BOBCATS

The Hornets played in Charlotte from 1988-2002 until the team decided to move to New Orleans to get a new stadium and hopefully increase fan interest. The last four years of the team’s stay in Charlotte saw a decrease in attendance yearly and the team and management soon got tired of putting a quality product on the floor night in and night out and getting nothing in return. The team moved to New Orleans after the 2002 season and the city of Charlotte was left without a professional basketball team for a period of time until the NBA, in an effort to change the alignment of divisions, allowed a 30th team into the league and placed them in Charlotte as the Bobcats.

The team named Bernie Bickerstaff head coach and general manager and the team went through the expansion process with their expansion draft, a draft where each NBA team can only “protect” a certain number of players and the rest of the players can be chosen by the expansion team. Most teams set aside players with humongous contracts knowing that the Bobcats wouldn’t take them or put out players making the league minimum that the team wouldn’t mind losing. Bickerstaff had stated that he wouldn’t be taking any big contracts unless they were “impact” players because the team’s salary cap is only 2/3 of other teams for the first years. The Bobcats took a total of 17 players and only held onto a handful of them (if the team took players from a team and released them, they could gain money from the team for taking a bad contract and the players became free agents) before moving onto the actual NBA draft to continue building their team. They were guaranteed the 4th pick in the draft when they went through the lottery but they made a deal with the Los Angeles Clippers to move up into the second spot. The Bobcats were hoping to land UConn big man Emeka Okefor with their pick but there were concerns that the Orlando Magic would take him with the first pick. Rumors began to circulate that the Bobcats agreed not to take a player in the expansion draft that was involved in the Magic/Houston Rockets deal that sent Tracy McGrady to Houston in exchange for the Magic taking high school player Dwight Howard with the first pick and allowing Okefor to be drafted second by Charlotte.
The Bobcats followed up their first round pick of Okefor with Bernard Robinson, a swingman from Michigan, with the 45th overall pick of the draft. Robinson was an explosive player in college but he’s not “NBA ready” yet, so he’ll likely sit for large portions of this season. Okefor will likely start at power forward or center with Melvin Ely playing the other position and Jason Kapono rounding out the frontcourt positions at small forward. Jason Hart, Omar Cook, and J. R. Bremer should all see time at the point guard spot and Gerald Wallace, formerly of the Sacramento Kings, will play a lot at the shooting guard. Wallace has the talent to start for most teams in the league but simply got caught in a numbers game in Sacramento and is looking to show just how good he can be if he’s given a chance to play everyday. Bickerstaff is realistic with this squad and he knows the team likely won’t be very successful early on but he knows that the Southeast division is up for the taking with Miami, Orlando, Washington, and Atlanta joining his ball club. If the Bobcats can win more than 25 games this year, you’d have to think the organization would consider it a good season.

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