Hoping for a Better Bobcats Future

It seems like forever ago, but the Charlotte Bobcats are barely 14 months removed from a 44 win regular season and #7 seed in the Eastern conference playoffs. Take a look at the team's major contributors (listed by average minutes, played at least 41 games) that season:

Gerald Wallace, Stephen Jackson, Boris Diaw, Raymond Felton, Tyson Chandler, D.J. Augustin, Nazr Mohammed, Stephen Graham

In the 14 months since the Bobcats' first playoff berth, 6 out of the 8 are gone. The longest tenured Bobcat (time with the team) is now either D.J. Augustin, Gana Diop, or Matt Carroll. If we weren't in an official rebuild mode before this draft, the departure of Jackson clinched it -  it's time to tear it down, clean it out, and start over.

Before you spout off about how big free agent signings are the only path to title contender status, remember: Oklahoma City and Memphis proved that small market teams, run the right way (even if, in Memphis' case, it's sometimes in spite of themselves), can blow up a fringe playoff team and emerge on the other end as viable contenders. So, what's the secret?

Well, it's having 5 and 4 lottery picks, respectively, over 4 hopeless lottery bound seasons. More importantly, it's having 4 and 3 of those lottery picks, respectively, in the top 5 (note: Seattle/OKC traded its best player at the time, Ray Allen, for a top 5 pick - sound familiar?). And, if you don't think patience is necessary to accomplish this, consider: the average win total for OKC and Memphis over that 4 season span? 27 games.

There is a blueprint, and Rich Cho was part of executing it in OKC. The major part of that blueprint is stockpiling high draft picks, and making average-to-above-average decisions. It didn't take a genius to pick Durant after Oden went #1 in '07, and it didn't take a genius to take Rudy Gay at #8 (he went 3 picks after Shelden Williams) in '06. By the way, in hindsight, Saer Sene and Hasheem Thabeet were disasters as lottery picks for OKC and Memphis, and they're still sitting pretty today. They don't all have to be perfect picks, just more hits than misses, with one home run mixed in. So, Bobcats fans, let's try to maintain some perspective as we trudge through the dog days of the next few seasons. This may take a while.

P.S. And try not to throw too many stones at draft picks we don't like... because smarter people than you and me (these guys and these guys too) had Serge Ibaka behind Alexis Ajinca at the time. And if you didn't know enough to pick Serge back then, then you probably don't know enough to dispute the Bismack pick now. (This postscript is absolutely directed at myself, but if you're guilty of the same, then great. Two birds with one stone.)