Charlotte Bobcats

New Owner Michael Jordan expects hard play, deeper playoff run

Over the past two seasons, head coach Larry Brown’s team has steadily improved and this season could be the year that the team gets back into the playoffs and play a bit deeper within them. Of course the team he leads will have to play the minutes and Larry Brown knows how to get the best out of young moldable players. Led by SG Stephen Jackson, the team will have to wait on Kwame Brown to return any low post playing and Coach Brown isn’t going to rush his new big man back into the fray until he knows he is 100% ready to go.

Jordan, who purchased ownership of the team in February, was unanimously approved by the NBA Board of Governors making him the first NBA player ever to become the majority owner of a franchise.

In 2002, the Charlotte Hornets left the city that they broke into the National Basketball Association with. The ownership duo of George Shinn and Ray Wooldridge did a lot of the same things that other owners do like not re-sign superstars like Alonzo Morning, Larry Johnson, Eddie Jones and Vlade Divac, and they raised prices despite dwindling attendance numbers. What most cities they’ll take all this stuff and smile. The cities will listen to owners when they tell them that “A world class city has to have a sports team to be world class” but the city of Charlotte wouldn’t take it anymore. Shinn and Wooldridge tried to move the team to Memphis but couldn’t hammer anything out and then came crawling back to Charlotte and demanded a new arena. The fans in Charlotte would have nothing to do with them. In 2002, shortly after announcing the team would be moved to New Orleans, fans hit the ownership duo where it hurt the most, in their wallet. The Hornets actually didn’t have a bad team that year and made it into the playoffs, but only around 10,000 fans showed up to see the Hornets get beat and leave to another town.

Not long after that, the city of Charlotte started lobbying to get a new franchise in their city to wash away the bad taste in their mouths left by the most hated pair of people in Charlotte George Shinn and Ray Wooldridge. The NBA awarded the city a franchise and the owner was Robert Johnson who is the founder of Black Entertainment Television and the first minority owner in the NBA. Johnson also brought rapper Nelly in as one of his many minority owners of the Charlotte franchise. They decided that the name of the new franchise would be the Charlotte Bobcats which is similar to the region’s football franchise the Carolina Panthers. The team named Bernie Bickerstaff as the General Manager and Head Coach.

The team is looking like they have the base to be a good team in the coming years. They used the second pick in the draft to pick Connecticut center and all around Good Samaritan Emeka Okafor. Okafor finished his degree at Connecticut in three years and could’ve left for the draft a year before, but elected to stay to finish out his degree. Okafor also led his team to a national championship due, largely in part, to his dominating play in the middle. The team hopes that the theory that big men win championships in the NBA is true.

The teams projected starting lineup won’t be too scary to opposing teams due to the fact that they are players that all the other teams didn’t want, but they do have a great deal of athletic ability and will be a force to be reckoned with in a year or two. At point guard the team will have Jason

Hart, at shooting guard will be Gerald Wallace, at small forward will be Jason Kapono, at power forward will be Emeka Okafor and at center will be seasoned veteran Jahidi White.

The Bobcats’ bench looks mighty thin at almost every position. They should have Predrag Drobjnak spelling their big men along with Marvin Ely and for their guards Eddie House, Tamar Slay and Omar Cook should give their starters a breather when they need it.