Although the Bobcats came out on the short end of the stick against the Miami Heat, there really isn’t a whole lot to complain about with tonight’s effort.  The Bobcats rushed out to an early halftime lead behind fantastic play from DJ Augustin and crazy first half numbers from Boris diaw ( 14 points, 9 rebounds, 4 assists, 1 block at the half ). Boris finished up with a ridiculous 16 points, 16 rebounds and 8 assists. A more skeptical person might think his numbers this season have something to do with it being a contract year for him, but I’m sure it has absolutely, positively nothing to do with… yeah, nothing at all, Really.

After running out to an early 15 point lead, The Bobcats came out sloppy in the second half turning the ball over in three of their first four possessions. After that slow third quarter start, the Heat slowly chipped away at the lead until this finally happened.

Make all the Juwanna Mann jokes that you want to about Chris Bosh, but he brought it hard in the second half and with Wade missing a good chunk of the second half with a sore foot, Bosh was the predominant reason that the Miami Heat snuck out of Charlotte with a win.

That’s right people, The Charlotte Bobcats are a mere 65 wins away from putting together that mythical 66-0 perfect NBA season that the city of Charlotte and the NBA has been buzzing about. Who gives half a crap about that funky little 16-0 that the Green Bay Packers were working on in the NFL this season, when you have a team like our Bobcats on the verge of such a legendary season… Um, yeah.

There were plenty of heroes in tonight’s game versus the Milwaukee Bucks.

• For starters we had our point-center-pseudo-smallforward or whatever the hell he is Boris Diaw playing all over the court and racking up a near triple double. Boris had 9 points, 11 rebounds, 9 assists and 2 blocked shots for good measure (my fantasy team humbly thanks you).

At first I thought this would be a tough week to make fun of the Bobcats.  In fact, I was so nervous that I spent Monday on YouTube looking up old footage of Primoz Brezec for inspiration.  This is because our three early-week moves made—dare I say it—sense!  We signed Reggie Williams for peanuts and let somebody else pay $7 million for the pleasure of watching Kwame Brown lumber around and slap the ball away from the hoop (regardless of whether it’s offense or defense), before inevitably stringing up a beautiful line of injury DNPs for all the world to admire.  We also invited Melvin “Poor Man’s Chris Wilcox” Ely to a risk-free tryout.  Really, other than ruining my first prediction before the season even started, I had no quarrel with any of these decisions.  Worse, they had no comedic value!

Fortunately, as he so often does, Boris Diaw, bailed me out.  The pudgy Frenchman and noted Segway-admirer is now our starting center!  This is funny for two reasons.  First, just two days earlier, Diaw was practicing as a point guard while Kemba Walker remained un-signed…and now he’s the center.  Second, as the starting center, Diaw declared (with a straight face) that his first order of business would be to gain weight.  Diaw’s been known to enjoy delicious food now and then (usually now), so I’m confident he’ll be up to the task…of gaining weight, that is.  I have no idea if he can play center.

Weight was actually a popular topic this week.  Gana Diop is 25 pounds overweight, while hopeful job applicant Ely has supposedly dropped 30 pounds and impressed coach Paul Silas.  “I heard he’s a really good offensive player – a post-up man with both hands,” Silas told the Observer.  I’m both encouraged by coach’s assessment and alarmed by coach’s apparent lack of firsthand knowledge of Ely—why has he only “heard” of Ely?  Is there no film available?

He wasn’t the best option in the league, but Kwame Brown gave the team a serviceable big man to play with. Had Bismack Biyombo been able to get out of his Spanish league contract, he would have likely logged some minutes there as well in order to ease the youngster to the NBA game.

Kwame has instead opted to become a reserve out on the left coast; yeah, the money is better than what he likely would have gotten in Charlotte, but he’s only a reserve there rather than a starter here (doesn’t make sense to me).

All summer long we kept hearing about how Bismack Biyombo was going to get out of his Spanish contract and make it to the U.S. in time for the season. Well, Sports Fans, it looks like that is not going to happen after all. To make a long story short, it will take $4 million to buy out his contract. The team has said it can swing a half mil to help, but the rest is up to him.

I don’t think he’s coming. At least we know we’ll get him next year (maybe the team should consider sending a trainer over to him to help get him in NBA shape…).

That leaves the Bobcats with DeSagana Diop as its only true center; let me rephrase that—an out of shape, 280+ pound DeSagana Diop still recovering from a torn Achilles tendon is the only true center.

Not going to happen, folks.

So we are back training, the coverage from Matt Rochinski on training camp has been pretty good so far. He has managed to get a lot of interviews with players and even one with MJ. However one thing that really frustrates me as a fan is I feel I have seen the same thing over and over. The same vague answers, I have heard them all before. “What did you work on this summer” answer = “errrr everything” or “how is everyone doing at training camp” = “everyone is playing really hard”. These generic answers annoy me, as it’s a chance to see what they have to say and they get away with basically saying nothing. Did you guys see the MJ video? Ask yourself what you learned from watching that, I learned nothing which frustrated me. I am sure he has a reason for giving these “politically correct” answers but sometimes fans just want to here the truth, I would have more respect saying it how it is.

Anyway rant over, it’s been a busy week in the Bobcats front office, I’m going to run through a few of the moves we have made (or haven’t) and give my opinion:

See you later Kwame, and thanks for Stopping by.

Kwame Brown signed in Golden State for one year at 7 million. First of all I want to congratulate Cho, as I think if MJ and Rod were still at the helm we would probably have chased Kwame and paid him. I see this as a success; we are being clever here by not overpaying (because 7 million is way too much). Instead we have signed Melvin Ely, an offensive minded big which should be a bonus as post scoring has always been a rarity in Charlotte. I am not saying this guy will be just as good as Kwame by any means, but he is a big body who hopefully Silas will rejuvenate in the same way he did with Kwame last year.

In the last two seasons of NBA basketball we have witnessed an incredible amount of hype and media attention surrounding the league’s superstars, including LeBron, Howard, Nowitzki, Melo and so on. It seems that a championship recipe these days involves two or three superstars and one full roster of washed up veterans for minimum wages, and it’s done. To some extent, it gets you almost all the way. We all saw the Heat fail to win a championship last year with a roster that included Chris Bosh, LeBron James and Dwyane Wade, arguably one of the most overpowered big three’s in the history of basketball. At least it should be, and remember, when KG, Allen and Pierce got together, they were past their prime and these guys are just entering theirs. So while all eyes are on Dwight Howard, CP3, and the extremely over-hyped FA pool, I look the other way, knowing I won’t be blinded by this hysteria.