The Charlotte Bobcats front office has spoken many times about long term goals and not making quick fixes  to improve the team over the short term, but I fear that they’ve taken that to another level.

On the radio the other day, Team president Ed Tapscott really downplayed making any noise in the 2006 free agent market. He did however really talk excitedly about the big name free agents of 2007, and how the Bobcats want to save cap space to make a run at one of those players.

With the absence of high schoolers in this year’s draft, the 2006 NBA draft should be one of the weakest in over a decade, outside of Adam Morrison there isn’t anybody coming out that you could really consider a future “star”.  The 2007 draft will be a different story all together, You’ll have the influx of one year players that were not able to enter the draft after high school graduation, and to top it off you have the player that could anchor your franchise for the next 10 years, Greg Oden. He has the talent to completely turn a franchise around.

These reasons, plus the shocking inactivity at the trade deadline ( notably not making a deal to move either Melvin Ely or Brevin Knight and not taking Seattle up on the offer to trade Kareem Rush ) leads me to believe that the organization is satisfied playing at the 18 to 25 game win level until the year 2007. In my opinion thats a big risk for them to take, because theres only so many 10 game losing streaks and “playing close while being out manned” that the fans can take before they completely lose interest.

{moscomment}

In the 2006 NBA draft some team is going to make J.J. Redick a lottery pick, in all likelihood a very high lottery pick. The reasons that some team will make this pick are obvious. He has arguably the smoothest most pure shooting stroke at the college level in possibly the last fifteen years, His stroke can be measured only against some of the truly great shooters in college basketball history. In the college game, the purity of his stroke is on a level that only ballers like Dennis Scott, Glen Rice and Steve Alford have experienced. With that being said, why shouldn’t a lottery team rush out and make him their top draft pick?

People overlook it year after year at draft time, but the reason is a simple one. Being a star at the college level does not automatically translate to stardom at the professional level. Lets open our minds for a few minutes and project J.J. Redick at the NBA level. At 6’4" playing shooting guard, he is going to be matched up night after night against the greatest athletes in the world. They’ll all be quicker, taller and stronger than him. He’ll be matched up against the likes of Kobe Bryant, Dwyane Wade, LeBron James and Rip Hamilton, all superior athletes who won’t allow him to get his shot off on offense and who he wouldn’t have a prayer of containing on the defensive end.

His cause would be helped tremendously if he could give his future NBA team some minutes at point guard, but unfortunately he hasn’t shown the play making skills or the ball handling necessary to run the point for an NBA team.

With that being said, I don’t necessarily believe that J.J. Redick will be a bad NBA player, but he is without a doubt NOT worthy of a lottery pick. He is however worth a late first round pick in the 20 to 30 range. I see his future in the NBA being more along the lines of a Steve Kerr on the low end and a Vinnie Johnson at the upper end. Which if expectations are kept at realistic levels isn’t really that bad.

{moscomment}

When he came out of the University of Missouri, he was touted as a can’t miss prospect, An athletic scorer with a silky jumpshot. Take a look at these two predraft assesments of Kareem’s NBA prospects: 

Major stroke from the college 3-point line, and most NBA types think he’ll hit the NBA three with ease. He’s a terrific athlete and has explosiveness around the basket, and is generally viewed as a solid citizen. He got all the attention from defenses this year at Missouri and didn’t put up the kind of numbers that were expected. But that doesn’t sway his supporters. "His stock did drop," says a Central Division scout, "but when teams look around and have a need at the two, I think it would be hard pressed to look past him." David Aldridge – ESPN.com  

{mosgoogle} 

Strengths: Quite possibly the top scorer returning to the college game. When he’s hot, watch out, the ball will find the net. Can score in a variety of ways, and his outside J is money, as evidenced by his higher shooting % behind the arch than in front of it. Not even the athlete of undrafted brother of Jaron, but plays the game entirely more cerebrally, and has a much better offensive game. Very smooth player, good decision maker who plays under control. One of the best jump shooters in the college game today. NBA Comparison: Allan Houston nbadraft.net 

So the question remains, What the hell happened?  How did he take all of this hype and wind up a few years later scoring 11 points a game and shooting 36.7%, how did he wind up losing his starting shooting guard spot to a ROOKIE point guard playing out of position? I believe that the answer lies in his first few years with the Lakers, During that time he was backing up Kobe Bryant and his minutes were extremely limited so he never really had the on court time to develop as an NBA player and to throw an additional monkey wrench into the mix, he was forced to play the role of spot up jump shooter and not allowed to be offensively aggresive or use the skills that he showed at Missouri to create and take people off the dribble.  By the time he made it to the Charlotte Bobcats, he was a player that was mentally shot. All that he was by that time was an inconsistent spot up jump shooter. At this stage of his career I doubt if he’ll ever develop into anything more than that.

{moscomment}

Yesterday The Charlotte Bobcats completed the trade of guard Keith Bogans for the Houston Rockets’ Lonnie Baxter. On the surface this doesn’t seem to make that much of a difference for the Bobcats, However if handled correctly as a precursor to another deal or two prior to the February 23^rd deadline then this could work out well for the Bobcats. Bernie Bickerstaff’s premise for this trade was that he was freeing up a logjam at guard and getting some power forward help with Emeka Okafor and Sean May both being injured and out of the lineup.

The problem with this is, that there is going to continue to be a logjam for minutes on the wing until Raymond Felton starts to get starters minutes at the point guard position, this isn’t going to happen for the rest of this season as long as Brevin Knight is on the team. As long as Knight starts at the point and Felton starts at shooting guard, then Matt Carroll, Alan Anderson, Kareem Rush, Bernard Robinson are going to get table scraps for minutes on the wing. These scraps will be reduced even more when Gerald Wallace returns to the lineup in the next couple of weeks and reclaims his minutes at small forward.

The second problem with this trade is that Lonnie Baxter just isn’t going to get that many minutes at the power forward spot, Melvin Ely is playing well and over the past few weeks Jumaine Jones ( although I would classify him as more of a small forward ) has stepped it up and played well at the power forward position. And next season theres no way that Baxter is going to sniff any minutes on the court playing behind Emeka Okafor, Sean May and Melvin Ely. The only way for this to make sense is for Ely to be moved before the trade deadline, otherwise this is just an extremely short term fix until the team gets healthy.

If Bickerstaff made this trade to set himself up for future trades before the deadline then I’m all for it, however if this is all that we see before February 23^rd then only Bernie knows what hes doing.

{moscomment} 

The latest rumor has Tubby Smith of the University of Kentucky replacing Bernie Bickerstaff at the end of this season as head coach of the Charlotte Bobcats and Bernie Bickerstaff moving upstairs to focus solely on his General Manager duties.

The positives of this are, we would get Bernie out of the head coaching position. We all know that Bickerstaff is certainly not the guy to coach this team for the long haul , theres no record of him ever elevating his players and making them play above the level of their talent which is what the truly great coaches are able to do. This is also the offseason that the Bobcats may actually make a significant move in the free agent pool. Adding a quality free agent along with a high draft choice that could possibly be an Adam Morrison or a Rudy Gay , will increase our overall talent level tremendously. Because of that we’d be much better off with a coach that is “more suited” for a team with a higher talent level.

The negatives of this is really just one. Tubby Smith is a college coach. Hes a very talented National Cahmpionship winning college coach, but the fact remains He IS a college coach. The list of superstar college coaches that have entered the NBA and failed is a long one. The NBA graveyard is littered with “great” college coaches like the Rick Pitinos and John Caliparis of the world that were supposed to come into the NBA and tear the league up. We’ll have to wait and see what the Bobcats decide to do, but In my opinion I would take a seasoned NBA assistant over a college coach any and every day of the week.