BOBCATS EULOGY: THE DEATH OF A FRANCHISE

[Big Aristotle]

Dear Charlotte Bobcats,

It is with a frustrated, angry, and heavy heart that I have to now mourn the passing of a promising franchise that was cut down before it had a chance to make an impact in the NBA. The current and senseless loss of our franchises first and sensible draft pick will go down as one of the worst trades in NBA history. I remember on June 4th, 2004 when out of the ashes of the demise of the Charlotte Hornets we selected Okafor to bring back hope and optimism to the good state and become the cornerstone of a new team. Okafor would later become the ROY and things would begin to get better for us. The next year we made solid moves at the time and drafted Raymond Felton and Sean May, two Carolina players that were supposed to further bolster home team support and comprise our core team along with Okafor and Gerald Wallace. From then on our team had to play through adversity every season in a bid to be relevant in the Eastern Conference. Having lost Sean May for the entire rookie season, we still increased our wins and while we were still a lottery team, we had a bright future with the upcoming 2006 Draft but in hindsight that is where the beginning of the end started for us. With Michael Jordan, who will live in infamy in NBA front offices as the one who signed Kwame Brown, selected Adam Morrison to upgrade our SG spot. However, he picked him over Brandon Roy, Rudy Gay, and to a lesser extent, J.J. Redick. Roy would go on to win ROY while Morrison lost his starting spot and despite this, our team still did better than the previous year. The worst season was yet to come for our team starting with the hiring of Jordan crony Sam Vincent over Stan Van Gundy, Paul Silas, Mike Fratello, and Herb Williams. Then came the draft when GM Rod Higgins selected Brandan Wright in a draft day trade for Jason Richardson who was supposed to be our go to scorer and help our team make the playoffs for the first time in franchise history. Despite an incompetent coach and losing Morrison for the entire year, we did worse by a win and failed to make the playoffs. Such has been the case with our team where faced with adversity, our team continued to compete and solidify a small, but hardcore fanbase. The signing of Larry Brown as a replacement for Sam Vincent was an upgrade but with his questionable history with the Knicks, should have also served as a warning sign our franchise was moving in the wrong direction. For reasons unknown, we drafted DJ Augustin ahead of Brook Lopez, who would have finally gave us a center to compliment Okafor in the post. In addition, we picked up stick figure Anjica over player like Courtney Lee and Mario Chalmers. Despite these questionable picks, we received Boris Diaw, Raja Bell, and Sean Singletary and we had a real chance of making the playoffs. Then tragedy struck near the end of the season where a damn horse event, which could be held outside because quite frankly, they are HORSES, derailed our chances to make the playoffs. Now finally, our team has been completely killed. Our team, our franchise, and our future completely killed by an incompetent front office which saw them trade one of our best players to the owner who betrayed our city in the first place, George Shinn. I used to think through all the adversity our team had that at least we had the talent on the court to offset them if only slightly, by their willingness to compete. Okafor was one of those players. Now we downgrade significantly and will forever be relegated to cellar dweller status forever. Thanks for the memories Bobcats. You will be missed.

Your former fan,
Aristotle

[Bradleiu]

Yeh it makes me feel *** too all the stupid moves we have made, especially the Morrison drafting man did we *** that one up and now we have Tyson Chandler, I dont blame you Aristotle for becoming disenfranchised by our front office. We should have kept Bernie on as GM at least he made reasonable aquisitions. Now we have an owner who dosnt want the team and the front office  appears directionless, i will continue to follow the team but this one really has me fucked.

[3sixD]

* 3sixD waits for the master plan to unfold??

[pooflakes]

i wouldnt say the bobcats are at a death i think its a franchise that never actually got going, too many mistakes and too many bad descions have left the team in a bad way, which dosent look to have a great future.


The team needs big changes and not signin players like chandler who is worse than okafor and has recurring injury's and lookin likely iverson.

The franchise needs to get rid of any high paid rubbish (look above) start from scratch and make good moves

[chellis]

i wouldnt say the bobcats are at a death i think its a franchise that never actually got going, too many mistakes and too many bad descions have left the team in a bad way, which dosent look to have a great future.


The team needs big changes and not signin players like chandler who is worse than okafor and has recurring injury's and lookin likely iverson.

The franchise needs to get rid of any high paid rubbish (look above) start from scratch and make good moves

You're going to have to start from the top and not let MJ have the final say on all player personnel decisions.

[pooflakes]

that is true too, maybe everythin will change from top to bottom with new ownership

[JR]

bump

[bobcatsTRUTH]

in defense of the thread title, the bobcats are achieving in spite of their own front office.

think about how good this team COULD be and you just shake your head... this was written right after the okafor trade, and in case you were wondering how that's worked out... well the bobcats have been a better team with tyson chandler OUT of the lineup.

also, we still have may-over-granger, morrison-over-roy, and augustin-over-lopez (not even mentioning horrendous ajinca pick).  this isn't hindsight, the cats were projected to take different (better) players and they've goofed in just about every way possible in the draft.  just because they've made some good (lucky) trades the last 2 years doesn't mean we're giving jordan and higgins a pass.

i'm a bobcats fan, but i'm also a realist (hard to be one without the other)... this team is, at best, a high playoff seed.  we're likely without our 2010 1st rounder, and after this year we'll likely let felton go in free agency only to replace him with nothing because our owner is a cheap ***.  stephen jackson is probably going to be traded before his 3 year extension runs out, nazr is getting old, and pretty much everyone outside of gerald wallace is completely worthless.  so we might make the playoffs this year, but where do we go after that?  management has put the organization as a whole in the position where they're going to fall flat on their faces.  so beyond 4 months there's not a lot of optimism for success.

[Big Aristotle]

Well the Bobcats now have to avoid Michael buying the team and killing it like never before. I'm rooting for George P. so much. Jordan having free reign on a franchise is too much seeing as how most of what he has done for himself to prove himself in the front office has been overwhelmingly bad. Larry Brown needs to go if reports of him wanting to trade Augustin for a big is true. We could have had Brook Lopez with no offense to Augustin.