Charlotte Bobcats: What should have been done?

The great what should have been from the Bobcats; a suffering recount of Charlotte basketball agony.

As someone who lives in North Carolina and is a lifetime local sports supporter, I'm not sure what to do with the Bobcats. I know a few Bobcats Fans, mostly I would say there are more apologists.

Talk recently was about the Kings moving to Seattle, but why not take the Bobcats? We wouldn't mind. We'll throw in Jordan. And a few craft breweries or beaches or leaf seasons to sweeten the pot. Please?

If you were around North Carolina in the 90s, it's hard to describe how much the state loved the Hornets. This was our first professional sports franchise, the colors were awesome and we had guys like Zo, LJ, Mugsy and Dell leading the charge. The arena was full every night, and loud.

If you grew up in this state in the 90s, you had a poster of these guys on your wall

Then George Shinn happened (may he ever rot in a hole somewhere). Shinn was greedy, and threatened to move the team if he didn't get a new stadium. Charlotte called his bluff, only it wasn't, and the team was gone to New Orleans.

Not wanting to miss out on a great basketball market like North Carolina, the NBA quickly awarded the city another franchise. The ill-fated Bobcats, run by his Airness, Michael Jordan arrived in 2004.

Only, as good of a player as he was, MJ is at the other end of the spectrum as an owner. On the court he seemingly couldn't be beat, and off it he can't get anything right.

One of the easiest ways to determine the exact failure to this point of the Bobcats is to look at the draft. If OKC is the model for how a small market team can compete with the big market clubs, then Charlotte is the model of how a team can consistently be this terrible for a decade. The draft is a hard thing to do, but to succeed you've got to hit on draft picks, and those picks have to become stars.

So here is a 'what should have been' for the first few years of the Bobcats sad existence.

2004: Bobcats Pick: Emeka Okafor. Coming off a national championship at UConn. Emeka looked like a heck of a player. Problem was he turned into a robot (stiff, no post moves) in the NBA.

Shoulda picked: Yikes. Take your pick here. Luol Deng, Andre Iguodala, Jameer Nelson, Al Jefferson, Josh Smith all went on to have better careers than Okafor. I'll give the Cats Iguadala as the cornerstone of your team.

2005. Bobcats picks: Raymond Felton, Sean May. More national championship players. Felton has had an OK career. May was a cheeseburger inspired flameout.

Pictured: Sean May at UNC. Sean May for the Bobcats, notice a difference?

Shoulda picked. The hawks, who picked second, practically begged the Bobcats for a trade of the two picks that should have been Chris Paul. Oops.

2006: Bobcats pick: This one hurts, you know what's coming. Adam Morrison. Playing in the pacific Northwest, Morrison averaged nearly 30 points a game in college. Wore a mustache, cried a lot, generally regarded as one of the worst picks in the last decade.

Seriously.  That was supposed to be the basketball player that saves you franchise?

Shoulda picked. Lots of options here as well. This was a pretty weak draft, but Rudy Gay, Rajon Rondo, Ronnie brewer, J.J. Reddick. As the speculation at the time was Rudy Gay, I'll go that direction.

2007: Branden Wright (traded for Jason Richardson), Jared Dudley. The Richardson trade worked out OK as did Jared Dudley (for another team). In this scenario though, we already loaded at Small forward with Gay and Iguadala, no need to make it.

Should picked: hands down, no question it should have been Joakim Noah. The young center is one of the most unique players in the league. For Dudley, Arron Afflalo would have been a good glue guy at the SG spot.

2008: This is another painful one. Bobcats picks: D.J. Augustin, Alexis Ajinca. Double ouch. Augustin is small, slow, and terrible. Ajinica was a 7 foot frenchman who couldn't see time IN FRANCE. Good work MJ.

Pictured, not a coat rack

Shoulda picked: No doubt about this one either. Brook Lopez could have gone first overall, and inexplicably fell to the Bobcats, who had promised they would pick him, only to take a knee jerk reactionary pick on a 5'7 D.J. Augustin. And if M.J. wanted to take a project on a foreign center, Serge Ibaka was there. Talk about collecting the best front court in the NBA in one draft.

If you're keeping score at home the lineup should have looked like:

PG: Chris Paul,
SG: Iguadala, Afflalo
SF: Rudy Gay
PF: Joakim Noah
C: Brook Lopez, Ibaka

That core wins championships, at the very least competes for them every year. Fill in with some decent backups and there's enough there to win for a long time. The thing about these picks is that it's not like I'm calling for them to draft second round gems (Marc Gasol) that nobody knew about. These were all picks that EXPERTS called for the Bobcats to make.

Instead, the Bobcats came up with terrible to moderately less terrible picks. None of the picks from these years play for the team any more, and half are out of the league entirely.

How about this box of puppies?!?! Free to a good home.
Only condition is you have to take the Bobcats with you...

-Joel