Charlotte
Philip Maymin
Basketball News Services
Bob Johnson and his partners paid $300 million to the owners of the other teams. The NBA held a special expansion draft for them earlier this summer. GM Bernie Bickerstaff maneuvered all summer to get young, cheap, hungry talent, and got his biggest prize in second overall pick Emeka Okafor. As coach, he has trained his picks in the art of team defense. His roster now stands at 17. And tonight is the first test of this Charlotte experiment.
The Bobcats will face an outside opponent for the first time in franchise history. Two of the Wizards they will face thought they would have a chance to be on Charlotte's expansion team: Antawn Jamison and Juan Dixon. The Wizards, on paper, have more talent, more accolades, and a cohesive core that has played together. But is Charlotte perhaps hungrier?
The Charlotte experiment can be described this way. Every player in the NBA, from the least benchwarmer to the latest star, have awards and talent that the masses never reach. Even second-round draft picks and unsigned rookie free agents have backgrounds such as being the best player in a particular conference or player of the year honors or otherwise. The talent is there. The opportunity may not have been.
Charlotte has sought out those players that have the talent to explode but have not had their moments to shine. They are looking for this season's Flip Murray. If you recall, Murray was a throw-in in the Milwaukee-Seattle trade two years ago that featured an exchange of Gary Payton for Ray Allen. When Allen was out in the beginning of last season, Murray stepped up to average about 20 points per game, and was one of the scoring leaders in the league. It was all a matter of minutes.
Bickerstaff is hoping the same can be true of his crew. Tonight will be the first test.
NEXT GAME
The Bobcats play their first ever preseason game TONIGHT as they host the Washington Wizards at 7:00pm. The historic game will be broadcast solely on NBA League Pass, a premium subscription offering available to most cable and satellite subscribers.Tickets are still available.
TEAM NOTES
Rick Bonnell ofThe Charlotte Observernotes: The Bobcats cut reserve point guard Patrick Jackson on Wednesday, trimming the roster to 17.Bickerstaff doesn't expect to make any more cuts until after the upcoming three-game exhibition road trip.
The Bobcats went through their final in-house competition on Tuesday night with an intrasquad scrimmage for season ticket holders at the Charlotte Coliseum. The performance served as a final barometerleading into Thursday night's exhibition opener against Washington.
INJURY UPDATE
No injuries to report.
Rick Bonnell ofThe Charlotte Observerwrites: Charlotte Bobcats forward Melvin Ely knows why he and his teammates hardly ever look sharp offensively in intra-squad scrimmages. "We're all cheating," Ely said, explaining that if a defense knows the other team's offense intimately, then almost any play gets blown up before it creates an advantage.Ely's right -- so much so that Bobcats coaches told the players to back off defensively in practice -- but is that the only problem this team has scoring?
Rick Bonnell ofThe Charlotte Observerwrites: Antawn Jamison had a dream last spring; coming home to play for the expansion Charlotte Bobcats."I'm not going to lie; before the season was over I thought that it would've been exciting for Dallas to leave me off the (protected list) and for the Bobcats to pick me up," Jamison told the Observer Wednesday. "I knew that was unrealistic, and I'm very happy with the situation now, but..."
Rick Bonnell ofThe Charlotte Observerwrites: The NBA is considering a plan to abolish the 3-point shot until the end of games to increase shooting percentages and make the sport more aesthetically pleasing... When told about the story Charlotte Bobcats coach/general manager Bernie Bickerstaff and Bobcats guard Steve Smith found it hard to believe the NBA would adopt such a rule."Not a good idea," Smith said. "The scores would be really down because then you don't have to (guard) the guy who is spreading the court," causing the action in the lane to bunch up even more.
Michael Lee ofThe Washington Postwrites: Juan Dixon was dribbling and dropping jumpers on a court featuring the logo of the expansion Charlotte Bobcats, wearing a practice jersey that still read "Wizards Basketball." When the Washington Wizards walked on the floor of the Bobcats' practice facility here on Wednesday, Dixon said he never thought about what it would've been like had the Bobcats selected him in the expansion draft last summer.