Kareem Rush is hoping to find a home with the Seattle SuperSonics. In his words:

Tacoma News Tribune  

“I think I can fill a role that this team needs, which is to knock down shots consistently,” Rush said. “That’s what I do. I’m a veteran guy and I can step right in if somebody goes down.”

Random Observation: Rush shot 38.6% from the field last season, Since when did that qualify as "knocking down shots consistently"? 

"If I make this team, I am hunting for Charlotte," Rush told the Tacoma News-Tribune

After doing some googling, I found that this Kareem is getting ahead of himself with his plans of vengeance. He  STILL can't stay healthy enough to get on the court.

The Seattle Times

Sonics guard Kareem Rush aggravated the partial tear in his groin during warmups at the team's open practice at Hazen High School on Tuesday. He is listed as day to day.
Coach Bob Hill was eager to finally see the veteran play since Rush missed the opening two weeks of camp, including three exhibition games, because of the injury. But when Rush attempted to play through the pain, he pulled up limp and had to watch the sets of 12-minute scrimmages before a packed gym of high-school students.

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Here at BobcatsPlanet.com we’re looking for nominees for the 2005-2006 Kareem Rush award. What the hell is the Kareem Rush Award you ask? Let me explain… This is the award that goes to the softest and laziest player in the NBA. Kareem isn’t eligible himself because its just not fair to match him up against any other NBA player, Hes the Michael Jordan of laziness. When it comes to softness, He is the Anti-Charles Oakley.
Whether its being handed a starting shooting guard gig with the Bobcats only to have it taken by a rookie point guard playing out of position, or its missing weeks of games because of sprained fingers, hangnails, toothaches,  bad pap smear results, infected ovaries etc… Kareem has it covered.
Now if theres someone on your team that has lived up to Kareem’s prestigious level of Cottonelle-like softness, then nominate him here, and maybe he can be the recipient of … drumroll please… The 2005-2006 Kareem Rush Award.

The Charlotte Bobcats front office has spoken many times about long term goals and not making quick fixes  to improve the team over the short term, but I fear that they’ve taken that to another level.

On the radio the other day, Team president Ed Tapscott really downplayed making any noise in the 2006 free agent market. He did however really talk excitedly about the big name free agents of 2007, and how the Bobcats want to save cap space to make a run at one of those players.

With the absence of high schoolers in this year’s draft, the 2006 NBA draft should be one of the weakest in over a decade, outside of Adam Morrison there isn’t anybody coming out that you could really consider a future “star”.  The 2007 draft will be a different story all together, You’ll have the influx of one year players that were not able to enter the draft after high school graduation, and to top it off you have the player that could anchor your franchise for the next 10 years, Greg Oden. He has the talent to completely turn a franchise around.

These reasons, plus the shocking inactivity at the trade deadline ( notably not making a deal to move either Melvin Ely or Brevin Knight and not taking Seattle up on the offer to trade Kareem Rush ) leads me to believe that the organization is satisfied playing at the 18 to 25 game win level until the year 2007. In my opinion thats a big risk for them to take, because theres only so many 10 game losing streaks and “playing close while being out manned” that the fans can take before they completely lose interest.

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When he came out of the University of Missouri, he was touted as a can’t miss prospect, An athletic scorer with a silky jumpshot. Take a look at these two predraft assesments of Kareem’s NBA prospects: 

Major stroke from the college 3-point line, and most NBA types think he’ll hit the NBA three with ease. He’s a terrific athlete and has explosiveness around the basket, and is generally viewed as a solid citizen. He got all the attention from defenses this year at Missouri and didn’t put up the kind of numbers that were expected. But that doesn’t sway his supporters. "His stock did drop," says a Central Division scout, "but when teams look around and have a need at the two, I think it would be hard pressed to look past him." David Aldridge – ESPN.com  

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Strengths: Quite possibly the top scorer returning to the college game. When he’s hot, watch out, the ball will find the net. Can score in a variety of ways, and his outside J is money, as evidenced by his higher shooting % behind the arch than in front of it. Not even the athlete of undrafted brother of Jaron, but plays the game entirely more cerebrally, and has a much better offensive game. Very smooth player, good decision maker who plays under control. One of the best jump shooters in the college game today. NBA Comparison: Allan Houston nbadraft.net 

So the question remains, What the hell happened?  How did he take all of this hype and wind up a few years later scoring 11 points a game and shooting 36.7%, how did he wind up losing his starting shooting guard spot to a ROOKIE point guard playing out of position? I believe that the answer lies in his first few years with the Lakers, During that time he was backing up Kobe Bryant and his minutes were extremely limited so he never really had the on court time to develop as an NBA player and to throw an additional monkey wrench into the mix, he was forced to play the role of spot up jump shooter and not allowed to be offensively aggresive or use the skills that he showed at Missouri to create and take people off the dribble.  By the time he made it to the Charlotte Bobcats, he was a player that was mentally shot. All that he was by that time was an inconsistent spot up jump shooter. At this stage of his career I doubt if he’ll ever develop into anything more than that.

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With the way that this season is turning out, there aren’t a whole lot of positives to talk about. Even though we’re only half way through the season, this year is basically shot. There have been so many injuries that its been very difficult to achieve any continuity or evaluate the progress of many of the players. To this point in the season, the are a few things that we HAVE learned.
One is that it appears that Raymond Felton will be a legitimate NBA point guard, I still wish that we had moved up in 2005 to draft Chris Paul, however from what we’ve seen over the last couple of weeks, it does look like Felton will be able to hold down the point position for years to come.
Another thing that we’ve learned is that Emeka Okafor MUST do something to improve his low post offense, We don’t necessarily need him to score 25+ points a game, but we do need him to shoot a higher percentage from the power forward position. 40% shooting from a Emeka simply won’t cut it. Lets hope that in the summer of 2006 he spends more time working on his footwork and post game, than he does on yoga.
We’ve also learned that despite Bernie Bickerstaff’s faith in Kareem Rush’s ability, that Kareem is NOT the shooting guard of the future for the Bobcats, Hes hurt too much, and when he is in the lineup, he doesn’t do anything that impresses anybody. Best case scenario would be for him to be a backup to a legitimate shooting guard.
The last thing that we’ve learned is that Gerald Wallace is the core of this team and is irreplaceable. We survived and remained competitive with other injuries, but when Wallace went out of the lineup, all bets were off. His energy and defensive intensity makes him an all-star level talent. Unfortunately he won’t get in this year.
In this train wreck of a season this is what we’ve learned.

It appears that Kareem Rush is going to be out an extended period of time with another injury. This time around its a sprained finger… Not a broken finger, but a sprained finger thats going to keep him out for multiple games. His story is that anytime he gets hit on that finger that it hurts really bad, and that may well be the case, but when is the last time that you’ve seen Allan Iverson, Kobe Bryant or Dwayne Wade miss multiple games over such a trivial injury as this.
There is one positive to this though, It will give the Bobcats extended minutes for Bernard Robinson. Although he needs a lot of polish to his game, hes physical, aggressive, he can take the ball inside……. And I doubt that he would miss games over a sprained finger.