Something to Look Forward to For Bobcats Fans
Wow! What a week for the Charlotte Bobcats.
Those of you that have read my rambling in the past know that I prefer not to go off on tirades on the current and very dire straits of the franchise. With that in mind, the above words are about the only thing I can really say. However, if I stop there this will not be much of a post.
So what in the world am I going to talk about if I’m not going to go off on these guys?
The future.
It’s kind of a bummer to have to go through a season of sucking (I’m still holding out a little hope that the guys will turn it around), but the benefit to that is a good shot at getting one of the top draft picks in next year’s lottery. With the number of talented players that are in the college ranks it is not hard to imagine which ones would be great fits in Charlotte.
So let’s do that. Let’s imagine who the Bobcats might get in the draft next year. Now of course it would depend on who comes out and who doesn’t, so for the sake of argument anyone the team could want will come out.
Also, I think we can look away from the guards. The team needs a big man more than it needs someone to spell Kemba Walker and D.J. Augustin. With that in mind, here are some of the big men that I wouldn’t mind seeing wearing the blue and orange in 2012:
Extremely Bad and Incredibly Awful
All I can say is, thank god for the Raptors and Thunder. After the Wizards started out the season 0-8, I checked to see when they were scheduled to play the Bobcats and circled it on the calendar—more like “skull-and-crossboned it.” As most of us probably remember, the Bobcats popped the Nets’ losing streak cherry back in the 2009-10 season after New Jersey started out 0-18. It’s not an embarrassment I was particularly interested in revisiting, especially when I have a group of co-workers who know I like the Bobcats, and who think of the NBA in general as a bunch of lazy thugs, who—when they are not brawling with fans—are busy choking their coaches. I only hear from these guys when the Bobcats and/or the NBA does something stupid (thus I hear from them more often than I’d like), and I’d frankly rather have my prostate examined while renewing my driver’s license at the DMV. Fortunately, the Wizards had already gotten their first win out of the way, so Wednesday night’s game was nothing more than an insignificant, humiliating meltdown.
What a relief, because those remaining Bobcats fans who hadn’t committed suicide by intermission might have noticed that Coach Paul Silas opted not to go with a center to start the second half. Considering our backcourt consisted of Kemba Walker and Matt Carroll, this was a strategy that was just crazy enough to…fail spectacularly. The lowlight had to have been Boris Diaw’s inexcusable failure to box out Rashard Lewis on Andray Blatche’s missed 32-foot hail-mary attempt to beat the shot clock. I’m totally befuddled why Gana Diop didn’t play more than 11 minutes—I know he’s out of shape, but has anyone taken a look at Blatche lately? Blatche keeps in game shape about as well as he solicits prostitutes, so I’m unclear why Silas decided to double-down on a tiny lineup.
Previewing the Game of the Century – Charlotte Bobcats versus Washington Wizards part I
Looking ahead at the first of two epic match-ups between the Bobcats and the Wizards, I took the opportunity to interview Kyle Weidie of the fantastic TruthAboutIt.net a phenomenally entertaining Washington Wizards blog.
Below are his thoughts on the Wizards.
Ziggy: What was the main reason Flip Saunders was fired?
Vulgar Display of Blogcat
Many causal NBA fans haven’t watched Charlotte play a single game this year. But they may have heard anecdotally about how the team was blown out by 39 against Miami or by 30 against the Hawks. And thus they have probably come to the easy, lazy conclusion that this team has played some bad games. But you know something? What these ignorant so-called “fans” don’t realize is that our Charlotte Bobcats have played other games, too, games like last night against the Nets…and those games are actually even worse. How awful was Sunday night’s game? I would make a prisoner watch it in order to beat a confession out of him. I haven’t watched something that depraved, sick, and twisted since that episode of Whitney. In fact, when talking about the Bobcats, I’m thinking of replacing the word “watching” with the phrase, “subjecting yourself to,” as in, “Hey, are you subjecting yourself to the Bobcats tonight?”
Sunday night was actually bad to the point of profundity. Through suffering comes enlightenment, and I’m convinced that all of us—in choosing to wat—I mean, subject ourselves to—this team, are not simply expressing our die-hard fandom but responding to a higher calling. Here’s how: People think of this as a golden age for basketball, with an amazing cast of stars and super-teams. But the Bobcats are so cover-your-eyes horrifying that maybe the real reason we’re here is to document that it wasn’t all wonderful for the NBA circa-2012. Bobcats Planet may actually be the NBA’s very own “How the Other Half Lives.” We’re the 99-percenters. The black people on Mad Men. After all, Raging Bull and Ordinary People weren’t the only movies released in 1981; so was Make Them Die Slowly. Thirty years from now they’ll uncover this website, and it will serve as a testimony to those faceless, forgotten, hopeless masses who didn’t live in New York, Chicago, Miami, and LA.
Detesta-bull
Before I say anything further about the Saturday night Bulls-Bobcats game, I should come clean on two things right up front: Chicago features both my most hated player and my most hated announce team. Carlos Boozer is the player, and Neil Funk and Stacey King (really just King) are the announcers. With the game only available on Chicago’s network, and with Boozer the featured player, I knew I’d be in for a gay old time.
I know professional basketball players are transient mercenaries by nature, but Boozer is by far the most overt about it. What he pulled in Cleveland—weaseling out of a verbal agreement with a kindly blind owner was Dickensian in its repugnance—and Utah (I call his behavior during his last year there “Dwight Howard-lite”) were ugly enough, but it’s even more infuriating to see him get rewarded for his chicanery with outsized, undeserved contracts every time. Even worse, he’s the ultimate empty stats guy; he’s frequently injured and he always vanishes at crunch time. Yet teams are still stupid enough to fork over money to him in heaping helpings. But therein lies the good news for us Boozer-hating connoisseurs: we’re annually rewarded for our efforts with his no-shows in the playoffs; it’s as reliably delightful as the Turner Network 24-hour marathon of A Christmas Story. The one downside is that for the foreseeable future, Boozer’s shrinkage will come courtesy of the Miami Heat—not exactly a likeable bunch themselves. I suppose I’ll view the next Miami-Chicago series with while holding my nose, like a liberal watching the Republican primaries.
What do the Charlotte Bobcats and Bart Simpson have in Common?
I’ll give you three guesses, but if you need more than one then you must not follow the NBA or watch FOX on Sundays (or any other day thanks to syndication; love them reruns). What’s the answer? Easy—
Low expectations.
Whether you are the optimistic or pessimistic type it is kind of hard not to agree with that. Coming into this season it was pretty easy to see that this season was likely going to be a rough one for the guys. While all the young talent is something to be excited and encouraged about, the team has no definitive leader or focal point.
The good thing is that in time a leader can develop. The problem is going to be in figuring out whom it will be and how long will it take for him to step up. Hence the theme of the post—low expectations (go ahead comedians let me have it).
I would not want to do this often, and I’m glad it is happening in a strike shortened season, but I don’t mind having a year like this. It may sound crazy, but hear me out a little.
