At some point in any fan’s life, your team really stinks up the joint. You put your gear away, telling your housemates (or your wife) you trashed the ratty recliner with the embossed team logo, when really you put it behind the furnace for better days. Life is tough when this happens. As I said a few posts ago about the Red Wings, very few franchises can look over the last two decades with an almost impeccable record of success. Certainly expectations help determine just how “great,” but in a given year while Yankees fans, for example, may not win a championship, their team remains one of the best. But for the mere mortals in the sports world, especially those living in Cleveland, losing becomes more normal than winning. My teams in Washington similarly embody such depressed expectations. For as much victory as there is in sports, losing actually occupies the majority of sports time and space.
To that end, today’s post will focus not on a winning franchise but on one of the worst franchises and one of the worst owners in professional sports today. I refer to the Charlotte Bobcats.
One might say the Bobcats were doomed from the beginning. In 2002, the Hornets relocated from Charlottes to New Orleans in one of the nastiest divorces between franchise and city, where the city refused to pay for a new arena. To compensate, the NBA guaranteed a new franchise in the city which was subsequently bought by an ownership group including the rapper Nelly, a dire sign for any enterprise in any business.
After four years of bad basketball with a 99-219 record, the Bobcats hired Larry Brown as coach, an NBA Hall of Famer, who led them to a playoff berth in the 2009-2010 season and a sweep. In the course of that season, Michael Jordan acquired the team.
Since then, the team continues to be pathetic in every sense of the word. This season, the Bobcats are 30th in points-per-game and 27th in points-allowed, a recipe for serious disaster. Their leading scorer, guard Gerald Henderson, averages 14.9 points, entirely too little to make a team respectable. The Bobcats currently reside at the bottom of the Eastern Conference with a 4-29 record and have lost 19 of their last 20 games.
While players ultimately bear lots of responsibility, we should not leave Michael Jordan immune from criticism just because he was the best player on the planet. Charles Barkley commented this week that Jordan clearly hasn’t hired people who will disagree with him about basketball decisions, and the evidence supports that assertion. His front office portfolio continues to be abysmal. Wizards fans can talk at great lengths about his pick of Kwame Brown in 1999, passing on Tony Parker, Pau Gasol, Gilbert Arenas, and Joe Johnson. Brown bombed for the Wizards, casting doubt about Jordan’s ability in the front office from the beginning.
Charlotte continues to strengthen that case. Jordan picked Adam Morrison who promptly flopped, grew a hideous crustache, and moved out of the league. In addition, Jordan traded All-Star Gerald Wallace to Portland and let Raymond Felton go in free agency, stripping the Bobcats of two extremely serviceable players. As much as I like MJ, he needs to relinquish the reins of control over this team to an experienced GM to bring this franchise to some form of success. Whatever he has going on right now does not work.
Charlotte should be pleased about one thing though: were this an 82 game season, their current pace would put them in the bottom three of all-time worst NBA records. Not much of a silver lining, but it’s something.
Bit #1: Lenten NBA Drama
Needless to say, NBA players did not give up drama for the season of Lent. One of the best things about the NBA is the rise of mega-teams, with 2-3 superstars. But the evolution of those teams has a cost: diva-like qualities of star players who want to play with another big star, meaning we as fans must listen to trade requests, reports of front office miscommunication, and personality clashes. Expect much of the same in the next few weeks as the trade deadline approaches.
Rajon Rondo, Dwight Howard, and Deron Williams are the big names possibly being traded soon. I don’t see Howard going anywhere, because if the Magic wanted to, they would have traded him already in my mind. Williams continues to play very well for the Nets and I think he re-signs there, as the Nets move to Brooklyn next season. As for Rondo, the Celtics continue to assume they can make the team better by trading him, even though he continues to be their best player and ultimate facilitator. To trade him would be inexplicable, but GM Danny Ainge has done crazy things before…and they’ve worked.
Bit #2: Worst division in the NHL
Sometimes, one division takes on the appearance of a cesspool, collecting lots of poor records, average teams, and subpar performance. In the NHL, the Southeast division takes this distinction for the season. The leading Florida Panthers boast only an 11 point lead over the bottom-dwelling Carolina Hurricanes, tied for closest in the NHL with the Pacific Division. The difference, however, is the Southeast teams are all bad. All of them lag in goal differential, being outscored over the course of the season, in some cases by over 20. Florida’s 72 points are the lowest of any division leader and this division will likely obtain the #8 seed as its only other playoff berth. So while on paper it looks like parity, don’t be fooled.
Bit #3: Why Not Pay Drew Brees?
Some of you will remember my first post about Peyton Manning. A reprise of that scenario may not be too far away in New Orleans. Reports this week stated Brees and the Saints were far apart on a longer-term deal. The Saints can franchise Brees, paying him the average of the top QB salaries over the last five years (about $17 million) for just one year, in effect pushing off contract talks until after next season. Yet Brees revitalized the Saints, making them not only champions but perennial contenders. His relationship with Sean Payton continues as a partnership on the Belichick-Brady level. The Saints should not think their team is good enough without Brees to stay at such a high level. With a better defense, they easily stood a good chance to win it all last year. Meanwhile, a continuing influx of young talent at skill positions and spreading the ball around means the franchise can win right now. In short, pay Drew Brees and ask questions later.
Bit #4: Character still matters
UCLA basketball represents possibly the best program in college sports. Not so now, with a Sports Illustrated article released today detailing the dynamics of the past two seasons. I encourage you all to read it, but one point particularly struck me. Ben Howland, coach at UCLA, went to the Final Four with guys not nationally ranked as top recruits, many of whom reportedly understood the sacrifice necessary to be a good team. With more ranked recruits, the program dug a hole, deepening its issues every year. In the SI article, stories abound of star recruits picking on walk-ons, managers, and assistants, without any discipline from Howland until too late. While college undoubtedly changes young players, for a player to pull on another’s injured left shoulder and force managers to play “fetch” shows deeper character flaws than what college can create. Character cannot be doubted in recruiting college athletes, as UCLA’s case shows.
Bit #5: March 2, 1962 – Chamberlain scores 100
The NBA has changed a lot since this day 50 years ago, but Chamberlain’s feat continues to withstand the test of time as the single greatest performance by an NBA player. Not much more to be said, other than this record will most likely never be broken. With the increased athleticism today, as porous as NBA defenses might be, scoring 100 points defies any real expectations. In addition, Chamberlain shot the ball 63 times on this night, way more than any current player would shoot or any coach would allow. So, a good date to note in sports history as likely not to be repeated.
No comments:
Post a Comment