The Charlotte Bobcats are in the midst of another depressing losing streak – this time a five-game skid that has them marching into a home matchup with the Los Angeles Lakers. L.A. continues to give a go at trying to form a championship team, but without Pau Gasol and an ailing Dwight Howard, they seem to be running on fumes.

That’s the good news. The bad news is the Bobcats have been atrocious for most of the year, and as troubling as the Lakers’ have found themselves for much of the 2012-13 season, they’re still a far better team than Charlotte is.

With that said, Charlotte did give the Lakers a run for their money earlier this year, and at least has Byron Mullens back to help give them some size and versatility again from their bigs.

Let’s break this matchup down further and try to come away with a pick for tonight’s game:

1. The Point – Edge: Bobcats

Steve Nash is the better pure point guard here, but at this stage in his career Kemba Walker is the better scorer and clearly wins the defensive battle. I like Ramon Sessions more than Steve Blake, Darius Miller or Chris Duhon at the backup spot, as well.

On the verge of embarrassing the Lakers on their home court, the Bobcats came up emptier than a soda calorie on their last possession. Gerald Henderson failed to put back a partially-blocked Kemba Walker miss, Byron Mullens mistakenly thought the hoop was attached to the ceiling, and then Ben Gordon missed a pretty good 3-point look after a mad scramble. Ballgame.

I think the turning point actually came a few minutes earlier, when with 6:30 to go and the Bobcats down one, Walker missed two free throw attempts and then a wide-open 13-foot jumper that he normally makes with Spam-like consistency. Then the Bobcats forced the Lakers into an inbound play with about 2 seconds on the shot-clock that Kobe Bryant of course hero-balled for a 3-pointer. Now that I type it out, it doesn’t seem like much on paper, but trust me, it was an opportunity more golden than Juan Manuel Marquez’s urine and the Bobcats just couldn’t convert.

The shell-shocked Bobcats then PTSD’d their way to a 17-point humiliation the following night in Phoenix. Unlike the Lakers game, this one had more garbage time than a landfill. The Bobcats actually trailed by 30 at one point, and if I had to title this series, it would be “Please Shannon Don’t Hurt ‘Em.” Shannon Brown now owns the Bobcats like a mail-order bride, having gone for 50 points in their two contests. Brown was joined by a Phoenix phalanx of frenetic force: 17 made 3’s, 55% shooting from the field and 31 assists.

The Bobcats looked less interested than a blind man at a peep show in their loss to the Hawks on Thursday. Then again, nobody seemed to care about that game, not even the Associated Press guy covering it. Check out this except from his recap: “The Bobcats were coming off a dispiriting home loss Wednesday to the Los Angeles Clippers in which they blew a seven-point lead in the fourth quarter…The Hornets were led (in their previous game against Atlanta) by Ben Gordon, who scored 20 of his 26 points in the fourth quarter.” First of all, they never blew a 7-point lead against the Clippers in the fourth quarter; they trailed the entire fourth quarter right through the final buzzer, at which point the game ended. I guess you could technically say that they blew a 1-point first quarter lead and were outscored over the game’s final 41 minutes, but that wasn’t any more dispiriting than normal. So I’m guessing the guy just cut-and-pasted something wrong. But calling them the “Hornets”? Man, that was just cruel—is he trying to jinx us?

Actually, if he was trying to jinx us, how would we even know? We’re talking about a team that has dropped ten games in a row, so putting a jinx on them now would be like throwing a black cat in front of a guy who just fell through a manhole and drowned in a sewer. I don’t mean to imply that the Bobcats have been unlucky, however, as luck has had nothing to do with it. Unluckiness hasn’t left all those opposing 3-point shooters more open than a Chinese restaurant on Thanksgiving, nor has it allowed opposing bigs to abuse the Bobcats’ frontcourt like painkillers. Nope, the Bobcats don’t have the personnel to compete offensively or defensively, and it looks like we’re in for another long season in the abyss.

I was on the optimistic side before the season began when analyzing the prospects of the Charlotte Bobcats for the first month of the season. I was criticized a bit for predicting a 6-9 November start, and while I freely admit it was a bit of a reach at the time, it turns out my lofty expectations of a young (but talented) team weren’t so far fetched, after all. In fact, the Bobcats topped my prediction, and finished the first month of the season at 7-8.

They kickoff the month of December tonight against the Portland Trail Blazers, so it only made sense to get back to the magic eight ball and try to predict how the team will do over the course of the next month. It’s a month of giving, cheer, and holiday. Let’s see if the Bobcats will be spending it in a good mood or not as we break down and predict each game:

1. 12/3 – vs. Portland Trail Blazers (Loss)

Portland is inconsistent, but they’re bigger and stronger than Charlotte. This one could get messy at home.

2. 12/5 – vs. New York Knicks (Loss)

New York has struggled on the road a bit, but they shouldn’t in this one. They spread out the floor with the best of them and can hurt you inside and out. Their offense will simply be too much for the Bobcats in this one, as they start December 0-2.

3. 12/7 – @ Milwaukee Bucks (Win)

They’ve beaten Milwaukee before and the Bucks are a pretty inconsistent team. Charlotte can bang down low with them and they matchup well at the guard spots. It’ll be close, but I think the Bobcats get their first win of the Christmas season here.

As a part of this planet, there are certain things you just can’t control. Like where you are born, who your parents are, your height or the color of your skin. Myself, born in Oslo, Norway, grew up and stopped at 5’8, dark hair, dark eyes, and was stuck on the countryside of Bergen through the age of 20. There were literally nothing to do besides playing soccer. I was lucky enough to be good at it, so I stuck with it. But for all my other interests, like skateboarding, snowboarding, drawing, basketball, programming, computers and so on, I figured my chances were slim very early on. I was only 5’8 and stopped growing at the age of 16, so any dreams of being an NBA center never occurred. Not because I didn’t want to be a 7’0 foot tall ball player but because I wasn’t. And the same way people have to let their guard down and accept that things just are different. Situations and qualities are always different, the NBA franchises has to accept the same.

The Los Angeles Lakers are lucky to be located in a big area, with millions of people. The Knicks are also lucky to be located in the center of the huge NYC. And while these teams are so lucky, the smaller teams should just accept what it is. Some teams are fortunate, and the others, must compensate. Which is exactly what needs to be done in small market teams. There is no chance that all the 30 teams in the NBA can ever create a similar fan base, market size etc. Small market teams on the other hand has a tendency to play that ”But we can’t sell tickets because we are located in a crappy market” card.. And that is where the Small Market teams should shut their mouth, and accept what it is. At some point, someone chose to start a franchise in Charlotte, Indiana, Sacramento or Toronto. And those guys knew, that these franchises were going to be harder to run.

The Bobcats are two games into the worst road trip out west since The Shining.  And just as it did with Jack Torrance, dementia is starting to spread in and around the team.  Midway through the second quarter against the Lakers, with the Bobcats clinging to a semi-respectable 16-point deficit, color analyst Dell Curry speculated, “If the Bobcats can just keep Bryant, Bynum, and Gasol in check, and close out on the perimeter shooters, they could make this interesting.”  Whatever you say, Wardell!  It was a little like listening to Newt Gingrich describe his plans for colonizing the Moon.  Curry might as well have been encouraging a guy in a wheelchair to just jump a little higher.  Of course, the Bobcats did none of the above and lost by 33 in a game that should have been hauled off in a straitjacket.

Then in the following night’s contest, a 44-point castration at the hands of Portland, Coach Paul Silas issued this completely deranged analogy, spectacular in its inaptness: “If I had a full squad and we were losing this way, it would be awful.  But you take (LaMarcus) Aldridge and (Gerald) Wallace off their team and see what kind of team you’d have.”  Then his eyes rolled into the back of his head and he began growling “Redrum” over and over.  First of all, I love how he considers the worst loss in team history to not be awful.  Second, Silas was presumably attempting to compare DJ Augustin and Corey Maggette to Aldridge and (Saint) Wallace, which is so funny by itself that I can’t even add anything, so instead I’ll just end this sentence by linking to one of my favorite t-shirts.