I’m so excited about the Bobcats trading Hakim Warrick to the Magic for Josh McRoberts! Not because I think the trade will matter much—seriously, Weird Al Yankovic albums have more significance than this deal—but because it frees me up from having to think about last night’s loss to the Pistons.

Against Detroit, the Bobcats sandwiched decent 2^nd and 3^rd quarters with contemptible 1^st and 4^th quarters; it was a suck sandwich. Or maybe it was a decent sandwich with suck bread. Whatever. More importantly, it was the how of the suckage more than the suckage itself that really hurt. The Pistons were down one of their best players, Andre Drummond, and they lost Brandon Knight for basically the whole fourth quarter to injury. Plus, for whatever reason, Tayshawn Prince is a Bobcats Killer (a nickname I doubt he’ll embrace), averaging 15 points and 7 boards against us in the last two seasons, and he’s no longer a Piston. So trailing by 1 going into the fourth quarter at home, the Bobcats essentially had to zero in on the lone Pistons weapon, Greg Monroe.

The NBA is more concerned with growing world wide and teams like the Charlotte Bobcats, while important to their individual markets, are simply inventory to spread the game globally, not necessarily to dominate a particular market.

Basically, It doesn’t matter where the team plays to the upper levels of the NBA. New York, Los Angeles and Chicago, maybe but the rest, it doesn’t matter where they are. As long as a city can put up an arena, somewhat sustain a bit of TV or local business revenue, the league will use whoever and wherever to stock its shelves with content to send out into the world.

It used to be there was a building in a town that hosted the circus, a couple car shows, maybe wrestling a couple times a year and the main tenant would be a basketball team. They sold tickets and kept the lights on to support this local building. It evolved into it’s own beast, certainly under David Stern where places that never had a major league team of any kind, suddenly had Michael Jordan visiting 4 times a year.

The Bobcats crash-landed into All-Star Break with a resounding whipping by the Pacers. Even though Indiana was significantly short-handed, they still had enough hand left over to pimp-slap the Bobcats, 101-77. I’d rather check the commodes of that stranded Carnival Cruise ship than the stats, but let’s go ahead and get it over with. The first thing that jumps out at you is Charlotte’s 31% shooting percentage—awful. The next red flag is that Bismack Biyombo and Brendan Haywood went 1-for-13 from the field. That’s actually not a red flag, that’s more like blanketing the entire mall in Washington D.C. with the colors of the Soviet Union. I can’t tell what’s more alarming: that they missed 12 shots or that they took those shots in the first place. A quick look at the shot chart reveals that all but three of them were in the paint, and from what memories of the game I have that I’ve failed to suppress pharmaceutically,  I believe at least two of those three came to avoid a shot-clock violation. So for the most part, I guess they weren’t forcing anything, which is good.

But the play from our bigs was the hairy mole on this ugly game. Other statistical travesties include Charlotte’s +9 turnover differential, most of which came in the first half. In some ways the turnovers were appreciated, because they meant that we at least didn’t have to watch the team clank shots. But we generated 2 more turnovers than we did assists, creating an overall aesthetical value of play that resembled the cover of Metallica’s Load album. And this is before factoring in the 12 free throws each from Biyombo and Tyler Hansbrough that we had to suffer through.

The Charlotte Bobcats really got me. Perhaps it was in fact only me, but I had hopes that they’d get off to a decent start and maybe even be competitive in 2012-13. Turns out, for the first month anyways, I was right.

The Bobcats were at one point 6-4, and exited November a reasonable 7-8. Since then, they’ve won five measly games. More importantly, they didn’t win a single game in December, and have frequently been flat-out abused on defense.

Yes, the Bobcats enter the All-Star break sitting at a depressing 12-40 and even entered the break with another disappointing blowout loss. It’s only fitting.

But in a season where Bobcats fans are probably saying “it is what it is” at a record rate, there still is a light at the end of the tunnel. After all, Charlotte isn’t about to turn things around anytime soon, which at the very least means a strong likelihood of a high lottery draft pick in the 2013 NBA Draft.

With that said, it’s time for first half grades, and the Bobcats as a team get a resounding F.

Let’s break the members of the Bobcats down individually and see how they grade out through 52 games:

Mike Dunlap (HC) – D+

The hot start can’t be completely forgotten. I almost laughed when I wrote “hot start”. But that’s what a hot start is right now for the Bobcats – getting off to an “around .500″ record. Dunlap is a rookie coach working with very average talent from an overall stand-point. There’s enough here to suggest he can be solid at this level, but from a record stand-point it’s clear he’s been unsuccessful. I still have hope for him, but wouldn’t be shocked at all if he’s one and done in Charlotte, either.

Last night was one of the best bouts of insomnia I’ve ever had. Even though I had to chug a keg of coffee with a Scarface-sized pile of Splenda to get me going this morning, it was all worth it. That’s how psyched I was to see the Bobcats take out the Boston Celtics. I know, I know, the Celtics were playing the second game of a back-to-back, their game the night before had gone to triple-OT, they were already down Rajon Rondo, Jared Sullinger, and eventually Leandro Barbosa, etc., so I shouldn’t exactly be doodling bumblebees while whistling the theme to The Partridge Family. In fact, the Bobcats are like a 1986 Nintendo game in that you can always beat them straight up, so the only way to make it challenging is to start upping the degree of difficulty, (e.g., beating Kung Fu by only limiting yourself to jump-kicks). And in this case, the Celtics finally just had too few options to beat the Mr. X Bobcats. I don’t care about any of that; I’m still joyful. I’m about to lose control and I think I like it.

After all, we didn’t just beat the Celtics, we stopped their 7-game winning streak. That’s right, like the Pope, the Celtics are suddenly fallible again. Boston’s perfect record since Rondo went down was probably more incidental than anything else, because they’re probably a 7^th or 8^th seed at best this year. Now that I think about it, doesn’t it feel like their decline has been going on for years? It actually feels like it’s lasted longer than their prime at this point—they’re like the Roman Empire. Or Vince Carter. But anyway, they’ve given the Bobcats more fits than a Nordstrom’s clerk on crank through the years, so we should savor every victory we can get.

Bobcats fans had a feeling that their team could be a little better with the return of big man Byron Mullens after a 19-game layoff. It took five games, but boy were we all right.

Mullens lead the way by far in Monday night’s impressive win over the Boston Celtics, as the Bobcats snapped a seven game losing skid with a close 94-91 victory. Mullens was just abusing Boston in the paint on his way to 18 rebounds, as well as a solid 25 points off of 10-of-16 shooting. While his shooting touch (4-of-5 from three) was worth talking about on its own, it was the intensity on the boards that got attention, and Mullens was pleased with that.

”I just have to show the league and this organization that I can rebound,” said Mullens after the game.

It’s not like Mullens can’t hit the glass. He averages over eight boards per game, but at seven feet tall, he and just about everyone else is probably shooting for over 10 rebounds per game. It’s clear with this rebounding outburst that he has the potential, and it’s also evident that he has a bit of a chip on his shoulder and is dedicated to improving his rebounding craft.

Let’s start with the good news, because there’s enough bad Bobcats news to depress a Syrian: Michael Kidd-Gilchrist is back from his concussion. He also seems to be back to normal, playing 39 minutes in the last two games. He’s only shot 2-for-11, including 0-for-4 on jump shots. On the other hand, he couldn’t make those shots before he was injured, so that doesn’t really mean anything. In fact, it would be funny if his knock on the head actually caused him to lose that weird hitch in his jumper. Also, if it made him think he was King Tut. All kidding aside, I’m really relieved MKG seems to be okay, because he’s the backbone of this team.

It’s just too bad this team is Christopher Reeve. You’re probably assuming that the Lakers loss two nights ago—featuring a blown 20-point Bobcats lead with about 17 minutes remaining—destroyed me, but it didn’t really; in fact, it only partially damaged me. I really think that 18-point choke-job against Portland back in December, followed two days later with another self-strangulation in New York, more or less inoculated me against future outbreaks of devastation. It’s like watching two of your kids die after suffering through long painful diseases over several years, and then a few months later, your third child suddenly gets sucked into an airplane turbine—sure, it hurts, but you’ve had worse. Let’s not forget that December also saw nearly the exact same thing happen to these Lakers in LA: the Lakers reeling and injured, the Bobcats coming out of the gates on fire, a huge third quarter lead squandered—been there, done that. I think I would have been surprised if the outcome had been different.