Charlotte
Philip Maymin
Basketball News Services
Though it was an inaugural season for an expansion team, and talk of having the worst record of all time was in the air at the beginning of the season, the Charlotte Bobcats managed not only to beat the likes of Detroit, Houston (twice), Sacramento, Denver, and Miami, but also to put together three two-game winning streaks over the course of the season.
In November, they beat Orlando, Detroit, and Atlanta.In December, they beat New York, then won back-to-back games against New Orleans and Houston for their first two-game win streak, then beat Houston again later in the month for good measure. They ended the season 2-0 against one of the hottest playoff teams.
2005 saw Charlotte beat Minnesota and Toronto in January and Utah and Denver in February. They started March off with a bang by beating Sacramento, then later in the month beat Orlando twice. After the second win against divisional rivals the Magic, they beat Miami to net their second two-game win-streak.
Finally in Aprilthey beat Atlanta twice for their final two-game winning streak.
TEAM NOTES
Primoz Brezec will participate in Basketball without Borders, the league’s premiere international basketball and community relations outreach program, at La Ghirada Sports Facility in Treviso, Italy from July 28-31.
The Bobcats will have the second-most combinations in the 2005 NBA Draft Lotteryto be held May 24. Charlotte will have a total of 183 chances out of 1,000 with its two lottery selections.
Stan Choe ofThe Charlotte Observerwrites: Three former sales workers for the Charlotte Bobcats are suing the NBA team for wrongful termination, saying it owes each of them hundreds of thousands of dollars in unpaid commissions.The three allege the Bobcats fired them to avoid paying at least $1.26 million in commissions they earned by selling luxury boxes and season tickets. The lawsuit, filed in state court in Charlotte earlier this month, names the Bobcats, team owner Bob Johnson, team President Ed Tapscott and other top team officials as defendants.
Tom Knott ofThe Washington Timeswrites: Juan Dixon is a role player who sometimes struggles with being subservient to the lead players around him. Dixon is a limited one-on-one maestro at the NBA level, in case this has not dawned on him yet -- and apparently it has not, judging by his indiscriminate forays in the first two games of the Wizards' playoff series against the Bulls... If Dixon had landed with the Bobcats in the expansion draft last summer, he undoubtedly would have put up good numbers in Charlotte.But he would have put up those numbers in the context of an 18-64 season. Someone has to score points in a 48-minute game. That does not mean they are quality points.