Those of you that know me well or that have followed BobcatsPlanet since the early days know that I like to tinker with things. In some aspects that characteristic can be looked at from a positive perspective. For example, I am always looking for a way to improve things that I’m working on. Another way of looking at it is that I constantly create change… and change tends to drive people a little crazy.

Now that I have that 30 seconds of psychoanalysis out the way, I’d like to announce that shortly after the end of the season, I’ll be making some fairly significant changes to the layout of the blog portion of our site.

Through the magic of archive.org, lets take a look at BobcatsPlanet throughout the years.

Version 1.0 (2006)

Dark grey, with traces of orange. I really like dark themes, but I can’t tell you how many complaints that I got about the difficulty of reading light text on a dark background.
For the geeks: CMS/Blog – Joomla 1.0 Forum – Joomlaboard ( a precursor to Fireboard )

Version 2.0 (2007)

At the time that I made this change, the Bobcats’ primary color was orange, so it would only make sense for me to use an orange theme, Right? I regretted using all of that orange almost immediately. After a few weeks, the Orange made me want to claw my eyes out… Not one of my better moments.
For the geeks: CMS/Blog – Joomla 1.0 Forum – SMF

Version 3.0 (2008)

As of 4/10/2009 this is the version that you’re looking at. I liked the layout and it was so much easier on the eyes than 2.0. The page headers were clearly the best that this site has ever seen, but there was one small problem. With the arrival of Larry Brown (ILBIT) about 2/3 of the guys in those headers got shipped out of town post haste.
For the geeks: CMS/Blog – Joomla 1.5 Forum VBulletin

Version 4.0 – Stay tuned in, I hope that you’ll like it.

In Rick “BoneCrusher” Bonnell’s blog today he writes:

I got an e-mail from the Fox people, saying Bobcats games now are available in about 1.6 million television households in the Carolinas.

There are still a lot of gaps in that network, because some cable systems declined to pay a surcharge to carry the games on Fox Sports Carolinas (formerly Fox Sports Net South) and SportSouth.

Unfortunately there are a large number of fans and even more importantly potential fans that want to see the Bobcats on TV but can’t. This is affecting people primarily outside of the 75 mile Charlotte radius, but oddly it affects people just accross the SC border also which is less than 20 miles from Bobcats Arena. The situation is a mess. In my opinion, the Bobcats bigshots and the FoxSports bigshots need to lock theirselves in one of their plush conference rooms and not come out iuntil some kind of agreement is made.

Exhibit A:  Still Can’t watch the games!!!!

Exhibit B:  Bobcats on cable and satellite

BobcatsPlanet member TheBeagle writes

From what I’m understanding, if you’ve got TWC in the Carolinas, you have no trouble getting any games, whether FSNCarolina or SportSouth.

FSN South has enabled any and all cable AND sat companies to carry Bobcats games if they so choose.

If you live outside of some nebulous 75 mile radius of Charlotte AND are a sat subsriber, you’re SOL because of some NBA outer radius rule.

There is a fee that FSN South charges for allowing their channel to be part of a given cable or sat provider’s selection.

Some of these cable and sat provider’s who haven’t accepted the fees are screwing over Bobcats fans.

Now, I don’t know what the fees are, but

1. If they are astronomical, the Bobcats organization needs to either foot some of the bill, or needs to have some strong words with FSN South and the trouble they are causing the fans, and
2. If the fee is reasonable, they should quit their petty protesting and pay the fee already. I mean, get a life; you’re customers are paying you to be able to view television, the least you could do is pay a little bit and broaden your broadcasting horizons.

It seems to me, at present, that everyone BUT the fans are at fault. The Bobcats are at fault for not researching the agreement they entered into with FSN South back in April. They were, and for good reason, so eager to get rid of the News14 deal and to, ostensibly, air more games across a wider area they likely overlooked some fine print that is biting them, but moreso, the fans in the ass. Still, the problem with the games not being picked up by varying cable and sat providers is not the franchise’s fault; that’s petty squabbling between FSN South and the respective providers, who are the ultimate culprits in this senselessness. Until I see the fee FSN South is charging for providers to air games, I can’t say who is most blameworthy between the two. I’d say the Bobcats are at 25% fault, and FSN South and the providers occupy the other 3/4s.

Any suggestions on steps that can be taken to resolve this?

Bobcats.com has really stepped up their game over the last few weeks. They’ve provided several quality videos of the Bobcats working out over the last several weeks.

• Jason Richardson offseason workout video
  
• Adam Morrison offseason workout video
• Matt Carroll offseason workout video
• Emeka Okafor offseason workout video
• D.J. Augustin offseason workout video

Rufus on Fire unleashes his Bobcats facial hair project.

Queen City Hoops does their usual excellent job of analyzing the numbers with Looking back (and forward) at Matt Carroll

In his last post Ziggy said that there is NOTHING going on with the Bobcats. I beg to differ. I’m sure the big question on everyone’s mind is “Who’s the 3rd point guard going to be?” So, I’ve composed my list of candidates in no particular order:

#1- Darrell Armstrong; He’s 40 yrs old so he’s probably a long shot but it might be nice for the Gastonia product to finish his career at home and mentor the likes of Ray and DJ.

#2- Lindsey Hunter; another guy who’s twice as old as everyone on the team but he did play for LB in Detroit so I guess he’s a possibility.

#3- Smush Parker; talent wise he’s pretty good for a 3rd point guard but I wouldn’t touch him with a 10 foot pole; I’d rather bring back McInnis and you know that’s not happening.

#4- Mateen Cleaves; I know what you all are thinking but he DID tear up the D-League last year and he would be a 4th guy on the team to have won an NCAA tournament.

#5- Eddie Gill; I think we’re the only team in the League who hasn’t had him yet so why not?

#6- Aaron Miles; he’s steady and not flashy at all so he might be the kind of player who LB would like and he played very well the last two years in Europe.

#7- Mike Wilks; a bit short at 5-10 but he’s earned a reputation as a true professional who practices hard and he could be a good mentor for DJ.

#8- Kevin Kruger; he nearly made Orlando’s roster last year and was petty good in the D-league but his lack of experience makes him a bad fit for this team.

#9- Julius Hodge; he says he wants to be a point forward and he has ties to N.C. so he’s intriguing but not intriguing enough. Any thoughts? Who am I missing?

Because there is absolutely nothing going on in the Charlotte Bobcats universe at this time, I’d like to take a few minutes out of our (somewhat) regularly scheduled programming to present to you.

Things that Entertain me

For some reason there is nothing that I enjoy more than seeing knuckle headed skateboarders getting completely wracked. I don’t know what that says about me, I’m sure its not good and that Dr. Phil wouldn’t approve of this particular character flaw, but what the Hell, when there is no basketball to be found then its witnessing things like the incidents in these videos that make me happy.

Today the Charlotte Bobcats signed Shannon Brown to a minimum deal for the upcoming 2008 – 2009 season.

Lets see if the power of Youtube can answer the question of “Who is Shannon Brown”?

We learned that he is athletic and could get up and down the court during his MSU days.