It was as if the words were a healing force. That is how often Glen Rice repeated them. He is the Hornets’ small forward, the very definition of a pure shooter, and on Sunday evening he kept using these words as if they would magically wipe away the miserable display put forth by him and his team in the opening game of their second-round playoff series with the Bulls.
His performance? His team’s offensive philosophy? The Bulls’ defense? No matter what part of Game 1 he was asked about, Rice would offer these words in explanation.
“We just missed a lot of shots,” he would say one minute.
“Things just didn’t go down for us,” he would add a minute later.
He sounded shocked every time he said that, someone suggested.
“I was very shocked,” Rice said. “We’re very capable of knocking down a great deal of shots.”
Hornets coach Dave Cowens was slightly more expansive.
“We kind of came up dry many times,” Cowens said, offering his own take on what happened to Charlotte in its 83-70 loss.
“The philosophy is to try and get the ball past their great defenders, (Michael Jordan) and (Scottie Pippen), so if they come down and help out, it leaves our shooters open. Then we don’t have to try and take guys off the dribble, which plays to their strength.
“Early in the game it was working pretty well because we were making shots. Then they caused a few turnovers, they made some adjustments, they came harder on the traps, and we didn’t handle that well a couple of times. That allowed them to get closer, and then they started smelling it.
“When they start coming really hard and you kick it out and come up dry, the next time they come harder, and they come with more guys, and everybody gets more intense. That’s what happens.”
That, in fact, is just what happened to the Hornets Sunday, and there were numbers strewn all over the United Center to support Cowens’ explanation. In the first 16 minutes, his team hit 12 of its 23 shots (52 percent) and scored 32 points. In its next 20, it hit a mere 4 of 23 shots (17 percent) and scored only 16 points.
In the 20 minutes that stretched from early in the second quarter to the end of the third, the Hornets got baskets from only Curry (three points on 1-of-7 shooting overall), Rice (25 on 9 of 25) and B.J. Armstrong (two on 1 of 4). They hit only 12 of their last 44 shots (27 percent). And after scoring 23 points in the first quarter, they scored 15, 10 and 22 in the quarters that followed.
Anthony Mason, who averaged nearly 20 in the Hornets’ first-round conquest of Atlanta, would finish with six on 1-for-5 shooting. Rice, who hit 43 percent of his three-pointers in the regular season, would go 1 for 6 (17 percent) on three-pointers.
In the regular season the Hornets hit 38 percent of their three-pointers, third best in the NBA. Here they hit 28 percent.
In the regular season the Hornets shot 47 percent overall, sixth best in the NBA. Here they hit 36 percent.
In the regular season the Hornets averaged 96.6 points a game, 10th best in the NBA. Here they scored 70, and nearly half in the first 16 minutes.
That is when they built themselves a 15-point lead (32-17), and when they were thinking “that this was our night,” Rice said. “But all of a sudden things just turned around. They did pick up their defense. But again, we had a lot of wide open shots. Things just didn’t go down for us.”
And here it came one last time.
“If you can’t hit your shots, you can’t win a game,” said Rice.
