Spelling Charlotte Without An O

Look, I’ll be the first to tell you that I wasn’t expecting much from the Charlotte Bobcats this year. I picked them to finish 11th in the East, mostly due to the fact that they don’t have many players that can put the ball in the basket. You can have all of the schemes and plays and sets that you want, but at the end of the day, you need a guy (or three) that can fill it up on the offensive end. Trading Emeka Okafor for Tyson Chandler was obviously a cost-cutting measure to make the team’s finances more appealing to a potential buyer (current owner Bob Johnson is selling the team), but it made them much less appealing from a basketball standpoint.

Exhibit A: Wednesday night’s opening game loss at Boston in which the Bobcats scored 59 points. No, not in a half. In the entire game.

Charlotte didn’t score 20 points in a single quarter and only scored 10 points in the 3rd. They shot 31% from the field, and only had two players make more than half of their field goal attempts. It was terrible. The Lankster had a busy night last night with the Spurs playing the Hornets on ESPN and the World Series on Fox, so I had to throw in some Bobcat time whenever one of those games was on a commercial (I have two TVs in my living room; it’s legit). In a way, the Bobcats did me a favor because once it became clear that they had no chance of winning and were well on their way to establishing a new franchise record for futility, I no longer had to change channels.

To put things in perspective, I did a little research for you. Last night, 8 different teams scored at least 59 points in a half (the Bobcats’ total for the game), 15 different teams scored at least 31 in a quarter (the Bobcats’ highest output in a half), and 14 different teams got at least 59 points from only their three highest scorers (which the Bobcats got from their entire roster). I know Boston is a good defensive team and it was their home opener, but my goodness; how does something like the ineptitude the Bobcats showed last night happen?

Friday night, I’m headed to the Queen City to see the Bobcats’ home opener against the New York Knickerbockers. The good news is that the Knicks are garbage and gave up 115 points to a not-that-good-on-offense Miami Heat team in their opener. The bad news is that the Bobcats scored 59 points in their opener at Boston. Once again, fifty-nine.

Did somebody say Charltte Bbcats?

~~ Lank