- Played very aggressively, but  mixing it up inside, couldn't
get any shots that he could hit.  Scored 4 points on 1-6 shooting, and
had 4 boards in 20 minutes.
=20
Hamer- 3 points and 4 boards in 12 minutes.

Coaching- Do you really need a coach for this?  Gaston should
temporarily (?) lay off the coaching staff for the rest of the year,
and save himself their salaries.

Bill Cooper
wfcooper@tiac.com
=09