If you look back in NBA history, we can recall many hmmm moments in the NBA Lottery. Remember when Patrick Ewing became the saviour of the Big Apple? I’m also sure you remember Tim Duncan going to San Antonio to be one of the Twin Towers when the Admiral was near the end of his career. How about Lebron James going home to Cleveland, then Derrick Rose going home to Chicago? Then we have the most recent, when Lebron James took his talents to South Beach and the next thing you know, the #1 Pick goes to Cleveland?

Maybe these Cinderella stories are just coincidences, or maybe there is a little more to them than we will ever know. Either way, they happened and there is no turning back now. So let’s just focus on tonight and hope that we get the #1 pick.

If a hmmm moment happens tonight and goes in the Bobcats favor, I can give you 5 reasons why I think it might have happened.

Do You Think He Get's this pissed in staff meetings?

I’d like to pick this thing apart like an autopsy.  The Bobcats 2012 season was dreadful.  I guess you have to still call it 2011-2012 season, because the Bobcats actually played 3 games before New Year’s Day.  But does it really matter?

Actually, yes.  It does matter because likely the most significant positives came in those first two games.  The Bobcats actually won against Milwaukee in that first game, and former Bobcats Stephen Jackson and Shaun Livingston.  The next game, it took a Dwayne Wade last second shot to beat the young Bobcats.  Wade showing “the Superman” to Cam Newton, who was in the crowd, hopefully cheering on his hometown Bobcats, was an indelible image from the season.

No, those were the salad days.  When the season was young.  If you look at the big picture of the season, you see one glaring, overwhelming, undeniable truths that will likely not be pushed aside for years, if ever: The Charlotte Bobcats are the worst team in NBA history.

“The worst,” isn’t defensible.  You can’t make claims like “Well, they show some promise and if it weren’t for….”  No, you can’t defend the Bobcats of the 2011-2012 season.  Epic futility, even in a shortened season, with a young team in flux, isn’t able to be cast aside like it was expected or a link in a chain of events that was somehow planned.

Tanking couldn’t be the reason for the lowest winning % in NBA history.  Michael Jordan claims that the Bobcats weren’t even going for the most ping-pong balls.  So, worst in the league, not a goal, worst ever?  Far from it.  I still argue we’re talking about Michael Jeffery Jordan here.  He’s one of the world’s greatest competitors.  They invented the quote “I don’t care if you’re playing basketball, checkers, tidly-winks or whatever, he hates to lose,” about the owner of the Bobcats.  But, we all also know that his exploits as owner and executive haven’t come close to what he did as a player, even in his time with the Wizards.  That says a lot.

"What the hell man? Can't have the worst win % and come back?"

I thought it was strange, early in the year, when there was a meeting that apparently absolved Paul Silas and his coaching staff of all responsibility of the misery heaped upon the franchise through epic losses.  I thought Silas might see the Bobcats through whatever was coming after this horrible season, but I was further confused when I heard Marv Albert and Mike Fratello on the TNT broadcast basically sealing Silas’s fate as Bobcats’ coach.

They said, basically, that Silas could come back to the team, in some aspect, but likely not as the head coach.  This was confirmed today, by Rick Bonnell of the Observer.  For all we know, this could be Paul’s decision.  He has had health issues, some serious and he’s no spring chicken.  If you ask me, however, this was simply a case of not rewarding a guy who led the worst team in NBA history.

Not only are the Bobcats 7-57 against the league, they’re now 0-2 against national columnists.  In SI.com, Michael Rosenberg wondered how someone as competitive as Michael Jordan could let something like this season happen.  In his ESPN Insider Per Diem column, John Hollinger demonstrated how the team’s atrociousness is historically significant.  I halfway expect to turn on tomorrow night’s game against Orlando and see Anderson Cooper solemnly reporting from outside of the arena, wearing a CNN-branded raincoat and describing the situation as an “ongoing catastrophe.”  The Bobcats are officially in Secret Service-territory now, a national embarrassment.  They’re also the worst nightmare for fans like me, who hope that if their teams can’t be any good then can’t they at least not make a scene?

Nope, they’re making that scene.  In fact, they’re getting drunk and throwing up in a crowded restaurant while picking their noses.  With spinach in their teeth.  “When the Kings arrived in North Carolina on Saturday evening,” wrote Jason Jones in the Sacramento Bee, “they had a practice that focused on what they needed to do to beat the Bobcats.”  Does that mean they practiced showing up?  Because I’m not really sure what else is required nowadays. The Kings owned more paint than Sherwin-Williams, scoring 78 from close-range.  DeMarcus Cousins, Jason Thompson, and Travis Outlaw rampaged through the Bobcats’ frontcourt like George, Lizzy, and Ralph.  It wasn’t just Sacramento’s bigs, either; the Bobcats made Isaiah Thomas look like Isiah Thomas, and Tyreke Evans’ notorious inability to develop long-distance range didn’t really matter when all of his shots were slam-dunks.  To me, this felt like the first time the Bobcats had genuinely stopped trying, especially on defense.  Everything about their effort was humiliating, including the technical foul on Bismack Biyombo (although I guess that means his English must really be coming along).

When this season started I professed to the world that I would not be another one of those guys that just harped on every little bad thing that the team did. As it turns out, it’s good that I held onto that idea as long as I did; there are just too many things. However, now that my optimism has turned into skepticism I find it hard not to complain about something.

Michael Jordan needs to fire Paul Silas.

Yes, you’ve heard me complain about the man before, but his abject refusal to even try to win a game has me shocked that he’s still got a job. I can’t stand that he’s having his son coach the team. It’s not his job. Paul needs to be doing whatever he can to lead the team to victory. That doesn’t include getting his son experience as a head coach.

This alone is enough for me to fire him if I ran the team. The fact that he didn’t even try to have the team do something when they were only down by five with 14 seconds left Wednesday night against the T-wolves was just absurd. At the least he should have had the guys foul Minnesota and make sure they earned the win.

I could care less that the man came out of retirement to coach the team or that he’s 68; no one made him take the job. Being tired is no excuse to do a shoddy job down the stretch. It’s no wonder that the team packs it in on occasion. I guess the players think it’s okay to pack it in since the head coach does.

That may seem hard to say (or believe) when you take a look at the body of work that thee guys have put in on the hard-court leading up to the All-Star break, but in this case I’m not talking about the game of basketball at all.

I love sports. I love watching the games while hanging out with the guys drinking a few beers. I love telling stories that paint me as a college/pro prospect when my talents were nowhere close to either.

What I especially love about professional sports is when players and teams show that they realize that they are special, but not in an egocentric way. I love it when they show appreciation for the unique opportunity that they have. Playing a game for a living is something that most people would like to do, and they get to do it.

The Bobcats might be failing miserably on the court, but this week they proved that they have their hearts and minds in the right place off the court.

In Monday, as part of their “Cats Care” program the team donated a massive refrigerated mobile pantry to the Second Harvest Food Bank in Charlotte (valued at $125,000). Of course a mobile pantry is worthless without food so they donated $125,000 in food as well.

“When I first took over the team one of the things I wanted to emphasize was for the Bobcats to connect back to the community,” team owner Michael Jordan said. “It’s a very beautiful truck and hopefully it’s going to serve a lot of people. We feel deep in our hearts that we owe back to the community for what the community has done for us.”