The Charlotte Bobcats have disappointed, yet again. Not only have they been abysmal for the majority of this 2012-13 NBA season, but they couldn’t even add some extra excitement during the NBA trade deadline this year.

Tyrus Thomas is out of the rotation and is widely regarded to be on the outs with the franchise. He’s still a Bobcat. Gerald Henderson is in a contract year and will walk for nothing when the season is over. He’s still here. Ben Gordon got in a spat with head coach Mike Dunlap and was rumored to be headed elsewhere. Nope.

The Bobcats didn’t trade any of those guys, and they also didn’t find a way to get anything for solid bench player Ramon Sessions. Instead, they only swung Hakim Warrick to the Orlando Magic for forward Josh McRoberts.

I’m so excited about the Bobcats trading Hakim Warrick to the Magic for Josh McRoberts! Not because I think the trade will matter much—seriously, Weird Al Yankovic albums have more significance than this deal—but because it frees me up from having to think about last night’s loss to the Pistons.

Against Detroit, the Bobcats sandwiched decent 2^nd and 3^rd quarters with contemptible 1^st and 4^th quarters; it was a suck sandwich. Or maybe it was a decent sandwich with suck bread. Whatever. More importantly, it was the how of the suckage more than the suckage itself that really hurt. The Pistons were down one of their best players, Andre Drummond, and they lost Brandon Knight for basically the whole fourth quarter to injury. Plus, for whatever reason, Tayshawn Prince is a Bobcats Killer (a nickname I doubt he’ll embrace), averaging 15 points and 7 boards against us in the last two seasons, and he’s no longer a Piston. So trailing by 1 going into the fourth quarter at home, the Bobcats essentially had to zero in on the lone Pistons weapon, Greg Monroe.

The NBA is more concerned with growing world wide and teams like the Charlotte Bobcats, while important to their individual markets, are simply inventory to spread the game globally, not necessarily to dominate a particular market.

Basically, It doesn’t matter where the team plays to the upper levels of the NBA. New York, Los Angeles and Chicago, maybe but the rest, it doesn’t matter where they are. As long as a city can put up an arena, somewhat sustain a bit of TV or local business revenue, the league will use whoever and wherever to stock its shelves with content to send out into the world.

It used to be there was a building in a town that hosted the circus, a couple car shows, maybe wrestling a couple times a year and the main tenant would be a basketball team. They sold tickets and kept the lights on to support this local building. It evolved into it’s own beast, certainly under David Stern where places that never had a major league team of any kind, suddenly had Michael Jordan visiting 4 times a year.

The Bobcats crash-landed into All-Star Break with a resounding whipping by the Pacers. Even though Indiana was significantly short-handed, they still had enough hand left over to pimp-slap the Bobcats, 101-77. I’d rather check the commodes of that stranded Carnival Cruise ship than the stats, but let’s go ahead and get it over with. The first thing that jumps out at you is Charlotte’s 31% shooting percentage—awful. The next red flag is that Bismack Biyombo and Brendan Haywood went 1-for-13 from the field. That’s actually not a red flag, that’s more like blanketing the entire mall in Washington D.C. with the colors of the Soviet Union. I can’t tell what’s more alarming: that they missed 12 shots or that they took those shots in the first place. A quick look at the shot chart reveals that all but three of them were in the paint, and from what memories of the game I have that I’ve failed to suppress pharmaceutically,  I believe at least two of those three came to avoid a shot-clock violation. So for the most part, I guess they weren’t forcing anything, which is good.

But the play from our bigs was the hairy mole on this ugly game. Other statistical travesties include Charlotte’s +9 turnover differential, most of which came in the first half. In some ways the turnovers were appreciated, because they meant that we at least didn’t have to watch the team clank shots. But we generated 2 more turnovers than we did assists, creating an overall aesthetical value of play that resembled the cover of Metallica’s Load album. And this is before factoring in the 12 free throws each from Biyombo and Tyler Hansbrough that we had to suffer through.

The Charlotte Bobcats really got me. Perhaps it was in fact only me, but I had hopes that they’d get off to a decent start and maybe even be competitive in 2012-13. Turns out, for the first month anyways, I was right.

The Bobcats were at one point 6-4, and exited November a reasonable 7-8. Since then, they’ve won five measly games. More importantly, they didn’t win a single game in December, and have frequently been flat-out abused on defense.

Yes, the Bobcats enter the All-Star break sitting at a depressing 12-40 and even entered the break with another disappointing blowout loss. It’s only fitting.

But in a season where Bobcats fans are probably saying “it is what it is” at a record rate, there still is a light at the end of the tunnel. After all, Charlotte isn’t about to turn things around anytime soon, which at the very least means a strong likelihood of a high lottery draft pick in the 2013 NBA Draft.

With that said, it’s time for first half grades, and the Bobcats as a team get a resounding F.

Let’s break the members of the Bobcats down individually and see how they grade out through 52 games:

Mike Dunlap (HC) – D+

The hot start can’t be completely forgotten. I almost laughed when I wrote “hot start”. But that’s what a hot start is right now for the Bobcats – getting off to an “around .500″ record. Dunlap is a rookie coach working with very average talent from an overall stand-point. There’s enough here to suggest he can be solid at this level, but from a record stand-point it’s clear he’s been unsuccessful. I still have hope for him, but wouldn’t be shocked at all if he’s one and done in Charlotte, either.

There’s no other way to put it: last night’s 122-95 loss to the Cleveland Cavaliers was an inexplicably savage butchery. I’m at a total loss for words. I guess that’s not technically true, otherwise I couldn’t be typing anything. But still, after every few sentences I manage to force out, I stare at the box score in mute horror. I wish I had as strong a stomach as coach Dunlap apparently does. After reviewing the statistical bloodstains and brain matter from the Cavs’ slaughter, coach Dunlap merely commented, “There are three or four of those that happen to you. They’re not pretty.” A) Duh. B) This was actually the 5^th time this season that the Bobcats have lost by 25 or more, so I would challenge coach Dunlap to revise his definition of “those.” He also added that the team’s “physical effort was unacceptable—our front door and our back door is effort.” Okay, but the rest of the house is a meth lab, and that falls on every executive on the team who let it come to this.