We here at Canis Hoopus almost had to create a new word for last night's game:
Main Entry: Bucknered
Function:
verb
Date:
2008
transitive verb1 a: to lose a game due to the performance of a little-used bench player. Example: the Wolves moved down the ping pong ball scale when they were bucknered
Thankfully, Greg Buckner's +17 in 21 minutes, 13 points, 4 rebounds, and amazing 72% eFG weren't up to Antoine Walker's 28 minutes, 19.6ppg, and 52% 3FG stat line that pushed the Wolves to 3 of their 4 pre-2008 victories. Say what you will about playing hard and making this thing work for the future, but it would have been a headache-and-a-half had a guy who has been a healthy scratch since March 4th done anything on the court to lessen the team's chances in the upcomming lottery.
That being said, I will always hold Mr. Buckner in high regards thanks to his performance with Clemson against the Golden Gophers in the post season that never happened. To this day I have never witnessed a more entertaining college game. On to the game...
Outside of narrowly missing being bucknered, the Wolves played an entertaining but supremely disturbing game. How was it disturbing? In each and every single basketball game ever played, the home and away team each have an equal amount of possessions. In a evenly paced and matched game, the two teams will have similar amounts of shots, rebounds, and so on and so forth. Last night the Wolves shot 50-97 from the floor for an eFG of 54%. This isn't to say that the Wolves had 97 possessions. In its most basic formula, possessions can be thought of like this:
Poss = FGA - OREB/(OREB = DDREB) x (FGA - FGM) x 1.07 + TOV + 0.4 x FTA
In terms of last night's game, this equation looks like this:
Poss = 97 - 15/(15 + 25) x 97 - 50 x 1.07 + 11 + 0.4 x 16
All in all, last night's game featured (roughly) about 90 possessions. This roughly works out as total shots minus offensive rebounds plus turnovers and %40 of free throws (a widely accepted number of free throws that end in a change of possession.) On the positive side, this means that the Wolves had a fair number of forced turnovers and offensive rebounds. On the negative side...well, Charlotte shot an amazing 43 of 69 from the field for a mind-numbing 69% eFG. Let's put this into a bit of perspective. Last night, the Wolves scored about 1.32 points/possession. In the grand scheme of things, that's nothing to sneeze at. In fact, it's one of the team's best offensive outputs of the year. However, in terms of what the teams did during each possession when they shot the ball the Bobcats were massively more effective than our Beloved Puppies. Overall, the Bobcats had 19 more FTAs, 12 more FTMs, and a 15% higher eFG% than the Wolves. In a moderately paced game with relatively high offensive efficiency, the Bobcats maximized their possessions on a level unimagined by this year's puppies. I'm not sure the Wolves can play much better on the offensive end of the court: shooting nearly 55% with eFG, dominating the offensive boards, and ending up with over 20 assists. They also forced a decent amount of turnovers while grabbing a ton of defensive rebounds (Charlotte shot the hell out of the ball and they only had 5 offensive rebounds; Minnesota had more misses...therefore more opportunities for Charlotte to narrowly win the defensive rebounding war.) In other words, the Wolves lost this bad boy with a combination of bad defense and/or insanely good Charlotte offense. Folks, I don't think we've seen an offense function as efficiently this season as what the Bobcats did against the home team last night. If you really want to go nuts with how bad the Wolves d was/how good Charlotte's offense was, take a look at the Cats' TS%:
TS% = PTS/2 x [FGA + (0.44 x FTA)]
Which works out to...wait for it...72%. That's right folks, when you give up 62.3% from the floor, 56.3% from 3 (on 16 attempts), and 74.3% from the line (with high volume), you get waxed.
Moving on to individual effort, Randy Foye had one of the emptiest "big" games I've seen in a long, long time. FQF ended up with 6 boards, 7 assists, 2 turnovers, and 19 points with an eFG of 50% in 40 minutes of play. What the stat line doesn't show is that 11 of his 17 shots came from outside the lane; 14 of which were taken on the right side of the court (I think folks are catching on to his only-drive-right mentality). It also doesn't show that the majority of his court generalship consists of passes around the perimeter and/or dump ins to Big Al and Ryan Gomes, who went a combined 62% from the floor, mostly from close in. I don't know about how you think about all of this, but entry passes, shots from predictable places, and kicking it around the perimeter does not make for effective point play. FQF was the only Wolves starter with a positive +/- (+2), but his counterpart (Raymond Felton) was +11 with 15 points and 11 assists. I'll go back again to what I've been saying about FQF's production for quite some time: At what cost? He can go 20/8/8 until the cows come home but unless his net production and the team's off/def efficiency approaches something close to equality (or better), he's an older, less effective, less experienced, and more expensive version of Rashad McCants.
Well, that about does it for now. Until later.
