Today the Charlotte Bobcats signed Shannon Brown to a minimum deal for the upcoming 2008 – 2009 season.

Lets see if the power of Youtube can answer the question of “Who is Shannon Brown”?

We learned that he is athletic and could get up and down the court during his MSU days.

For everyone’s reading pleasure I decided to submit my list of the best 2-3 combos in the East to see where exactly this team ranks with all the others. I took into consideration if a team has a reserve with starting caliber talent. Feel free to argue with anything and everything…

1.  Boston (Pierce/Allen)
2.  Miami (Marion/Wade)
3.  Milwaukee (Jefferson/Redd/Mason)
4.  Detroit (Prince/Hamilton)
5.  Cleveland (James/Szczerbiak)
6.  Chicago (Deng/Hughes/Gordon)
7.  New Jersey (Carter/Simmons)
8.  BOBCATS (Wallace/Richardson/Morrison?)
9.  Washington (Butler/Stevenson)
10. )Orlando (Turkoglu/Pietrus/Bogans)
11. Atlanta (Johnson/Evans)
12. Philadelphia (Iguodala/Young)
13. New York (Richardson/Crawford)
14. Toronto (Kapono/Parker)
15. Indiana (Dunleavy/Granger/Daniels)

There you have it, what is widely considered the team’s strength is really very average. I hate to be a pessimist but Brown will have to do a heck of a job for this team to make the playoffs.

Every good team in the NBA has an identity. Some teams are known by the offense they run. Phoenix under D’Antoni was known for playing uptempo small ball. The Lakers are known for the triangle offense. Jerry Sloan has been running pick and rolls ever since Stockton and Malone. Rick Adelman has used his version of the Princeton Offense successfully in Houston. You get the picture. Some teams on the other hand aren’t known for the offense they run but rather are known for their defense. Case in point: the Detroit Pistons of the last five to six years. Now, when one looks at this team the question becomes what type of identity should they try to create for themselves. Judging by the personnel of the team I believe that this team should model themselves after the Detroit Pistons. Here is why: the Pistons do not have a superstar who is capable of taking over a game with his scoring. No one on the team is a threat to score 50 on any given night. That’s OK because all five starters might score 20. The same can be said for the Bobcats. Jason Richardson is a nice offensive player but he is by no means a prolific scorer. The Bobcats could potentially have the same scoring balance that Detroit has. Secondly, this team has good length on the defensive end. Gerald Wallace is already a good defender ala Tayshaun Prince. Okafor is solid and the guards are athletic enough to become very good defenders with the right coaching and motivation. Which brings me to the point I’m really trying to make which is that Larry Brown is the right guy for this team. Suppose this team tried to model themselves after Phoenix. I don’t think that would work because, well, Okafor and Felton are not Amare Stoudamire and Steve Nash. We saw with the Memphis Grizzlies last year that you have to have the right personnel to play that style. OK, what about the Princeton Offense? It’s worked to varing degrees under Adelman, Eddie Jordan and Byron Scott but from what I understand you need bigs who are good at hitting open cutters and let’s face it passing and reading defenses aren’t Okafor’s strengths. What kind of offense this team will run remains to be seen but my point is that this team’s identity should be it’s defense. It’s the old cliche “defense wins championships”. We saw that last year with Boston. This team is young enough to be molded into a defensive nightmare for opposing teams and Brown is the perfect teacher for the job. He’s done it so many times before. Sure there are other guys out there that are known for their defensive emphasis such as Tom Thibadou but at the end of the day LB has taken teams like the Bobcats and turned them into winners. Thibadou is a high risk-high reward kind of guy and this franchise can’t afford to take high risks right now. I don’t know if everything I’m saying here is what MJ and Higgins were thinking when they hired LB but hiring him could turn out to be the best move MJ ever made.