1. The removal of Sam Vincent and the hiring of Larry Brown.

Anytime you can move from this

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

To This

 Then that alone is worth 6 or 7 wins by itself. Supposedly Sam was despised by the players, so much so that its rumored that they even locked him out the locker room at halftime of one of the games. As far as his coaching prowess, The man started Jeff McInnis at PG for the majority of the season… The discussion on Sam can end right there. Larry Brown has his faults, His NY Knicks / Isiah Thomas experience was unpleasant but its safe to say that LB has more coaching knowledge in his little finger than Fine Ham Biscuit has in his entire body.

  Reasons 2 through 5 after the jump

The Charlotte Bobcats face the Washington Wizards tonight at 7pm. Agent Zero is out, Caron Butler is a game time decision and most importantly we finally have a starting center not named Primoz…. I like our chances.

Theres no TV locally for tonight’s game, so you can follow the action in our game thread or in our chat room . If you want to follow it from the enemy’s The Wizard’s perspective  you should check out

Washington Wizards Blog or Bullets Forever  

A member of our forum submitted this great story of his experience at Wednesday night’s Bobcats/Wizards game.

So I was sitting up in the rafters like I do every game and I see Mr.
Whitfield looking up into the stands. I wave to him to say what’s up,
and he motions for me to come over. When I get to the portal he gives
me a $300 dollar ticket front row center court. He said this is my
seat, you should have it….thanks for the support.

I will buy Bobcat season tickets for the rest of my time in the area. Thanks Mr. Whitfield!

Locally we too frequently hear the negatives, so from time to time I plan to share some of the positive experiences that I hear about.

There have been several articles written in the last few days about Gilbert Arenas supposedly cheating at Halo 3. Here are a few for you to look at: AOL Fanhouse, Truehoop, Give Me the Rock and Gilbertology.

What would make someone go through all of the trouble to use multiple accounts and staging multiple phony games just to boost their ranking? Its pretty simple actualy… Gilbert is doing everything within his power to avoid the inevitable beatdowns and repeated humiliation that he would have to live with if he ran into ‘BrotherMouzone’.

Brother is a one man wrecking machine… Hes a force of nature… And he cannot and will not be stopped. Gilbert does not want to suffer the same kind of horrible death that Brother put on the victim in the image above. Experiencing brutality such as this would make it hard for any man to look at himself in the mirror.

Keep cheating Gilbert… Don’t let BrotherMouzone take your Halo 3 manhood.

Oy, again with the Wizards…These sorcerers from the magical land of Washington come back more times than Gandalf the Grey.  At least they were in their regular uniforms this time (I’m sorry, but those gold-and-black monstrosities are All Time-level ugly; they would have made crowds squirm in 1975).  Commentator/Reverend Henry Williams was also back to rock the microphone after what I assume were some faith-based absences.  Meanwhile, Matt Devlin has armed himself with some Spanish-related humor (you can never go wrong there), busting out with “La Garra!” (“the claw”), his new nickname for Walter Herrmann.
 
News14 didn’t have graphics available for the first several minutes, although we thank them for helpfully displaying the temperature (a surprisingly high 79˚–huh!).  Maybe the broadcast unit has already clinched a playoff spot and they’re resting the starters.  Speaking of which, Gilbert Arenas didn’t start—apparently as a punishment for arriving late to practice—although he ended up making his first appearance roughly the same time as the graphics.  Unfortunately, he didn’t last long after spraining his knee on a Gerald Wallace drive to the hoop.  The contact served as a harbinger, as there were a lot of bodies flying around all night.  In fact, the entire game ended up being one big collision course…with destiny, that is.  Read on!    
 
In the second quarter, tragedy struck.  More specifically, Etan Thomas struck, flagrantly fouling Wallace with an elbow.  Then the wooden floor flagrantly fouled G-Dub’s head when he landed on it.  It was a vicious shot, reminiscent of the “bad” hockey player’s move on Patrick Swyaze in Youngblood, but fortunately Wallace returned.  In fact, falling flat on his back from 10 feet in the air only seemed to focus him, as he finished with 27 points, 12 rebounds, 8 assists, and 4 steals.  Wallace is simply amazing.  He’s like a Replicant from Blade Runner; he’s more human than human.  Incidentally, Wallace’s face wasn’t the only thing Thomas impacted, as the man who looks like Lisa Bonet on steroids put up 19 points, 10 boards, and 4 blocks, and he had his way down low so easily I began to think Emeka Okafor might have gotten poked in the eye with a dreadlock or something.   
 
This one was tight throughout.  No Butler and no Agent, who didn’t return from the knee injury, by the way.  How bad is this injury?  What if he has to give up basketball and ends up becoming “Real Estate Agent 0,” or maybe “Travel Agent 0”?  Anyway, it was up to Antonio Daniels, who had 18 points and made more passes (17 assists!) than a drunken sailor in a singles bar to keep it close.  AD was also helped out by the 'awns, Ant and DeSh, as Antawn Jamison had 25 points and 11 boards, while DeShawn Stevenson had 14 points.  Unfortunately, Mr. “I Can’t Feel My Face” apparently Can’t See Open Teammates either, as he shot just 4/12 and made some costly turnovers at the end, one of which went to Herrmann to ice it.
 
And how about Herrmann?  He finished with 20 points and 9 rebounds, calmly sank four consecutive free throws in the final seconds, and basically energized everyone with his intensity.  He reminds me of the little guy in "Metroid" (who ended up being a girl, or was it simply a guy with long hair—long, flowing, blond, Fabio-like hair? Hmmm…) the way he runs frantically all over the court.  Henry was impressed with Herrmann as well.  “They’ll lure you to sleep, those Europeans will,” he gushed after one of Walter’s numerous backdoor cuts, presumably before Matt leaned over and gently reminded him that Argentina’s in South America.  Okafor turned in his standard A+ performance as well, grabbing 10 rebounds to go with 17 points. 
 
Fasten your seatbelts, ladies and gentlemen, we’ve just cracked the 30-win barrier… 

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I was dreaming when I wrote this, forgive me if it goes astray.  Now that baseball season has started, I’m feeling completely overwhelmed.  I’ve got the out-of-market package on my computer (because of course it’s not available on TV to cable owners—have you heard Bud Selig’s responses when he’s asked about this?  Don’t do it without a washcloth and some Q-tips, because his answers are so slimy that you’re actually going to need to clean the ooze out of your ears afterwards).  I wish that either MLB could hold off for a few months or the NBA could raise its playoff requirements (it's about as hard to make the playoffs as it is to enlist in the military) to shorten the postseason so that I didn’t have to deal with both simultaneously. 
 
For the record, I couldn’t disagree more with those yahoos who made that ridiculous claim in “The Paradox of Choice” about how having too many options in a modern consumer society leads to confusion, overburdened customers, and depression.  Personally, I think anyone who condemns having a surplus of options needs to take an all-expenses-paid trip to someplace like Cambodia, but this seasonal sport overlap is the type of scenario that can almost cause me to see down their dopey path of dislogic.       
 
Anyway, the Wizards were in town on Tuesday night, a team for which I’ve never cared.  Maybe it’s because Gilbert Arenas goes to the free throw line even when he doesn’t get hit with anything harder than Adam Morrison’s dandruff, or maybe it’s because they represent a city that has determined “Bullets” to be a more offensive team name than “Redskins.”  Either way, when I heard that they lost Caron Butler to a season-ending injury a few days ago, I reacted about as sympathetically as Tony Soprano did when he heard about Phil Leotardo’s heart attack. 
 
The one downside to Butler being out is that we have to look at more of Washington’s bench players in action.  Is there anything more graceful than the down-low play of Etan Thomas and Jarvis Hayes?  Perhaps only two rhinoceroses fornicating.  If I’m Greg Oden, I’m not worried about how well I stack up against Shaq or Tim Duncan, I’m concerned about guys like Thomas or Michael Ruffin turning me into Leon Spinks.  Eerie Wizards Benchwarmer Moment of the Game: midway through the second quarter, I was remarking to myself how much it looked like Darius Songaila looked like an indoor soccer player wearing shinguards, when he actually headed the ball into the Bobcats’ goal—er, net.
 
Speaking of unlikely events, it was that kind of the night for the Cats.  Even when it seemed like we were trying to lose, the Wizards refused to allow us.  It was kind of hard to explain—is there some advantage to being the 5th-seeded playoff team rather than the 4th?  We put the Wizards on the foul line more often than Rod Stewart remarries, but they only hit 16/24.  Arenas had 33 points, but only made 4/11 3-pointers.  Not that we just woke up and won this one.  Using a short bench, the Cats had six guys in double figures, led by Gerald Wallace with 32 points, 13 boards, 3 blocks, and 2 steals.  Raymond Felton had 17 points and 14 assists, Brevin Knight (remember him?) had 12 assists off the bench, Emeka Okafor had 17 points and 14 boards…Jesus, I’m just now realizing how much we really rang this one up!  I haven’t even gotten to Herrmann’s 21 or Jake Voskuh’s 13.  Wow, maybe the season isn’t really that long after all, because it seems like only yesterday Coach Eddie Jordan was going on and on about that defense-first philosophy his team was going to have this year.

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