The day had all the earmarks of a truly Happy New Year for the Charlotte Bobcats.

Riding the momentum of their two previous games, which produced victories over the Los Angeles Lakers in a three-overtime beauty and a road win over the Indiana Pacers, to their near-complete control of the first half, the Bobcats seemed to have everything working their way Monday against Minnesota.

Everything, as it turned out, except, a reason to celebrate at night’s end.

After playing five games in seven days and thundering to a 20-point lead in the first half, the Bobcats ran out of gas and wound up stranded on the short end of a 102-96 game against the Timberwolves.

Thirteen second-half turnovers, which led to 23 Minnesota points, sealed their fate.

Despite the disappointment of the result, Coach Bernie Bickerstaff, who had often expressed concern about his team’s turnover rate earlier in the season, found no reason to complain.

“That’s all the kids had,” Bickerstaff said of his players. “When we get tired we make mistakes. With the five games in seven days (one of them a three-overtime affair), that was all they had.”

As costly as the mistakes were, they weren’t the result of sloppy play or lack of effort. And there was more to the loss than the errors. Oh, some of them did come at the most inopportune moments, to be sure – two came in the closing 1:28 with the Bobcats trying to recover the lost lead and take the game to the finish.

But there were other elements in this game, not the least of them a 32-point, 14-rebound performance by All-Star forward Kevin Garnett of Minnesota. He controlled the ball on a critical offensive rebound with 1:47 to play and the Bobcats within two. And he fired in a back-breaking 14-foot jumper with 16.2 seconds left and Charlotte down three.

“When you go down the stretch and there’s a Garnett, that’s a problem,” Bickerstaff said.

In simplest terms, Garnett did what All-Stars do. And the Bobcats did, on this night, all they could do. The combination of Garnett’s big plays and Charlotte’s step-slow finish was too much.

Though several players refused to attribute the loss to fatigue, Bickerstaff wasn’t about to point fingers after this one.

“I won’t (complain),” he said. “The errors were of commission – the guys were trying.

“A lot of the turnovers were unforced where guys were a step slow or tired. It’s not an excuse for the guys. They laid it on the line and I can’t fault them. It’s not like they didn’t have the effort.”

Bickerstaff had expressed concern before the game about where the Bobcats would find replacement energy for forward Gerald Wallace, out for at least a week with a shoulder separation and bruised rib suffered Saturday at Indiana. Not to worry, the players had no problem making the effort.

Execution was another matter at times. The Bobcats’ undoing had perhaps every bit as much to do with the first half as the second. They had sizzled through most of the first two quarters, shooting in the 60-plus percent range much of the way. They popped in six of their first seven three-point attempts. They scrapped. They moved the ball. And they had offensive balance with Raymond Felton, Adam Morrison, Matt Carroll and Emeka Ofafor combining for 45 first-half points.

But…

The game began to turn late in the second period. The Bobcats, ahead 53-33 going into the final minutes of the quarter, managed only two points to Minnesota’s 14 in the last 4:25 and suddenly, the Timberwolves’ deficit was down to a very manageable eight points (55-47) at the break.

“We didn’t close out the first half,” Bickerstaff said.

“We’ve got to understand that teams are going to make a run,” said Morrison. “But we’ve got to figure out how to shut it off. That will come with time and our development together.”

And, perhaps, it will come a little easier with some rest, a rare commodity given the NBA’s 82-game schedule. That’s especially true for the Bobcats, with a roster heavily populated with young players. The Timberwolves had, after all, also played five games in the previous seven nights but have more veterans and are more experienced at handling the pace.

The Bobcats get a rare day off today, then play only one time (Friday at Orlando) in the following seven days.

“We definitely need some time off, no question,” said Felton, who has been playing heavy minutes in the absence of injured Brevin Knight.

“(But) we’ve been playing well. I’m not upset with the way we’ve been playing.”

Leonard Laye covered the NBA, ABA and college basketball for more than three decades for the Charlotte Observer and the old Charlotte News until his retirement from writing sports fulltime. He will write a regular column throughout the season for BobcatsBasketball.com for his second straight year.