The Charlotte Bobcats just got some size back. Big man Byron Mullens returned to the court on Monday night, and right away did his part to make the Bobcats competitive, as he chipped in 12 points and nine rebounds in a narrow loss to the defending champion Miami Heat.

If you’re wondering how valuable Mullens is to Charlotte’s short term and long term prospects, look no further than the fact that he was supposed to have a bout a 15-minute cap in his return from a bad ankle injury, but instead logged 28.

Needless to say, Charlotte is starving for size, talent and production from their bigs, as Mullens is their only post player who has anything that resembles range, while he easily has the most versatile and well-rounded game at the position, as well.

So, just what can we expect from Mullens and the Bobcats with their 23-year old 7-footer back on the hardwood? Better play, hopefully.

So it has come to this.

Rick Bonnell is reporting in the Charlotte Observer that polls have gone out to the season ticket holders asking them if they would like to get rid of the current Bobcats name and return to the name of the city’s old franchise. The Charlotte Hornets.

Would adopting “Hornets,” the nickname first associated with NBA basketball in Charlotte, drive up sales of game tickets and team merchandise?

The Bobcats are already engaged in market research to find out. They’ve hired Harris Interactive, a nationally prominent polling company, to survey both current Bobcats customers and the general Charlotte sports market about a possible change.

That title is clumsier than Gerald Ford after doing keg stands of morphine, I know, but it’s the best I could think of after the unholy mauling endured by the Bobcats frontcourt last night. I’m still traumatized.  Al Jefferson and Paul Millsap and Derrick Favors and even DeMarre Carroll ripped out the collective heart of the Bobcats’ interior and showed it to them before they died. Late in the game, which I was inexplicably still watching, after yet another Al Jefferson dunk-and-one, color commentator Dell Curry pointed out, “One thing that’s not noticed is how good Utah’s entry passes are into their bigs.” Bismack Biyombo sure didn’t seem to notice anything all night long. Jefferson had his way with Biyombo like he was Sally Hemings. Tyrus Thomas was no help, either; in fact, he was anti-help. He shot 4 miserable long-range 2’s, turned it over twice, and was minus-11 in 12 minutes of “work.” Hakeem Warrick was more effective on the offensive end than Thomas (how could he not be?), but he was equally helpless defensively. Brendan Haywood, meanwhile, has taken up the Danny Glover-in-Lethal Weapon role; he’s grumpy and too old for this s—. All together, the Jazz’ bigs went 29-for-44. All together, our bigs are defending like 1990 Kuwait.

What a wonderful weekend it was for yours truly. First, on Saturday I got a late-arriving Christmas present consisting of gift cards for iTunes and Starbucks. This is like giving Eddie Money two tickets to paradise. I love both companies; roughly 75% of my paycheck goes to their products. If I were an NFL wide receiver, they would be my baby mamas. And even better, on Sunday the Bobcats do the unthinkable by defeating Detroit!

I say “unthinkable” because Detroit is all wrong for Charlotte, even if they’re a lousy team. Tayshaun Prince can’t seem to do anything against anyone except against us, and sure enough, he went perfect for the first quarter. Rodney Stuckey and Brandon Knight tend to expose our backcourt defense like Angelo Mozilo to a tanning both, and Charlie Villanueva cripples us like polio with 3-pointers. And then last year they added Greg Monroe, and then this year they added Andre Drummond, who’s more money than Phillip Drummond. It’s just too much; the game hadn’t even begun yet and I’d already pre-quit.

Fortunately, the Bobcats didn’t follow my lead. They somehow rode an almost entirely backcourt offense to victory. 77% of the Bobcats’ scoring came from the 1-3 positions (and with players like MKG and Jeff Taylor manning the SF slot, I have no problem including them as part of the backcourt). At one point in the second quarter, after yet another driving layup from Ramkemben Gorsesswalk, Pistons commentator George Kelser noted, “You might be able to double that pick-and-roll, especially with Brendan Haywood providing the pick.” Truer words haven’t been spoken since Jay-Z claimed that “life is short, then you on life support,” and the Pistons soon got wise. I expected Detroit to start cutting off the Bobcats’ guards like a beard in an Amish shearing attack, but they were either unwilling or unable. Walker, Gordon, and Sessions kept going 1-on-4 at the rim, kung fu movie-style, and it kept working.

“The lesson learned here is we can’t come out flat as a tack and give up those kind of points early,” coach Mike Dunlap said last night, following an abominable home loss to the Cleveland Cavaliers. First of all, Dunlap was clearly referring to the head of a tack, which is flat and spherical, rather than the pin portion, which is sharp and dangerous. Still, this seems like a clumsy use of a metaphor, because it’s that sharp edge that most people envision when they think about tacks. If you ever hear someone scream because they just stepped on a tack, your first thought isn’t, “Oh no, I bet the flatness of that tack was really painful!” In fact, let’s suppose that there were aliens who had no knowledge of our culture but had managed to intercept a single Hot 97 radio transmission of Jay-Z’s “99 Problems,” in which the phrase, “Aren’t you sharp as a tack?” is used. Those same aliens would be completely confused if they then had also managed to listen in on coach Dunlap’s interview last night. So let’s try to work on that, okay, coach? Try “flat as a 2-liter container of Diet Coke after it’s been left open for a week,” or “flat as a tire after it’s run over the Incredible Hulk’s heroin syringe,” or whatever pops in your head. It’s not that hard.

Anyway, the other embarrassing part of that quote is that this was not the first time the Bobcats have been given the “lesson” of starting out slow. The Bobcats have had this lesson enough to create an online Coursera syllabus. It’s also not clear why one would need a “lesson” about the dangers of letting a team score 62 points in the first half. In a game in which the object is to score more points than one’s opponent, and points are worth the same throughout the game, then limiting one’s opponents points at all times would seem fairly intuitive. In my college engineering courses, we never had a lesson on the importance of not building the Hoover Dam out of Gummi Bears. Okay, sorry, I’m just pissy right now.

I’m giving credit to the Bobcats for their loss to the Heat on Wednesday night. I had no expectations for that game, only fears. Playing Miami with these Bobcats is like locking a bunch of 8-year-olds in a room and forcing them to watch The Shining; all I could hope for was that nobody wet their pants and got traumatized for life. And indeed, Miami still shredded Charlotte like a classified document, but we worked a 19-point deficit down to 2 and would have potentially taken the lead if Bismack Biyombo could ever figure out how to finish a dunk.

It’s really amazing, actually—somebody should supercut this. Biyombo went 3-for-8 last night and you could sum up the total distance of his misses and not equal the range of a tick fart. He has the 8^th highest turnover rate among power forwards (those with at least 10 MPG), according to hoopdata.com, and a TS% that was last seen touring Brandon Bass country. He’s probably cost Kemba Walker, Ramon Sessions, and Gerald Henderson dozens of assists; although on the flip side, he’s probably given Michael Kidd-Gilchrist dozens of offensive rebounds. He’s at least able to throw some D on that—he’s 9^th in the league in total blocks/steals/charges per game and he’s holding opponents to a non-execrable 17-18 PER. But my word, you give him the ball from zero feet out and the results are more fruitless than a cheesesteak.