When your team sits at the absolute bottom of the league with a dismal 4-28 record the idea of looking forward to anything other than the end of the season (No 1) seems a little crazy. However, as someone who likes to at least try to find the silver lining in a season better compared to pyrite than an actual precious metal, I do believe we have a few things to look forward to:

The No 2 thing that we get to look forward to is a something that the team has done little of so far this season; we get to start the second half with everyone healthy! Woo hoo!

That brings me to No 3: Our next win will come against the Detroit Pistons on Leap Day, February 29. The Pistons rank towards the bottom of most significant statistical categories too. Part of the blame for the Bobcats ranking so low can be not having many of the starters during the season, but since they are all actually expected to be healthy and suit up on Wednesday I’m predicting a win.

I thought I’d use this All Star Break as a nice chance to gasp for air in this waterboarding session of a season and not write at all about the Bobcats for a weekend.  I didn’t feel like examining this team’s first 30-odd games of the year anymore than I feel like examining my own rectum.  But I was inspired by Gregg Easterbrook of all people.  For those of you lucky enough to have not stumbled on him, Easterbrook spews forth his recurring “Tuesday Morning Quarterback” column on ESPN during the NFL season, in which he peppers his pathological hatred for large football-centric colleges and drafted football players amongst random outer-space factoids and ponderous, in-depth critiques of terrible sci-fi shows that nobody likes in the first place.  He also loves to theorize, and does so with arrogant certainty—which is funny, because one of his go-to theories is that a team or a coach failed because they “angered the football gods.”  Probably the only reason I keep reading his columns is that he fills me with that sense of shame and disgust that I can’t get anywhere else during the Bobcats offseason.

Anyway, I was looking over one of the TMQ’s Easterbrook shat out towards the end of this NFL season, and it featured one of his typical pseudo-lectures, this one being on why football has become such a hit on television.  Here were his five reasons:

• Football is America’s most popular sport
• Football is a great DVR sport
• Football is live
• Women are acquiring more social and economic power
• Only men can understand flat-screen HD TV remotes

TORONTO—In a shocking announcement on Friday night, the Charlotte Bobcats declared to the world that they had won a basketball game.  In a chaotic press conference, spokesman Kemba Walker stated, “The Charlotte Bobcats have now amassed enough knowledge and technology to acquire a basketball win.  What’s more, our goal is to acquire multiple basketball wins within a period of 60-70 days.  We are now fully operational.”  Though there were few eyewitnesses willing to come forward, grainy footage was released showing Mr. Walker, along with several prominent leaders of the “Bobcats”—a radical splinter group of the organization known as the “NBA”—that appeared to back up his claim.  Walker denied accusations that his organization had committed a hostile act by procuring this win, claiming, “We are merely taking the necessary steps for our organization’s future security.”  Asked by one reporter what the next step might be, Walker would only say that “all options are on the table.”

Actually, Kemba Walker’s real comments after the game were as follows: “Even though it’s only our fourth win, it’s just a win.” He also helpfully added: “A win is a win.”  Nevertheless, I was so dumbstruck by what had just happened that I needed read and re-read his quote as if it were from Basketball Prospectus.   The Bobcats won!  Here’s the other great thing: they actually played well.  There’s one huge caveat to this statement, which is that the Raptors shot an abysmal 2-for-16 from 3-point range; in other words, they pulled a “Tyrus Thomas.”  But nothing else about the Raptors’ play was abysmal; in fact I’d say it was pretty abysmal—average shooting percentage, turnovers, etc.  There had to have been an emotional letdown—let’s face it: the Lakers, the NY Lins, and the Spurs had just come to town, so following that up with Charlotte is like following Led Zeppelin up with Right Said Fred.  Oh yeah, Toronto also didn’t have Andrea Bargnani.  But hey, we didn’t play Gana Diop, so I’d call that even.  Yup, I think this was a legitimate win.  Hell, who cares; at this point the win could have been more illegitimate than Frances Quinn Hunter and I’d take it.

Like a recurring nightmare, the Bobcats and Wizards played again on Saturday night.  My first impression was astonishment at what a large, lively crowd was on hand in Charlotte.  Who were all of these self-flagellators, and is there a Guinness Book of World Records category for “Most Masochists in a Single Room”? At least they were semi-rewarded with Kemba Walker’s first triple-double, Boris Diaw’s biweekly check-in from the planet Neptune, and an outcome that was a clear improvement on the four prior games.  But it was still a loss, and one that makes the Bobcats officially the worst team in the league.

Besides the obvious culprits—three disastrous possessions in the last minute of play and 12 missed free throws—I want to draw your attention to a particularly vomitous sequence late in the second quarter.  The Wizards were up by 3 with Jan Vesely on the line.  Vesely misses the free throw, but the Wizards get the offensive board and score.  Then John Wall steals it from Diaw, leading to a Wizards dunk.  Then Tyrus Thomas attempts a pass to a lucky fan sitting courtside, and it’s Wizards ball and they score.   Then Diaw, as if annoyed at being shown up by Thomas, throws a pinpoint pass directly to Vesely—Jake Delhomme couldn’t have done it better himself.  The Wizards didn’t score on this one, because they managed a dreadful pass of their own that was stolen by Walker, who—wait for it—makes his own terrible pass back to Vesely.  But wait, Vesely gives it to Nick Young, who promptly passes it right out of bounds (I swear I’m not making this up).  Thomas then simply misses an 18-footer (which at this point actually counts as progress), leading to a Wall travel, leading finally to a…Walker turnover.  The two teams combined for 8 turnovers in 84 seconds, 4 in a row by the Bobcats.  What had been a 1-point Wizards lead was now a 9-point lead in less than two minutes.  What had been the Time Warner Cable Arena should now be called the Jonestown Arena.

Wow! What a week for the Charlotte Bobcats.

Those of you that have read my rambling in the past know that I prefer not to go off on tirades on the current and very dire straits of the franchise. With that in mind, the above words are about the only thing I can really say. However, if I stop there this will not be much of a post.

So what in the world am I going to talk about if I’m not going to go off on these guys?

The future.

It’s kind of a bummer to have to go through a season of sucking (I’m still holding out a little hope that the guys will turn it around), but the benefit to that is a good shot at getting one of the top draft picks in next year’s lottery. With the number of talented players that are in the college ranks it is not hard to imagine which ones would be great fits in Charlotte.

So let’s do that. Let’s imagine who the Bobcats might get in the draft next year. Now of course it would depend on who comes out and who doesn’t, so for the sake of argument anyone the team could want will come out.

Also, I think we can look away from the guards. The team needs a big man more than it needs someone to spell Kemba Walker and D.J. Augustin. With that in mind, here are some of the big men that I wouldn’t mind seeing wearing the blue and orange in 2012:

Many causal NBA fans haven’t watched Charlotte play a single game this year.  But they may have heard anecdotally about how the team was blown out by 39 against Miami or by 30 against the Hawks.  And thus they have probably come to the easy, lazy conclusion that this team has played some bad games.  But you know something?  What these ignorant so-called “fans” don’t realize is that our Charlotte Bobcats have played other games, too, games like last night against the Nets…and those games are actually even worse.  How awful was Sunday night’s game?  I would make a prisoner watch it in order to beat a confession out of him. I haven’t watched something that depraved, sick, and twisted since that episode of Whitney.  In fact, when talking about the Bobcats, I’m thinking of replacing the word “watching” with the phrase, “subjecting yourself to,” as in, “Hey, are you subjecting yourself to the Bobcats tonight?”

Sunday night was actually bad to the point of profundity. Through suffering comes enlightenment, and I’m convinced that all of us—in choosing to wat—I mean, subject ourselves to—this team, are not simply expressing our die-hard fandom but responding to a higher calling.  Here’s how: People think of this as a golden age for basketball, with an amazing cast of stars and super-teams.  But the Bobcats are so cover-your-eyes horrifying that maybe the real reason we’re here is to document that it wasn’t all wonderful for the NBA circa-2012.  Bobcats Planet may actually be the NBA’s very own “How the Other Half Lives.” We’re the 99-percenters.   The black people on Mad Men.  After all, Raging Bull and Ordinary People weren’t the only movies released in 1981; so was Make Them Die Slowly.  Thirty years from now they’ll uncover this website, and it will serve as a testimony to those faceless, forgotten, hopeless masses who didn’t live in New York, Chicago, Miami, and LA.