Associated Press
CHARLOTTE, ó The Charlotte Bobcats are playing their best basketball of their brief history. The Atlanta Hawks are floundering, bickering and perhaps on the verge of collapse.
Two teams going in vastly different directions were on display Friday night, with the Bobcats getting 21 points from Gerald Wallace and using a near-perfect first quarter to build a big lead and beat the dysfunctional Hawks 98-91 for their franchise record-tying fifth straight victory.
“It’s starting to come together,” said Wallace, as the Bobcats remained 11/2 games out of the final playoff spot in the Eastern Conference.
Things are falling apart for the Hawks.
Atlanta got off to a horrible start, then played the entire second half without power forward Josh Smith, who got into a heated exchange with coach Mike Woodson at halftime that could be heard in the hallway outside the locker room.
Smith, who had 13 points at halftime, spent the second half sitting in the middle of the bench with a towel draped over his back.
“I don’t want to talk about that,” Smith said when asked about the benching.
Woodson, too, was tightlipped and wouldn’t say if the team’s third-leading scorer would play Saturday against Detroit.
“We’ll determine that tomorrow,” he said.
While the Hawks’ grip on the fourth-seed in the Eastern Conference is slipping thanks to its sixth loss in eight games, it was a much different scene just down the hallway in Charlotte’s dressing room. First-year coach Larry Brown has the Bobcats perhaps on the verge of their first playoff berth in franchise history.
“We had 20 assists in the first half. That was incredible,” Brown said. “I thought we did a lot of good things.”
Emeka Okafor added 17 points and 11 rebounds, Raymond Felton had 17 points and 10 assists, and Boris Diaw had 13 points and 13 assists as the fifth-year Bobcats matched their longest win streak set late last season ó when they were long out of the postseason picture.
But with Brown making his imprint on the team, the Bobcats were efficient, getting assists on 29 of 41 field goals. Raja Bell, playing despite a sore right shoulder, harassed Hawks top scorer Joe Johnson into 5-of-13 shooting for only 12 points.
Al Horford scored 15 points for the Hawks, who fell behind 36-21 after the first quarter, and saw their lead over Miami for in the race for home-court advantage in the first-round of the playoffs sliced to a half-game.