Douglas Jones – USA Today Sports Images
The Charlotte Bobcats have double-digit wins for the first time since 2011. That’s a depressing way of saying that the Bobcats have been a bad basketball team in the past season and a half.
They’ve had mass problems on both ends of the floor this season. Specifically on offense though, Charlotte has been a wildly inefficient team that relies extremely heavily on their perimeter players, guards and small forwards, to provide offense.
For this season, the Bobcats rank 27th in the NBA in field goal percentage, shooting an abysmal 42.3 percent from the field as a team. Moreover, Charlotte’s guards and small forwards have accounted for 74.5 percent of their points this season. Needless to say, that’s not great efficiency or post-production for the Bobcats.
But in their game against the Orlando Magic on Friday, they seemed like a different team offensively. Not only did they manage to shoot 46.8 percent from the field, way above their average, but their guards only accounted for 66 percent of their scoring.
That’s not saying any of the Bobcats post-players played like All-Stars or anything, but they didn’t rely on their guards to do the overwhelming bulk of the work. Hakim Warrick and Brendan Haywood weren’t going to take over the box score, but they were able to convert open looks when opportunities arose.
In regards to their field goal percentage, not only was Charlotte’s frontcourt able to convert on easy looks on the interior, but their frontcourt’s effectiveness forced the defense to stay at home instead of focusing on the Bobcats backcourt.
This game should serve as a prototype for how the Bobcats are going to be able to score victories in winnable games. You can’t win games in the NBA relying as heavily upon their perimeter players as they have been. Their post-players have to step up like they did on Friday night.
By no means do they need to carry the Bobcats. Kemba Walker and company in the backcourt have that covered. However, the frontcourt has to convert on easy opportunities to give Walker and the other guards room to operate.
If they are able to continue this type of play going forward, the Bobcats field goal percentage will most definitely rise. And they will, at the very least, have a chance to win more games than they have for most of this season.
