The Heat is on. On the street. Inside your head. On every beat. Caught up in the action, the Bobcats were looking out for LeBron James and company on Sunday night, but they were unable to slow down the Miami force of nature that blew through them like a 1985 saxophone riff. True to their M.O., Miami kept the foreplay up deep in the second half, allowing the Bobcats to stay within 5 points as late as 7:30 into the third quarter. But that’s when the necking and heavy petting ended, and James delivered money shot after money shot, as the Heat straddled the 3^rd and 4^th quarters with a 26-5 scoring orgy that climaxed in a 32-point blowout, 109-77.

Along the way, the Bobcats set the unofficial record for most NBA game recaps featuring the word “drought”; sometimes I can’t tell if I’m reading about the Bobcats or Sudan. “Once they got settled in, started making plays,” said guard Gerald Henderson afterward, “They got back into the game and we also went on a long drought where we couldn’t score the ball.” Particularly parched were Byron Mullens (2-of-8 overall, 1-of-5 from 3-point range) and Ben Gordon (0-of-7 overall, 0 (obviously)-of-3 from 3-point range). Overall the Cats generated a shooting percentage so tiny (33.7%) that Rick Moranis accidentally ate it with his Cheerios. Without a large, mobile, athletic big (or even one of the above), the Bobcats were forced to work the ball around the horn and hoist up a comical 25 3-pointers. “We ran into some dry spells and we settled for way too many 3s,” coach Mike Dunlap said. “At the end of the game we had 25, and that’s not who we are.”

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 Charlotte Bobcats have another chance to start a winning streak. It took overtime to get their ninth win of the year over the Detroit Pistons on Sunday night, but Kemba Walker and co. got it done and now sit at 9-24 as they prepare for a home date with the Utah Jazz.

While it was just Charlotte’s second win in their last 21 games following a terrible 18-game losing streak, it’s a stepping stone away from a horrible December. In fact, the Bobcats are now at .500 in the new year (1-1), while January offers them a brand new platform to try to get back to a competitive state.

They’ll need more nights like this. The scoring was there for the second straight game, as Kemba Walker paced Charlotte with 20 points and seven dimes, while Ben Gordon was hot off the bench with 18 points of his own.

Charlotte overcame a solid night from Detroit big man Greg Monroe, who had little difficulty doing as he pleased for much of the game, on his way to 18 points, 14 boards and six assists. Considering how close the game was and the fact that Monroe was never in foul trouble, it’s a wonder why the Pistons didn’t go to him more (just 10 shot attempts).

You sure it's me and not Higgins? You know, we're both named Corey, mine with an "E"

Oh Corey, sweet, sorry, injured Corey.  We barely got to know you as a Bobcat, and now, you are gone.  Stephen Jackson and Shaun Livingston to swap picks and bring in Maggette, last year on draft day, worked.  It was worth it to get Bismack Biyombo, or was it Kemba?  This time around, Corey Maggette for Ben Gordon and a protected first round pick, might just be crazy enough to work.

My question is, did Cory Higgins demand the trade because he has to be the only person named Cory or Corey on the team?  How would that conversation go?  ”Dad!  I’m tired of the coach saying “Corey, get in the game!” and then he looks at me and Maggette getting up and tells me to sit down!”

No, that probably wasn’t it.  I wondered aloud if this was a trade for trading’s sake, sort of to kick-start the week of the draft.  That was immediately met with “Nah, Rich Cho just loves him some draft picks.”  Very true.  Rich Cho is all about acquiring assets.  As “assets” go, conditional first round picks seem pretty easy to come by, if you have a guy that is that puzzle piece that a team thinks they need.

It’s interesting to me that Maggette was traded the same week as Kevin Youklis of the Boston Red Sox.  If you have read or seen “Moneyball,” you know that Youklis is the “Greek God of walks.”  Similarly, Corey Maggette is the “Greek Sub-God (if that’s a thing) of going to the free throw line).”  When he came in, a quick glance at his numbers would tell any Bobcats fan that he gets to the line a lot for a guy who doesn’t average as many points as a superstar or has the cache to draw fouls like a superstar.  His attempts jump off the page at you as probably the one thing he did really well.

It doesn’t take Keith Olbermann to call this a countdown.  Nor does it take Beyonce, Rush, and T.I.  Nor would Europe be wrong in calling it the final countdown.  Perhaps even Megadeth wouldn’t be going too far in calling it a countdown to extinction.  With just 8 games to go in this Somali election of a season, the Bobcats are essentially providing shoulders for better teams to cry on.  Teams like Detroit and Miami.  Detroit was able to break a 3-game losing streak thanks to the Bobcats’ typical offensive ineptitude and defensive grotesquerie.  The following night, the Bobcats did the impossible by making Joel Anthony look like a dominant center (side question: why is it pronounced “Jo-EL,” like he’s a native of Krypton?  Is it a French thing?) in a game completely devoid of irony that allowed the Miami Heat to—at least for one night—feel good about themselves.

Rafe Bartholomew wrote an article on the Detroit game for Grantland, cheerfully titled “Fate Worse Than Death: Bobcats-Pistons.”  The piece accused the Bobcats of tanking. “Will someone tell the Bobcats they can stop tanking already?” Bartholomew asks, “With nine games left in the season, Charlotte is 6.5 games behind Washington, the NBA’s second-worst team.”  That the Bobcats are tanking is the obvious conclusion to make, and I agree that the Bobcats indirectly chose the “tank path” last year when they began auctioning off all of their expensive players with above-average abilities.  But I don’t think the players themselves are tanking.  Let’s face it, even if this team was playing at the peak of its powers, exactly how much better would they be?  As much as I bash Tyrus Thomas, his best year was 2008-9, when he averaged 10.8 points and 6.5 boards.  Nor will I be bouncing my grandkid off my knee one day and telling him I saw every game of DJ Augustin’s magical 2010-11 season, in which he averaged 14 and 6.  Basically, all I’m saying is that this team might have crash-landed with a thud, but they were a North Korean-built rocket to begin with.

On Friday against the Nuggets, TV commentator Steve Martin announced that it was the 22^nd time that Charlotte had allowed 50 points in the paint.  I was absolutely shocked to hear this—shocked that it had been only 22 times (the following night against the Pistons made it 23).  I could have sworn it was more, because it seems as if everyone from Chris Bosh to Kris Humphries to Kriss Kross has burned the Bobcats down low like a venereal disease.

The Bobcats’ other Achilles heel has been the third quarter, which also reared its ugly, Mickey Rourke-like head again in the Denver game.  The Nuggets went on a 9-0 run about halfway through the period to turn a 2-point lead into an 11-point lead.  During this same stretch, the Bobcats missed 9 shots (including a technical foul free throw and two Bismack Biyombo layups), had 2 other shots blocked (including one by Ty Lawson???), and committed 3 turnovers in a tour-de-force of incompetence.  The Bobcats’ 3-point shooting also burst like the housing bubble (4-for-their-first-5, 1-for-their-last-17).  Not helping was the loss of Corey Maggette, whose own Achilles heel is literally his Achilles heel.  Maggette suffered an Achilles strain, meaning the Bobcats’ will be without their closest resemblance to an offensive force for at least a week.  And to top it all off, JaVale McGee didn’t do anything asinine, which was really one of the few reasons to watch this game.  It was like getting excited to see a Will Ferrell movie, only to have it be Everything Must Go.  Instead of laughs, we got just more of the same sad, typical failure.