NBA give and go: Don't sleep on the Charlotte Bobcats
By LARRY JOSEPHSON
To say the Charlotte Bobcats have faded into oblivion during their brief stay in the NBA would be a bit misleading. They haven’t been anywhere to fade from.
What they have been is consistent. The expansion Bobcats of 2004-05 settled into fourth place in the Eastern Conference’s Southeast Division and quickly followed that season with a fourth-place finish in 2005-06, a fourth-place finish in 2006-07 and a fourth-place finish last season. Take a wild guess where they reside right now.
The Bobcats, who will play second fiddle to the North Carolina Tar Heels in area code 28202 until they at least contend for an NBA championship, have the look and feel of a last-place team. They’ve been able to stay out of last place in the Southeast because every year there has been one truly awful team under them. This year it’s Washington.
But observers of this team, if there are any, will notice that the corpse is twitching a bit.
This week the Bobcats finished off a five-game road swing with three straight victories, covering the number against Sacramento, Golden State and the Clippers.
Beating those three hardly equates with driving the Japanese off Iwo Jima in World War II, but Charlotte will take ‘em when it can get ‘em, and the Bobcats made it six straight wins and covers by beating Chicago and Atlanta at home and the Knicks at New York in their next games.
The Bobcats have Spurs in San Antonio and Houston at home later this week. But starting on March 14 at Minnesota in the butt end of a back-to-back set, Charlotte plays eight straight games against teams with records currently under .500. Good things can happen to mediocre teams that play hard when others have packed it in.
The winning streak notwithstanding, Bobcats have some problems, most of which are evident when they have the ball.
Gerald Wallace is the leading scorer and Raymond Felton, Boris Diaw, Raja Bell and Emeka Okafur all can score a little in a balanced attack, but none can draw consistent double-teams and open things up for the rest.
Adam Morrison, who everyone figured would be good for 20 a game for the next decade, was quickly jettisoned to the Lakers when the team realized he couldn’t play a lick of defense. What’s left is a team that is dead last in the NBA in scoring.
Still, the Bobcats have opened some eyes with their play of late, even though they are locked into fourth in the division and half the country still thinks they’re the Hornets.
Welcome mat not out for Nets in Brooklyn
So here’s the problem for the Nets:
The team’s owner, Bruce Ratner, wants to move the team to Brooklyn, to play in a yet-to-be-built arena that would be part of a huge $4 billion real estate complex. But Brooklyn really isn’t all that sure it wants the Nets, and there have been protests and legal roadblocks placed in the path of a possible move.
The environmental people have also stepped in, ostensibly to protect the various species of wildlife that roam the streets at night.
Enter Cory Booker, the mayor of Newark, N.J., who claims to be working every day on trying the change Ratner’s mind, build a state-of-the-art facility and lure the Nets to Newark in an effort to help re-build his city.
Booker would buy drinks for the entire Nets Board of Directors if he could figure out a way to convince Ratner to sell the team to someone in New Jersey, but in the middle of a recession this deep the owner might as well put the team on craigslist for all the offers he’d get.
One interested observer in all of this is the agent for LeBron James, who has admitted that he’d be all ears if a New York team called his cell phone when James becomes a free agent in the summer of 2010. But James in Newark? Yeah, right.
Flopping: The last line of defense
For years Shaquille O’Neal railed against floppers, figuring that at 7-foot and 300-plus pounds, that’s the only way anyone could defend him. Then the Big Aristotle gets accused of flopping by Orlando coach Stan Van Gundy and goes off on the coach.
All of which brought to mind former Celtics center Dave Cowens, an undersized (6-9) center who also equated floppers with chewing gum stuck to the bottom of his sneaker. In one game against the Bulls, Cowens got a cheap call when Chicago’s Mike Newlin hit the floor like Ronaldo being tripped up against Chelsea. The enraged Cowens ran down the floor, found Newlin again, flattened him with forearm, then turned to the ref and said, “Now that’s a foul!”
For the record, O’Neal says that it’s only a breach of NBA protocol when a player flops for his whole career. “I was just trying to get a call,” he said.
Cleveland is the King of covers
Last season was unusual in one respect: Three teams – New Orleans, Orlando and Boston -- covered the spread at least 50 times. Oklahoma City, which has 38 covers so far, has a puncher’s chance at doing the same, but Cleveland has been the Big Kahuna of covers, besting the number 40 times at a clip of almost 66 percent.
Wizards, Grizzlies are drawing dead
At this writing, only two teams – Washington and Memphis – are in the process of running the table:
-Losing record overall
-Losing record at home
-Losing record on the road
-Losing record against the spread
-Losing record against the over
Golden State and Sacramento are closing fast, however, and may make it a foursome before the season ends.