The Charlotte Bobcats are in a bad way. But hopefully, another painful season is the stepping stone toward great future success. After all, the Bobcats already stock-piled Kemba Walker, Bismack Biyombo and Michael Kidd-Gilchrist the past two seasons, and could be just another young talent and a stable veteran away from getting back to competitive basketball.

That’s the hope, at least.

While it’s pretty clear the Bobcats biggest issue lies in their frontcourt, they’ll simply have to take the best overall talent come draft day. That is how teams truly get better, after all.

Charlotte is currently the worst team in the NBA. In fact, they’re in the cellar by a good four games and counting. Maybe it was by design. Judging by their average talent, though, I’m actually guessing it’s just how it naturally should have been.

The bad news is that doesn’t even guarantee them the top pick in the draft. However, as they stand, they have the best odds to emerge from The Lottery to hold the number one overall selection in the 2013 NBA Draft, and there’s a pretty good chance they’d spend it on Kansas guard Ben McLemore if they did.

Things can change between now and June, but for the moment, let’s speculate whether or not taking McLemore would be the right move.

According to Rick Bonnell, Tyrus Thomas didn’t even join the team on the latest West Coast road trip. I find this stunning, considering that coach Dunlap has shown he’ll still play guys who are willfully insubordinate (Ben Gordon) or who are willfully trying to eat their way onto a future season of The Biggest Loser (DeSagana Diop). As I gaze at Thomas’s image on my cubicle calendar, trapped in 2-D purgatory like Zod, Ursa, and Nod in Superman II, his hand held aloft—in all likelihood acknowledging to referees that he was the one who committed the personal foul—is that a twinge of pity I feel for the man?

Perhaps, but more likely it’s the twinge of my hands on my stomach as I try to suppress my own vomit. The road trip the Bobcats just completed was the worst one I’ve ever seen that didn’t involve Tom Green. How on earth the Bobcats found themselves trailing by 41 to the Sacramento Kings—who it should be noted were playing without the use of cyborgs—is a question I’d pose to Zoltar if I had a wish.

Tonight, I forgot there was a game.  Apparently, so did the Charlotte Bobcats.  That’s a bad joke thousands of people make all the time.  I often make it.  My dear sweet, long suffering mother often asks, “Are the Bobcats playing tonight?”  I respond with the incredibly ingenius “Well, they were scheduled to, but they forgot the playing part,” or something along those lines.

I tuned to the game with about 3 minutes left, thinking “Oh good, it’s Sacramento, they’re in big trouble,” and was quickly stunned to see 76-117.  Sacramento gets a lot of attention lately, mostly for being rudderless and lost, whether they’ll be sold and then moved, sold and stay, or just suck forever.  They’re playing in a no-name arena in front of a few people.  Hell, they made a trade just before the deadline, trading the #5 overall pick, Thomas Robinson to Houston in basically a salary dump.  There have only been maybe 6 top 5 picks traded in their rookie year, so this is truly historic rolling over.  Still, they put up 119 points against the Bobcats.

I was almost certain this year wouldn’t be like last year but the last few games have proved me wrong.  98-68 loss at the Jazz.  106-84 to the Clippers.  Coach Mike Dunlap is saying things like “This one just scooted away from us,”  ”Trying to stay upbeat, we have a game tomorrow and it’s all about playing with energy…team basketball.”  C’mon man, let’s get serious here.

The Bobcats didn’t put up much of a fight on Friday night against the Utah Jazz. Not only did backup center Enes Kanter absolutely destroy them for an impressive 20-20 line, but they also lost by 30 and scored just 68 points. Good thing they have an equally dysfunctional squad on the docket on Sunday when they take on the Sacramento Kings.

The bad news, however, is that Charlotte is once again waist-deep in a losing streak (currently a quality five game skid), and they’re playing on the road, where they’ve won just six games all season. Yikes, right?

Yes, but the Kings can be a baffling bunch, as well, so you have to like Charlotte’s chances to pull one out. Let’s take a closer look at the matchup and see who might come out on top on Sunday:

1. The Point – Edge: Bobcats

Isaiah Thomas is solid and I actually like Jimmer Fredette off the bench, but Keither Smart messes with these guys’ heads too much and neither is all that great at defense. Kemba Walker is a legit Most Improve Player of the Year candidate and is the better natural PG of the three. He also has been more consistent and is probably a better defender, as well.

If any good came out of the Bobcats’ latest disaster-piece, a 98-68 shelling in Utah, it’s that Charlotte maybe has a better chance now of bargaining down the price of either Al Jefferson or Paul Millsap in the offseason. That’s because both Jazz big men sat out last night with sprained ankles (Millsap was also busy naming his newborn daughter “Paular”), and their sneakers were ably filled by Derrick Favors and Enes Kanter. Both Millsap and Jefferson are on the last years of their contracts, and if last night was any indication, the Jazz might potentially feel comfortable avoiding a bidding war for them, knowing that they have the younger Favors and Kanter to take their places. And maybe the Bobcats could pick one or both of them up.

I should just stop right there, because anytime I do that I sound like Dr. Brown developing a theory for a working flux capacitor. It ain’t going to happen. Besides, such a move wouldn’t make the Bobcats contenders, or probably even very good. On the other hand, it would at least reduce the frequency of games like last night’s. Kanter, a one-man Turkish prison, tortured the Bobcats with 23 points (on 10-12 shooting) and 22 rebounds. The Turkish Bath Salt ate through Bobcats defenders, freeing up benchmates Jeremy Evans, DeMarre Carroll, and Gordon Hayward, who combined to go 18-of-30 in the rout.

“We’re giving heavy minutes to a lot of young guys, and that’s a lot of seeds in the earth that will eventually be harvested,” Bobcats coach Mike Dunlap said after the Clippers peed all over his flowerbed last night, 104-86. Dunlap’s strategy is nice and all, but Charlotte has been nothing but harvesters of sorrow for their drought-stricken fans this year, and last night was no oasis. Every Clippers point seemed to come either via 3-pointer or explosive dunk that left the Bobcats running for cover.

The game’s only bit of irony—a 6-point Bobcats lead after the first quarter—was quickly extinguished midway through the second quarter. “For 20 minutes we played fantastic basketball,” Dunlap said. “We had the lead, but we made some turnovers that they made some dunks off of, and…it carried over into the second half.” He’s perhaps over-simplifying the final 28 minutes a bit, but he definitely identified the turning point. Los Angeles went on a 15-5 run with 6 minutes left in the second quarter to melt Charlotte’s popsicle, and it was a rim-shaking siege of Blake Griffin- and DeAndre Jordan-authored savagery. Meanwhile, Charlotte responded with a turnover five-of-a-kind: traveling (Byron Mullens), bad pass (Kemba Walker), bad pass (Mullens), bad pass (Michael Kidd-Gilchrist), bad pass (Walker), and…bad pass (Mullens again, just missing the bad pass hat trick). Again, though, the Bobcats didn’t so much go cold as they went Bobcat; Charlotte is 29^th in both offensive and defensive efficiency (inexplicably still ahead of Sacramento in both categories—the Kings are the Hummer of NBA efficiency).

Byron Mullens, who had vowed not to shave his beard until he had boxed someone out on a rebound, finally showed up clean-shaven in Saturday night’s loss to the Nuggets. That was about the only good news in the drama-free blowout, as Mullens had begun to resemble either a man who had crashed headlong into a beaver at 80 mph or an unusually tall hostage. And speaking of tall, white, underwhelming rebounders with experimental beard tendencies, Josh McRoberts made his debut for the Bobcats. I had forgotten to mention this about McRoberts when I recapped his acquisition on Thursday, but it’s definitely one of his positive traits. In fact, if there was such a thing as beard efficiency, McRoberts would be putting up LeBron numbers—he’s done every look from Unibomber mountain man to 6’10” marine. His hirsute strength makes up for his Twitter absenteeism—according to his account he’s still a member of the Los Angeles Lakers.