The Bobcats crash-landed into All-Star Break with a resounding whipping by the Pacers. Even though Indiana was significantly short-handed, they still had enough hand left over to pimp-slap the Bobcats, 101-77. I’d rather check the commodes of that stranded Carnival Cruise ship than the stats, but let’s go ahead and get it over with. The first thing that jumps out at you is Charlotte’s 31% shooting percentage—awful. The next red flag is that Bismack Biyombo and Brendan Haywood went 1-for-13 from the field. That’s actually not a red flag, that’s more like blanketing the entire mall in Washington D.C. with the colors of the Soviet Union. I can’t tell what’s more alarming: that they missed 12 shots or that they took those shots in the first place. A quick look at the shot chart reveals that all but three of them were in the paint, and from what memories of the game I have that I’ve failed to suppress pharmaceutically,  I believe at least two of those three came to avoid a shot-clock violation. So for the most part, I guess they weren’t forcing anything, which is good.

But the play from our bigs was the hairy mole on this ugly game. Other statistical travesties include Charlotte’s +9 turnover differential, most of which came in the first half. In some ways the turnovers were appreciated, because they meant that we at least didn’t have to watch the team clank shots. But we generated 2 more turnovers than we did assists, creating an overall aesthetical value of play that resembled the cover of Metallica’s Load album. And this is before factoring in the 12 free throws each from Biyombo and Tyler Hansbrough that we had to suffer through.

“I don’t remember us having a game like that where we got outrebounded that bad,” Bobcats guard Ben Gordon said, after the Bobcats were outrebounded by 29 in a home loss to the Indiana Pacers. Actually, it would be weird if Gordon could remember being outrebounded that bad, because it’s literally never happened in the team’s history. In his post-game blog, the Observer’s Rick Bonnell wrote, “I started covering the NBA in 1988 and I can’t remember a team being outrebounded by 29.” At least these guys have their answers ready if they’re ever forced to testify on rebounding in a Senate hearing.

I can understand Gordon’s remarks, which were made in a post-game environment, while he’s physically and emotionally drained and presumably without an online search engine nearby. But it seems odd for Bonnell to just throw that line out in an article and not follow up with a quick query to see how often a team has been outrebounded by 29 or more since 1988. Because it’s a blog, we know he’s got internet access, and considering that the Miami Heat were just outrebounded by 28 a few days ago, it might not exactly be a black swan event. So I decided to undertake the search myself. I put on a fedora, hummed the theme to Raiders of the Lost Ark, and googled “outrebounded by 30.” I actually didn’t get much, so I tried it again, this time using a hyphen between the “out” and “rebounded.” Still nothing. Hmm. This was harder than I thought. It was starting to seem like Rick was right not to bother. Or maybe he had bothered and couldn’t finish; he was the digital equivalent of Chester Cobblepot in Goonies.

The Bobcats added two more losses to their dossier over the weekend, one a near miss and the other a far miss. Even the relatively close loss to the Pacers on Saturday would need to have an asterisk the size of Bismack Biyombo making a snow angel, because Indiana was without their best player, Paul George. The loss on Friday to Toronto was simply an undistilled humiliation; it was humiliation moonshine. The Bobcats might as well have played the game wearing red ball gags. For fans, every simple and advanced metric of our team generates a stench of losing with long-term rancidity. The best we can hope for is more articles like this one, in which members of the team are reduced to congratulating themselves for not brawling with each other.

These last two losses could also be titled “Revenge of the Obscure Bobcats.” The Raptors now prominently feature former Bobcat Alan Anderson, and the Pacers played ex-Cat Dominic McGuire (and DJ Augustin, but I wouldn’t call him “obscure”; at least, not without calling him many other things first). I have to admit, I consider myself to have an encyclopedic knowledge of the Bobcats, and I’m drawing a total blank on Mr. Anderson (side note: could there be a more useless encyclopedic knowledge of something? Maybe an encyclopedic knowledge of greeting cards for pets?). This is actually not necessarily a bad thing; for instance, I remain tortured by quite vivid memories of Primoz Brezec. Even writing his name as “Mr. Anderson” just now makes me feel like I must have made some sort of stupid Matrix/Agent Smith-type joke about him circa 2006, but I don’t think I did—probably because I was too busy making jokes about Brezec. But anyway, Anderson, McGuire, and Augustin are now all having the last laughs.

The Charlotte Bobcats will wait a few days into the new 2012-13 NBA season to officially get started, but fans can rejoice that their season opener will come at home.

Their season opening matchup with the Indiana Pacers will be a solid, although not unbeatable, test to begin the year. In fact, Indiana’s defensive tendencies sync right up with a historically slow-paced Charlotte offense, as well as a Bobcats teams that has relied on it’s defense in the past.

There have been a lot of changes to this current Bobcats roster, however, and some offer encouragement for an improved season.

With that said, let’s dive into some specific keys for this game, and see how the Bobcats might fare:

1. The Point – The Return of D.J. Augustin

Augustin isn’t listed as the official starter for the Pacers, but he will undoubtedly be seeing a good chunk of minutes on the floor with a rotation with George Hill. He’s clearly not a big guy, but Augustin can facilitate offense and can really light up the floor when he gets himself going. More importantly, he knows the Bobcats and won’t have much trouble getting around as he pleases against Kemba Walker or Ramon Sessions.

Add in the versatile Hill, and the Pacers look to have the edge at the point on paper.

I’m not here to write about owner Michael Jordan’s unsurprisingly unenlightening interview with the Charlotte Observer yesterday.  Especially when he takes “full credit” for last year’s obscenity of a season after first blaming injuries, the shortened season, and an inexperienced roster (as if the inexperienced roster was an act of God).

Nope, I’m here to write about our brand new point guard, Ramon Sessions.  But first, I want to say farewell to our old one:  Goodbye, DJ.  Um, actually I don’t know what else to say.  Let’s face it, DJ was a nice guy, but he wasn’t very good offensively.  Or defensively.  And he was short.  And he was injured.  And apparently he had cracks in his feet.  In part 3 of my season recap (during one of the few moments I wasn’t actively bent over the toilet), I begged the Bobcats not to try to re-up him, and now I’m glad they didn’t.  So…yeah.  I feel like that episode of The Simpsons where Homer thinks he’s going to die, and after telling Maggie to stay as sweet as she is, and telling Lisa that she’ll make him proud, he goes to Bart’s bedroom and says, “Goodbye, Bart…I like your sheets.”

Anyway, with that out of the way, let’s talk about Ramon Sessions.  First of all, his contract isn’t public yet, but he opted out of a $4.5M deal, so I’m assuming his new one with us will be for more than that.  (I’m actually almost hoping it is, because otherwise it means he opted out of $4.5M and the Lakers for less money and Charlotte, which would make him potentially criminally insane)  Of course, I’m hoping it’s not a LOT more than that, because he’s not THAT much better than the dearly departed Augustin, who just signed for $3.5M to play with the Pacers.

After getting blown out on Sunday by the Pacers, the Bobcats lost again on Wednesday to those same Pacers in the most hotly-anticipated sequel since The Human Centipede 2. For Charlotte fans, this season has long been an exercise in coping, and now the same can be said for journalists, too.  In his recap this morning, Rick Bonnell took the rather remarkable step of ignoring last night’s game completely and focusing instead on Bismack Biyombo’s improving performance.  Kudos to Rick for thinking outside the box, and I encourage future recaps that don’t actually recap anything.   Maybe he can just list his favorite Muggsy Bogues moments or Matt Devlin catchphrases.

Might as well, because what is there to say about the action on the court?  The team is so shit-your-pants embarrassing that we take solace when they only lose by 14 as opposed to 35.  Picking apart the Bobcats’ performance on Sunday would be like identifying all of the bad scenes of Gigli.  The Pacers bench was in full-scale laugh-and-point mode midway through the third period..  The team was outrebounded 40 to 26 and turned the ball over 18 times; even Lance Stephenson got in on the act, racking up steals as if they were felony assault charges.  Meanwhile, Tyrus Thomas was back to his old tricks, firing off his long-range 2’s that even had Pacers fans groaning.  The Bobcats also put the Pacers in the bonus in all four quarters, including a possible record-setting effort in the third quarter that took just 3-and-a-half minutes to complete.  That’s twice I’ve mentioned the third quarter in this paragraph, by the way, in which the team was outscored by 20.  I know it’s never cool to compare people to Hitler, but what about basketball quarters?