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.

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.

  The only one who could play any defense on Shannon Brown on Wednesday night was Charlotte Observer beat reporter Rick Bonnell.  Bonnell limited the Suns’ Brown to just 4 3-pointers in his write-up of the Bobcats’ loss to Phoenix.  The only problem is that in reality, Brown actually scored six 3-pointers, all of them in the 4^th quarter (but close enough, Rick).  Each of those 3’s was a testicle-puncturing dagger in the scrotum of Charlotte’s comeback attempt, leaving Bobcats fans to wonder why Brown never did anything like that when he was on our team.  Hell, Lakers fans are probably wondering where that kind of production was when Brown was on their team.  In fact, Albuquerque Thunderbirds fans are probably wondering why he couldn’t have done that when he was on their team.  This is a guy who historically only averages about two 3-point attempts per game, so how he suddenly developed Reggie Miller changeling powers is anyone’s guess.

Brown’s explosion didn’t bring about the torture of watching this game, it merely altered it.  Prior to his barrage, the Bobcats had dug themselves a 14-point grave, due to some truly wretched defense down low.  The first half featured a parade of Luis Scola and Gorin Dragic making more back door runs than Richard Gere in American Gigolo.  Byron Mullens summed it up beautifully: “They got a lot of easy baskets on us. Gortat and Luis Scola just cut down the middle in front of my face.”  Actually, Mullens summed it up terribly, because I’m not sure if that line makes any sense.  But I know what he meant, because the slide help was just horrendous.

It’s important not to get too down about Charlotte’s crushing defeat by the hands of the Dallas Mavericks, nor too excited about a narrow win over the Indiana Pacers to start the year.

By all accounts, this is still a young team that is going to have to play smart on offense and hard on defense for a chance even against the lowest of opponents. With that said, they’re well on their way to my predicted 6-9 mark for the first month of action, and they’ve shown enough in two games to lead me to believe that they can win more games than many initially thought. Maybe not many more, but more, nonetheless.

But that’s just talk until it gets done. Let’s see how the matchup with the Phoenix Suns for Wednesday’s game, along with a final pick prediction:

1. The Point – Edge: Suns

The Bobcats have the edge in terms of depth, but Phoenix has the edge when it comes to sheer talent and the ability to lead an offensve effectively. Goran Dragic is an underrated athlete and has the ability to defend, create, and score on his own. He’s also a human energizer bunny, so when necessary, he really doesn’t need to sit and can still play at a high level. Kemba Walker and Ramon Sessions offer a better than advertised rotation, but neither can pass the ball like Dragic, and both still deal with bouts of inconsistency. They’re improving, but Dragic should be able to run circles around both of them.

Wow, I finally feel like I’ve found a team more hopeless than the Bobcats.  Though the Phoenix Suns prevailed on Saturday night, 95-89, the game was close until about midway through the 4^th quarter.  Moreover, the Suns are an old team who could make up their own “What Ever Happened To?” trivia category (with the answers being Grant Hill, Michael Redd, Sebastian Telfair, Josh Childress, and Hakim Warrick).  And in a situation that eerily parallels Phoenix’s housing crisis, the Suns are saddled with terrible contracts and busted prospects.  They are also lorded over by Robert Sarver, a hated owner who overpaid for them in the first place and is compensating for it by running them on the cheap (Sarver’s actually managed the impressive feat of being hated more for his association with the Suns than with Western Alliance Bancorporation).  Add it all up (or maybe, “subtract it all up”), and I’m honestly happier to be a Charlotte fan, which is something I never thought I would say this season.

Not that this revelation made it any easier to sit through this game.  The AP recap focused on the 9-point spark provided by Robin Lopez in the 4^th quarter, but to me the real difference-maker was a tactical decision by the Bobcats to constantly double-team Steve Nash and Telfair.  For some reason, coach Paul Silas was obsessed with doing this at every chance.  Clearly Silas gave these orders to Bismack Biyombo before letting him out of his cage, because Biyombo would be up on Nash/Telfair almost immediately after they crossed half-court, and doing so with the type of energy and passion that he usually reserves for committing personal fouls. This made absolutely no sense to me, because Nash and Telfair are among the few guards who are actually slow and small enough for Kemba Walker to cover.  And Nash, being Nash, was smart enough to recognize the double-team and dump the ball off to a now wide open Marcin Gortat or a now wide open Redd; it’s similar to what happens when defenses constantly blitz Tom Brady.  Thus, the only reason this game wasn’t more of a blowout was because Gortat went just 5-for-11 (way too many misses, considering all of his shots were in the paint), and the Suns missed 12 wide-open three’s.  Indeed, I’m surprised Redd waited so long after his injuries to sign with the Suns; technically he could have played his role while still on crutches; all he had to do was park in a corner and wait.

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: