My goal is to always remain optimistic without being completely unrealistic when I write my posts, but I have to say that the Charlotte Bobcats are making it awful hard to do that these days.

The scene from White Men Can’t Jump where Wesley Snipes is getting hustled by Woody Harrelson keeps coming to mind when I think of this team. I picture Wesley in a Bobcats uniform with his hand in the air going, “It’s pretty! It’s so pretty!”

Then Rosie Perez stands up and yells out (in her best Puerto Rican accent), “Oh no it ain’t! Go pay your taxes!”

For those of you that do watch the Bobcats I am sure I don’t need to tell you how bad things have been. I think the game Wednesday night against the Portland Trailblazers should be treated like Lord Voldemort in the Harry Potter series; it will be “the game that will not be named.”

We knew that this season would be a tough one, but this is starting to hurt to watch; 3-20 and in the midst of an 11 game losing streak following Saturday’s game with the Phoenix Suns. When will the pain end? When will these guys win another game?

Before we figure out the best chance for that let’s take a look at what these guys are capable of and how they stack up to the rest of the league:

The Bobcats enter tonight’s game against the Pacers coming off an overtime loss to the Atlanta Hawks. Despite the loss it was a nice effort from a team that’s effort has been questionable at times this season. We finally got to see D.J. Augustin and Kemba Walker play together for an extended period of time and it worked for the most part on the offensive end. Not so much on the defensive end, but that’s to be expected.

As for the Bobcats’ opponent, the Pacers have quietly assembled a pretty solid roster. Darren Collison heads the point for Indiana and Danny Granger, Paul George, Roy Hibbert and Tyler Hansbrough make out the rest of the starting five. It’s clear that Indiana’s a team on the rise but the Pacers are still a piece away from being a legitimate contender. Nevertheless, the Pacers are on a different level than the Bobcats right now.

The Bobcats played one of the two teams, the Bucks being the other, that they have to beat to have any chance of getting into the playoffs this year. Well, after being totally dominated by the Pacers in the second half, I think it is safe to say these ‘Cats are not going to the playoffs this year. The first half ended with Charlotte behind by one point but the second half was totally controlled by Indiana. The Pacers outscored the Bobcats 57-34 after halftime.

The Pacers shot better than the Bobcats, 53.2%-44.4%, controlled the boards against the ‘Cats, 37-28,  and had one less turn-over than the Bobcats, 11-12, and they did this against Charlotte on their home court. It is not even important, as far as the playoffs go, for the ‘Cats to keep games close – they had to win, but fell miserably short. The loss puts the Bobcats three games behind the Pacers for the eighth and final playoff spot in the Eastern Conference.

Bobcats vs. Pacers:”Slip Sliding Away” – Bobcats Lose 104-103

I’m not going to bore any reader with negative adjectives describing how poorly the Bobcats played the first three quarters of this game. The ‘Cats did not look like the team that upset the Eastern Conference-leading Boston Celtics  just two nights ago, and they certainly did not look like they were playing a team coming into a back-to-back game after losing to Miami. Representative of that poor play was the under-the-basket-point-blank-shot miss by Gerald Henderson at the end of the third quarter.
The Bobcats started the game scoring the first eight points. Then the Bobcats transition defense decided to disappear for the remainder of the first half. This led to a ten point, 58-48, Pacer half-time lead. Both the Pacers and Bobcats share Head Coaching changes this year. Both teams know their fan base hungers for a play-off appearance, and both teams knew they were facing what is probably their main rival for the eighth and final seed in the Eastern Conference.

It wasn’t pretty in Indiana on Friday night if you’re a Bobcats fan. The Cats lost to the Indiana Pacers 100-92 behind a series of ridiculously open three point shots by the Pacers.  If you are in dire need of a recap, I will point you here. I’m not in much of a mood to write up anything about that sorry game.

Lets get down to the nuts and bolts of this situation. This team as it is constructed now has too many problems  to ever grow into anything special. In addition to being mired at the sub .500 level, if they continue playing like this for the remainder of the season then the fanbase is going to dwindle away. Now I don’t believe that I’m jumping to conclusions by saying that, I’m merely taking into account the general mood of the most diehard Bobcats fans ( the members of this fantastic site [/end shameless self promotion] ). Around here the general feeling is that this team lacks effort, lacks heart, doesn’t play defense, doesn’t guard the perimeter, has puzzling rotations and generally isn’t fun to watch this season. If we diehards feel that way, How do the borderline fans feel?

Hope you guys are over the 0-2 start…I know I’m not.  Last Night’s loss to the Pacers is a tough one to swallow.  Being up by 10 or 9 throughout much of the 2nd and 3rd quarters only to let it fall apart in the fourth quarter is troubling.  Danny Granger led scoring with 33 points but he was playing with 5 fouls much of the 4th quarter, fouling out with 44 seconds left in the game.  The killers in this game were Josh McRoberts and TyTy Hansbrough.  Combining for only20 points, they made the runs that kept and put the Pacers within and beyond striking distance.  No one blocked out on McRoberts while he had a string of putbacks through the 3rd quarter.  The Bobcats were up 8 and the Pacers were MISSING shots, “who’s on the white kid from Duke that’s played in 84 total games over 3 years and averages 2.5 rebounds and 3.3 points?”  ”Don’t worry about it, he won’t”  Wait but he did and the Pacers all of a sudden have life.

Next on our list of unimpressive honky ass white boys, Ty Ty Hansbrough!  Didn’t do much, didn’t enter the game until the 7:42 mark in the 2nd quarter.  8 points for his tenacity in the 2nd and a timely 4 more to end the game in the final minute.  I actually saw a headline “Hansbrough beats Bobcats.”  How can captain vertigo singlehandedly beat a playoff team?  Better figure it out quick Larry cause tonight, a team most people say was greatly improved this offseason looks to duplicate the feat.

Mille-wau-kay, obviously an evil place if they can elect 3 Socialist Mayors, got a kid with a goofy haircut or 4.  Bogut is from Australia, which I don’t like.  Let’s go over this “much improved” comment.  ESPN’s pre-season breakdown has many saying they will be 5th seed entering the playoffs.  Adande calls them “The league’s most useful roster.”  To me, hanging Corey Maggette, Drew Gooden and John Salmons as massive improvements and “the most useful” is a bit inaccurate.  They have yet to gel in the cheese state and I’m not fully impressed.