After the Bobcats fumbled away losses in Brooklyn and against the Miami Heat scabs, I got curious as to how historically bad their defense was. This became particularly pressing after the Heat game, in which Charlotte gave up 26 points to Mike Miller. Mike Miller is so decrepit right now that he looks like he can’t dribble more than five feet without needing a liver transplant. And I don’t think that’s a mouth guard he’s constantly fiddling with, I think they’re ill-fitting dentures. Basically all he can do is stand there and shoot 3’s, and if you’re defending him, you should just keep a guy on him at all times. The Bobcats flamed out in this task like Maverick and Goose’s F-14 (Miller shot 7-11 from distance), as they’ve done in nearly all other defensive tasks this year.

The Bobcats are giving up 1.078 points-per-possession this year, which is worst in the league. And it’s worse than last year’s team, which was the…hold on…oh yeah, also the Bobcats (1.065 ppp). But the good news is, in all previous years, the worst defenses get seriously bad. The immortal 2009-10 and 2010-11 Toronto Raptors (1.100 and 1.091 ppp, respectively), for instance, actually put a tax on defense to help fund an oil pipeline in Moosejaw, Saskatchewan.

But the real leaders of the worst defense clubhouse were the 2008-9 Sacramento Kings. As if I needed to remind you, this was the team that started out the season under the guidance of Reggie Theus, a man whom many feared might have been suffering from brain damage brought on by years of inhaling the fumes of his own jheri curls. Theus was replaced by Kenny Natt in December, the team finished with 17 wins, and Natt was literally outsourced to India, where he now coaches their national team. Perusing some of their box scores from that year is highly amusing, especially the 143-141 OT loss to Golden State on April 1^st. This was a game that prominently featured Kevin Martin, Monta Ellis, Beno Udrich, and Jamal Crawford: if you’re interested in building an all-time worst defending gunner team, I think I’ve just found your backcourt.

Had I more room in that headline, I would have also added “And Duke Results From 3 Days Ago.” That’s how far down we’ve been sucked into this sinkhole of a season. The Bobcats, after losing by 21 points to a severely disinterested Brooklyn Nets team, are about to wrap up two complete two seasons that I wish I could just DVR and tell myself I’ll binge-watch on some random weekend in August but probably won’t (coincidentally, this is also how I feel about American Horror Story).

At least we got to see old flame Gerald Wallace in action. Crash had a throwback night, collecting 8 points, 5 blocks, 2 steals, and 8 rebounds. He was unfortunately tripped up by 1-of-7 shooting before he later was literally tripped up by Ben Gordon in a possibly intentional move. If the Bobcats can’t get out of their own way, it would at least be nice if they could get out of other players’ way, especially when they’re former Cats. And speaking of which, Keith Bogans knocked down two 3-pointers. Longtime Cats fans will remember Mr. Bogans averaging 9.6 PPG for us back in 2004-5, often acting as a nice floor-spacing complement for Wallace. Ah, that lovely 2004-5 season…there was so much promise! Emeka Okafor anchoring the frontcourt and putting in a runner-up ROY season, the excitement of two top-10 draft picks, 50-Cent’s The Massacre…it was great. G-UNIT!

That’s me in the gift store of the Barclays Center last night. As you can see, because I was in enemy territory, I opted for a stealth approach (I’m the one in the middle). The Barclays Center, resembling a Death Star that crash-landed into my home world of Planet Hipster, is only about a 10-minute walk from my apartment, so I decided to check out the game live. After successfully navigating through the many potentially hostile bearded and flannel life forms encircling the crash site, I made my way in, only to promptly see…

…a wide-open Nets 3-pointer, a Bismack Biyombo offensive foul on a dunk attempt, and an easy offensive rebound put-back by Brook Lopez. It’s like they knew I was coming! It was amazing: all of the worst attributes of our team—terrible 3-point defense, ineptitude from our bigs, and poor defensive rebounds—on the first three plays. This was the sports-suck equivalent of going to a Springsteen concert in which he opens with “Thunder Road,” Rosalita,” and “Born In The U.S.A.” I felt like I could have just left right there, because there was nothing else to see.

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.

After the Bobcats lost to Milwaukee on Saturday, Rick Bonnell wrote that it “was the 20th time in a 7-38 season the Bobcats have lost by 20 or more points.”  Well the joke’s on you, Rick: it’s only been 15 games.  How do you like them apples, sucker?  I actually went back and counted to verify it, which is a totally depressing exercise, by the way; it’s like counting your herpes sores.  (Remember that 112-68 loss to the Trail Blazers!?  Holy Jesus.  Holy Buddha.  Holy Zeus.  Holy Mormon Garden of Eden in Jackson County, Missouri.)

Anyway, the fact that we haven’t lost as many games by 20 points as I feared was about the only good news to come out of the Milwaukee game—that and Stephanie Ready’s outfit.  I didn’t know that Burberry had recently merged with Skittles.  I guess this was in support of the latest retro-Cougars outfit night, but she should always do that; even her face was a refreshing burst of fruit flavors.  The rest of the game was not only nightmarish, it was prolonged unnecessarily by Milwaukee coach Scott Skiles’ inexplicable need to take 4 full timeouts, including one when they were ahead by 23 with four minutes to go.  Skiles’ moods range from frothing-at-the-mouth to silently seething, but I would have have thought that even he must have felt something approximating satisfied.

Without an experienced center, the Bobcats’ interior defense has emptied out faster than Charlie Sheen’s medicine cabinet.  Tyrus Thomas and Bismack Biyombo are constantly sliding to help the beaten guards, and neither of them boxes out very well.  And Thomas isn’t good at covering his own man, let alone helping others. The end result is 72 points for the Bucks in the paint (or maybe it was only 65—not sure if I can ever trust you again, Rick), led by Drew Gooden, who continuously swooped down like the Avenging Angel of Offensive Rebounds to smite the Bobcats.  Bobcats color commentator Dell Curry used the phrase “all alone” to describe Milwaukee’s bigs and back-door cutters so often he sounded like he was reading from the Craigslist personals section.

At least that would explain the barrage of inaccurate shit-balls this team keeps smearing in the general vicinity of the backboards this year.  Occasionally one will plop into the net, but mostly they splatter every which way, before being hauled in by Kris Humphries, Al Jefferson, and various other non-Bobcats—because the team can’t rebound, either (28^th in rebound rate).  The Bobcats are shooting 41.4% this season, which is not only last in the NBA, it would be last in the National Monkeys Hurling Their Own Feces At Each Other League if there were such a thing (to my knowledge, there isn’t).  In fact, in every conceivable sub-metric of shooting, the Bobcats are soiling the record books.

And that 41.4 percentage is falling fast.  Against, the Nets on Friday, Charlotte couldn’t even crack the 35% barrier.  Worse, we can’t even blame this on Boris Diaw, because his playing status—which was often questionable even when he was on the court—is now official: he’s going to sit until he’s bought out or traded.  This, by the way, is one of the most comical trade demands of all time.  I mean, if a team really wanted a large fat Frenchman, why not just take Gérard Depardieu?  I bet he’d be a lot cheaper and you could probably get free copies of Green Card.  But never mind, my point is, even when Diaw did play, he really only played-ish, taking just 8 shots a game.  Unfortunately, this scatological shooting performance is one of the few things in life that isn’t all Diaw’s fault.  It’s the fault of the 3-headed monster DJ Augustin, Kemba Walker, and Corey Maggette, which collectively shoots 35.3 times per game and collectively makes just 37.7% of them.  Statisticians don’t need a calculator to add all this up, they need a ream of toilet paper.