Look at it this way, Bobcats fans: at least “.106 winning percentage” doesn’t make for a very catchy derisive chant.  Not only is Charlotte officially the worst team ever, with 23 losses to close out the season (23—the Irony-Meter’s on 10), one month-old Bobcats fans everywhere are wondering if the Bobcats will ever win a game in their lifetime.  At least Scott Fowler should be happy.  The Charlotte Observer columnist wrote an idiotic article on Saturday hoping that the Bobcats would lose out in order to achieve a sort of “worst-ever” celebrity status.  “Make this season one for the record books,” Fowler wrote, “and then rebuild.”  Call me crazy, but I see no upside in being associated with the worst-ever team.

Actually, Fred Carter would call me crazy.  The unofficial spokesman for the 1972-73 76ers, the NBA’s now-former worst-ever team, really did seem to revel in the notoriety.  Back in 2010, when the Nets were threatening to displace the 76ers as the worst-ever team, Carter told the New York Times that he hoped it wouldn’t happen. “Immortality only comes in so many different ways,” Carter reasoned, sounding disturbingly like how I imagine Charles Manson looks back on the Tate-Labianca murders.  Then again, Carter also claims credit for being the person who invented the fist-bump, so he might be a few beers short of a six-pack.  I’m even slightly worried that Carter might take out a lawsuit against the Bobcats for a combination of defamation and copyright infringement.

In the 2006 NBA draft some team is going to make J.J. Redick a lottery pick, in all likelihood a very high lottery pick. The reasons that some team will make this pick are obvious. He has arguably the smoothest most pure shooting stroke at the college level in possibly the last fifteen years, His stroke can be measured only against some of the truly great shooters in college basketball history. In the college game, the purity of his stroke is on a level that only ballers like Dennis Scott, Glen Rice and Steve Alford have experienced. With that being said, why shouldn’t a lottery team rush out and make him their top draft pick?

People overlook it year after year at draft time, but the reason is a simple one. Being a star at the college level does not automatically translate to stardom at the professional level. Lets open our minds for a few minutes and project J.J. Redick at the NBA level. At 6’4" playing shooting guard, he is going to be matched up night after night against the greatest athletes in the world. They’ll all be quicker, taller and stronger than him. He’ll be matched up against the likes of Kobe Bryant, Dwyane Wade, LeBron James and Rip Hamilton, all superior athletes who won’t allow him to get his shot off on offense and who he wouldn’t have a prayer of containing on the defensive end.

His cause would be helped tremendously if he could give his future NBA team some minutes at point guard, but unfortunately he hasn’t shown the play making skills or the ball handling necessary to run the point for an NBA team.

With that being said, I don’t necessarily believe that J.J. Redick will be a bad NBA player, but he is without a doubt NOT worthy of a lottery pick. He is however worth a late first round pick in the 20 to 30 range. I see his future in the NBA being more along the lines of a Steve Kerr on the low end and a Vinnie Johnson at the upper end. Which if expectations are kept at realistic levels isn’t really that bad.

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