Paul Silas is not going to sit back and watch Charlotte Bobcats lose.
On Thursday he oversaw his first training session with the Bobcats and the 10 year veteran coach who was hired after legendary coach Larry Brown engulfed in another messy exit, made his intentions crystal clear.
The first move, he made was to cut down on the lay back and wait offensive style of play of his predecessor and instead of using a 24 second clock shot, Silas set his team a 14 seconds deadline to make it count. His message was short and simple ‘run and
have fun’.
Introducing an up-tempo style of play seems to be his solution to bring the Bobcats out of their miserable season start.
"I want to bring some energy to this ball club," Silas said after being introduced as the fourth head coach in franchise history. "I want us to get up and down and let it all hang out. If they don't want to get up and down, they can come sit down by me."
However, taking over the reins of a struggling 9-19 team that lost its drive under Brown and has lost six of its last seven games, including three encounters by margins of 30 points or more this month alone, will not be an easy job. He can change the style
of offense, bring in improvements here and there but one thing is for sure that it is going to take him sometime to change the attitudes and intensity levels of the player. And the 67-year old coach knows there is no easy fix to getting the Bobcats back into
the reckoning for the Eastern Conference play-off race.
“It’s a lot of pressure.” Silas said. “At my age, I see these guys on the sideline shaking their heads. Do you really want that? Yeah, I do.”
The Bobcats currently rate as one of the worst teams in the NBA when it comes to scoring and have managed an average of just 91.7 points per game, so much for the team whose owner is the iconic Michael Jordan. Only Milwaukee Bucks are averaging fewer points
and to make the matters worse, the shooting has further gone downstream in the last four consecutive losses as the Bobcats have averaged just 80.2 points and have not scored 100 since edging past the Denver Nuggets, 100-98 on December 7.
"We've got shooters," Silas said. "We've got defenders. We've got shot blockers. We've got all the ingredients that you need. The guys just have to get out and play and believe in themselves and believe that I believe in them. I've found that if you have
a confident player, it's unbelievable what he can do."
And the players seem to be enjoying the upbeat, rush forward game.
Stephen Jackson, the ace Bobcats guard was the most vocal as he indicated his coherence with Silas approach to move forward.
"It's rejuvenating," He said. "The styles are like night and day. Hopefully this will bring some life to us and give us some confidence and get us playing well again. Up-tempo, we've got a great group of young guys and this fits their style. Hopefully we
can do a good job at it and enjoy it because it's definitely fun."
He however, was quick to add that players are equally responsible for the situation Bobcats find themselves in and they are the ones who have to sort it out eventually.
"We have to take just as much blame as anybody for not playing well and causing Coach Brown to leave," Jackson said. "We have a job to do now. We know that it's not going to happen just because we have a new coach. We still have to go out there and play."
Silas definitely has rung in a change which may be the first of many to come, but the coach who proclaims that coaching the Bobcats is a dream come true, surely has a difficult road ahead.
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