First off, I’d like to praise Rich Cho’s reaction to the results of last night’s draft lottery.  I’m amazed at how gracefully he handled the unspeakably crushing news that he’d lost out on the #1 pick by smiling sweetly and casually congratulating the winner, Monty Williams.  It’s certainly not how I handled it, that’s for sure.  Given his Asian ethnicity and bald dome, Cho’s got a Buddhist monk vibe to him, so perhaps this really was no big deal for him—you know, life is merely suffering and spectacularly failed draft strategies on the way to eventual dharma, etc.  Whatever the case, thank you, Rich, for representing us well!

As for the loss itself, why are we all so distraught?  Because the media has commanded us to believe that Anthony Davis isn’t just a once-in-a-generation basketball talent; nope, this boy can stop bullets.  And by “the media,” I basically mean every journalist everywhere, from Sports Illustrated to Juggs.  The praise for Davis has been so over-the-top that it’s borderline homoerotic.  Not only that, but according to the media, Davis is in a class all by himself, and anyone else in this draft is practically a heroine addict.  Just look here, here, here, here, or here.  On his podcast with Bill Simmons, Chad Ford subtly predicted that if the Bobcats missed out on the #1 pick it, would be “kill-the-franchise, devastatingly bad.”  Given this bombardment of unified opinion, had Rich Cho kneed Monty Williams in the groin and then sat down and set himself on fire, I would have only considered it a mild overreaction.

By the way, that’s what I felt like doing, and I still do.  Having not watched a minute of college basketball all year (because I was having such a gay old time watching the Bobcats!), I can only hope now that the entire media landscape is completely wrong about Davis.  This might seem absurd at first, but then when you think about it…well, okay, it continues to be absurd even after you think about it.  But maybe Thomas Robinson and Michael Kidd-Gilchrist, one of whom we’ll almost certainly take now, are both much better than anyone thinks.  Again, I don’t know much about either guy, but I’m touched by Robinson’s back story (it also helps to imagine the little sister he’s raising to be a female version of the little kid in Jerry Maguire).  As for Kidd-Gilchrist, I’m not as put-off by his name as Tom Sorensen, but I do wish it had more of a sci-fi/fantasy sound to it.  Like Michael Youngblood, or Michael Lionheart, or Michael Dwarfwarrior—something like that.  Either way, I’m prepared to get behind either guy, and let’s face it, either one would be a HUGE step up from what we’ve got now.  As Bobcats fans, we’re like voters in 1988 hoping to improve upon Dan Quayle as the Vice President.  Jeff Van Gundy was actually taking it easy on us by saying, “You could make the case at any position that (the Bobcats) did not have a top-15 player.’’  You could not only make that case, Jeff, the jury would take about 5 minutes to deliberate before unanimously voting for the defendant to get the chair.

So don’t give up, Bobcats fans, you’ve got a reason to live.  Can’t forget, we only get what we give.  This has been a brutal 24 hours following a season that felt like being force-fed a bag of kitty litter.  But if we learn to cope with the pain, I’m confident that things will improve—with the taste of kitty litter, that is.  Not the Bobcats.  They’re completely hopeless.