The Wolves played out without Corey Brewer’s energy but what they lacked mostly, if you listened to Randy Wittman, were enough players willing to follow the game plan.
That’s why Brian Cardinal was out there in the third quarter, or so Wittman said. And why Kevin Ollie, back from his calf injury, led the offense for 10 second-half minutes while Randy Foye moved over to two guard.

The Wolves committed 14 first-half turnovers, just four after intermission. Foye had three turnovers, all in the first half, and four assists, all in the second half. The Wolves trailed by seven at halftime and never recovered.

“I don’t think it has anything to do with energy,” Wittman said. “It’s just a matter of executing the game plan. You have an idea where you want to attack from an offensive standpoint and where you’ve got to take their strengths away from a defensive standpoint. You’ve got to do those things. We lacked in the game plan.”

“I’ve got to find some guys — and probably some veteran guys — who are going to follow the game plan and what we want done.”

Al Jefferson didn’t reach double-figured scoring — he scored eight — for the first time this season and admitted to being “messed up” by a tactic Oklahoma City used Friday, Denver borrowed in the second half Saturday and Charlotte repeated Monday: He said it’s a stunting strategy where defenders will bluff double teaming him — sometimes they come, sometimes they don’t — and he said he has to be aggressive and attack it to defeat it, something he obviously didn’t do tonight.

He did get a career-high six blocked shots, a fact that made Wittman look at the stat sheet twice. He pulled Jefferson with 3:44 left in the game after Emeka Okafor scored on three consecutive Charlotte possessions and afterward said “they had guys who wanted it more down the stretch.”

A couple other things:

The Wolves  look awfully un-athletic, even against a Charlotte team that isn’t the most athletic in the league, and will be even more so with Brewer out for the season. Rodney Carney, the best athlete left probably, played six minutes.

Kevin McHale is along on this trip, too. That’s two in a row for him. When asked why he’s out on the road with the team, he stammered a bit and said he just wants to be closer to the guys.

I made a rookie mistake at the game’s start and took just one pen with me to the press seating area near the top of the first deck at what used to be called Bobcats Arena. Of course, the pen ran out immediately. Halfway through the first quarter, I went back downstairs and followed the maze of hallways underneath toward the press room. As I turned into the corner, I literally ran into Michael Jordan, one of the Bobcats’ owners. He was wearing, of course, a really nice suit (gold, I think) and looks like he has gained quite a bit of bulk since his playing days.

I took the charge for the team.

This entry was posted on Monday, December 1st, 2008 at 11:39 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.