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This franchise has not been above .500 on Jan 15th, since 2001. Even when we have made the playoffs since 2001 it's always been a spring run. Let us celebrate another year under .500. 15 straight seasons.

Box of last time we were over .500 on Jan 15th

https://www.basketball-reference.com/boxscores/200101150PHI.html

we scored a dismal 79 pts in this game. maybe this is the origin of the curse. man i don't miss that era of ball, where it was a struggle to score 90 most nights.

Cursed by Derrick Coleman maybe?

We honestly aren't that much better as an organization than the Cleveland Browns or the Bills who just made the playoffs for the first time since 99. Its pathetic really.

I blame Larry brown

We curse ourselves

only 3 winning seasons since the return in 04-05. 3 playoff wins, 0 2nd round appearances since 04-05. 1 of only 2 teams in league history to have never made it to conf finals, other being clippers.

yeah, i think its fair to put us in the conversation with the worst sports franchises.

since 04-05 only 2 teams have won less games, kings and wolves. no team has scored less pts. also worst efg%.

One major problem that I see with this franchise is that they get too fixated on or dare I say complacent with mediocrity. Batum is a perfect example. Hendo was another.

When I felt like the wise decision would’ve been to let Batum walk and take a gamble on low risk/high potential wings and instead use that cap space on quality bench depth on short contracts most of the board didn’t see it. They were too shortsighted on Batum having a career year that was still slightly above average. I don’t know what people expected of Batum. He’s always been overrated and overvalued on the board so much alike I see the front office had the same poor evaluation of him without calculating how bad it could be signing a player of his caliber to a near max contract into his 30s.

A lot of people were duped into believing that Batum made Kemba a better player when in reality it was a combination of us getting away from Alfense clogging the lane, finally adding a quality backup PG in Lin, and giving Kemba more palpably willing 3pt shooters at the wing position in order to play pace and space.

Its more about not having a plan, or not sticking to it for long.

I'd say it has a lot to do with never having a transcendent talent on the roster.

When Kemba is the best Bobcats era player the team has ever fielded, you're not going to be a challenger for any titles.

SWedd523 wrote:I'd say it has a lot to do with never having a transcendent talent on the roster.

When Kemba is the best Bobcats era player the team has ever fielded, you're not going to be a challenger for any titles.

That's just **** luck. You have to get a little lucky to find a transcendent talent.

For those reading that may be less familiar with our draft history since expansion, here it is.

Warning, this is an incredibly disheartening read. Prepare yourselves

The lone transcendent talent of 2004 was Dwight Howard (picked 1st). We picked 2nd. We missed on a couple one-time all-stars (nothing transcendent, but Devin Harris, Deng, Iguodala) but Okafor was, like most of our picks, merely good.

2005 had Deron Williams and CP3 picked 3rd and 4th, we picked 5th. With the exception of Andrew Bynum, Felton would end up the best player in the rest of the 2005 lottery. Again, merely decent.

2006 had Lamarcus Aldridge at 2, we picked Morrison 3rd, and the next two picks were Tyrus Thomas and Shelden Williams. Passed on Brandon Roy (the first real miss) but of course Roy didn't have a long career.

Never had a chance to draft a major talent in 2007, since we traded the 8th pick for J-Rich. Had we kept the pick, Jo Noah was the next pick (very solid career but far from transcendent) and the next best player drafted in the top 20 was a fringe starter in Thaddeus Young. Again, slim pickings.

There is no denying we completely blew the deep 2008 draft (DJ Augustin and Alexis Ajinca in the 1st round, as we passed on Lopez (again, very solid career but not transcendental) with the DJ pick and passed on Ryan Anderson, Courtney Lee, Ibaka, Batum, George Hill (5 of the next 6 picks after Ajinca- all good starting players with quite a bit of tread left). Again, nothing franchise altering, but nailing that draft would've nudged us in the right direction.

2009- the 4 picks after Hendo were Hansbrough, Earl Clark, Daye, and James Johnson. Holiday, Lawson, and Teague might've helped us, but if we had one of them, we probably don't draft Kemba two years later. So I don't think we benefit from anything here.

2010- our idiots traded our 2010 pick so we could draft Ajinca in 08. lol. Missed out on Bledsoe and Avery Bradley, again, no can't miss talents.

2011 - we get Biz and Kemba. No complaints whatsoever about Kemba, but this year was the time to crush the draft and we whiffed on Biz instead of Klay Thompson or Kawhi Leonard. Either one of those guys paired with Kemba gives this franchise a completely different look right now. Kawhi doesn't become who he is today without Popovich, but he would be a consensus top 20 player no matter who drafted him. An underrated note- is that we likely go big in 2012 had we drafted two guard/wings in 2011 which brings me to...

2012 - Davis is the transcendent talent picked at #1, we predictably picked #2. But with that #2 pick, I have always felt some regret passing on Drummond. Beal may fit this current iteration of the team better, but Drummond has always been the guy that I felt had the talent to be transcendent. He hasn't gotten there, but he's close to a franchise-altering piece. Aside from Biz over Klay/Kawhi, MKG over Drummond has been the biggest miss for this team.

2013 - we are back to the "who else were we supposed to take?" refrain. Cody Zeller, picked 4th, had Anthony Bennett (epic bust), Oladipo (wow who saw this coming?), Porter (solid, but nothing more) picked ahead of him, and worse players in Len, Noel, McLemore, KCP, and Burke taken with the 5 picks after. CJ McCollum has been great for Portland but few saw this coming from him. The big guys from 2013 are Giannis (was considered a reach at 15, now considered a transcendent player) and Rudy Gobert at 27. We were not in a position to draft either one. Half the league passed on Giannis in this crap draft, and nearly the entire league passed on Gobert in this crap draft. Nobody with a working mind would've picked either one of them at #4 at the time, and I'm sure neither Milwaukee or Utah expected what they got out of those two.

2014 - not really concerned about anyone we passed on in 2014 when we got Vonleh, to flip him for Nic a year later. Would LaVine or Gary Harris have been a nice get? Sure. A healthy Batum, however, is better than either one. In the long run, hardly makes too much of a difference, unless of course, we sell super low on Nic this season for something completely horrible. Then that becomes an asset problem, not a draft problem.

2015 - jury's still out on whether Booker and Turner are transcendent talents. I lean towards no. Future all-stars? Potentially. Hell of a lot better than Frank though.

2016 - we move our 1st for Belinelli. Nobody left on the board would ever start for us- I feel pretty confident saying that- but this team could've used Brogdon (rookie of the year), Ulis, or DeJounte Murray at backup PG the last couple years.

2017 - way too early to judge anything. Our rookie is 19 and has major upside, more than I can say about any of our picks in the previous 4-5 drafts. Is there a bit of regret over Donovan Mitchell? Maybe but who's to say we don't bench him like we've benched Monk? That's a coaching problem. There's also the fact that Mitchell has more experience (age 21) and seems to play like a veteran already. Either way, I don't think we were in a position to draft a franchise talent.

--

To break this all down, our best case scenario for our draft positions for let's say 2009-10 (the peak of that core) would be:

-draft Wallace in expansion draft
-Iguodala over Okafor (this one is a reach as it is, don't remember Iguodala being anywhere near the conversation for #2 but let's roll with it)
-stay with Felton
-Roy over Morrison (this will be great until 2010 then it goes downhill fast, I'll get to that)
-Joakim Noah over trading the 2007 pick for Jason Richardson
-Blopez over Augustin, Batum over Ajinca
-Jeff Teague over Gerald Henderson (I think this was another Iggy/Okafor level stretch, don't remember him ever being in that convo but let's roll with it)
-no picks in 2010

How unlucky does your franchise have to be when drafting in the lottery for 6 years in hindsight yields this as an absolute best case scenario?
Brook Lopez/Joakim Noah
Gerald Wallace
Andre Iguodala/Nicolas Batum
Brandon Roy
Raymond Felton/Jeff Teague

That is a really good team in 2010, but it doesn't even come close to winning a championship. Now keep in mind that team would then see Brandon Roy decline rapidly and retire a year later, Gerald Wallace signing a huge contract and falling off a cliff right around the same time, Andre Iguodala leaving to join the Golden State Warriors soon after, Brook Lopez missing 2 season in 3 years due to foot problems right after Roy retires and Wallace declines, and Joakim Noah blowing up around the time everyone else goes down, only to fall off a couple years later. By 2013, this team is essentially Jeff Teague, Nic Batum, and whichever of Noah/Blopez we decided to not trade, with no picks good enough to improve the team substantially. Even the best case scenario of this Bobcats team, was a 4-5 seed for a few years, followed by a whirlwind of huge contracts and injuries that drop this team back into 6-10 range again. The Bobcats quite literally could not win.

I will do another breakdown, starting with the 2010 offseason, but I'm too **** depressed to continue now

Looking at that history, it just makes me want to tank even more this year. Basically once you get out of the top 5, you're just hoping to get lucky.

don't forget the jeff taylor tragedy at 31, passed on:
jae
dray
middleton
barton

all taken between 34-40.

fatlever wrote:don't forget the jeff taylor tragedy at 31, passed on:
jae
dray
middleton
barton

all taken between 34-40.

Player development? or Cho can’t draft. Either way the front office needs to clean house.

The fact that Charlotte always struggles so mightily early on when every team fancies their chances at playoff basketball and get so much better when the other bad teams are clever enough to coast for ping pong balls tells you all you need to know about this franchise.

We might as well call it the Al Davis curse.

Great breakdown Motor. Interesting to retrospectively identify that there was no transcendent talent in our possible alternate picks. However, better drafts could have made for a much better core.

Also I was among the very few who did not want to re-sign Batum. Too expensive. I believe Cho and company felt they had no other options, and didn’t want the trade we made to render a rental return. Wrong. Saying no is always an option, and often the best.

As I’ve said before, we are stuck. Too much salary in non-stars, not a destination location to attract big free agents, ownership/management that makes poor decisions, and coaching that cannot develop young players.

fatlever wrote:don't forget the jeff taylor tragedy at 31, passed on:
jae
dray
middleton
barton

all taken between 34-40.

We would've cut jae, he sucked pre Boston. Dray wouldn't play (cliff would make him a sf and stick him in the shame corner if he did.
Barton wouldn't play either and he sucked most of his career.
Middleton wouldn't be as good as he is now, cliff would've made him a 6-8 troy daniels.

Also we traded the tobias harris pick on draft day for biz.

I have next to no confidence in our ability to develop players. Kemba is literally the only one who has lived up to or exceeded expectations.

fatlever wrote:This franchise has not been above .500 on Jan 15th, since 2001. Even when we have made the playoffs since 2001 it's always been a spring run. Let us celebrate another year under .500. 15 straight seasons.

Box of last time we were over .500 on Jan 15th

https://www.basketball-reference.com/boxscores/200101150PHI.html

we scored a dismal 79 pts in this game. maybe this is the origin of the curse. man i don't miss that era of ball, where it was a struggle to score 90 most nights.

I'm the biggest NBA fan you'll ever meet. But thank god that era coincided with me starting college and only caring about beer, women, and video games. Because the NBA got completely whack for several years there. I dont say words like "whack". But that is the only word to correctly describe it.

That Nets vs. Hornets series in '02 or so... I'd rather watch us play 82 games with Dwight Howard, NIc Batum, and my balls in a vice than watch that series again. I don't mind watching us lose if the game is entertaining. Those games blew goats.

PJ Brown, Aaron Williams, Jamal Magloire, Lee Nailon, Todd MacCullough, Jason Collins, Elden Campell, Tractor Traylor, Keith Van Horn. Those guys all got big minutes in ONE FREAKING SERIES. And that was in the 2nd round on a team who made the Finals!!! all those plodding big men, midrange jumpers, and clogged toilet offenses back then.. god no make it stop. MAKE IT STOP

And people complain about watching guys like Eric Gordon, Nick Young, or Lou Williams launch a bunch of threes? GIve me a break. You watch 10 of those early 2000's games and get back to me.

You go Spend your nights watching Jelani McCoy, Chris Mihm, Rafael Araujo, and Slava Medvedenko buddy.

MotorKeepsGoing wrote:

SWedd523 wrote:I'd say it has a lot to do with never having a transcendent talent on the roster.

When Kemba is the best Bobcats era player the team has ever fielded, you're not going to be a challenger for any titles.

That's just **** luck. You have to get a little lucky to find a transcendent talent.

For those reading that may be less familiar with our draft history since expansion, here it is.

Warning, this is an incredibly disheartening read. Prepare yourselves

The lone transcendent talent of 2004 was Dwight Howard (picked 1st). We picked 2nd. We missed on a couple one-time all-stars (nothing transcendent, but Devin Harris, Deng, Iguodala) but Okafor was, like most of our picks, merely good.

2005 had Deron Williams and CP3 picked 3rd and 4th, we picked 5th. With the exception of Andrew Bynum, Felton would end up the best player in the rest of the 2005 lottery. Again, merely decent.

2006 had Lamarcus Aldridge at 2, we picked Morrison 3rd, and the next two picks were Tyrus Thomas and Shelden Williams. Passed on Brandon Roy (the first real miss) but of course Roy didn't have a long career.

Never had a chance to draft a major talent in 2007, since we traded the 8th pick for J-Rich. Had we kept the pick, Jo Noah was the next pick (very solid career but far from transcendent) and the next best player drafted in the top 20 was a fringe starter in Thaddeus Young. Again, slim pickings.

There is no denying we completely blew the deep 2008 draft (DJ Augustin and Alexis Ajinca in the 1st round, as we passed on Lopez (again, very solid career but not transcendental) with the DJ pick and passed on Ryan Anderson, Courtney Lee, Ibaka, Batum, George Hill (5 of the next 6 picks after Ajinca- all good starting players with quite a bit of tread left). Again, nothing franchise altering, but nailing that draft would've nudged us in the right direction.

2009- the 4 picks after Hendo were Hansbrough, Earl Clark, Daye, and James Johnson. Holiday, Lawson, and Teague might've helped us, but if we had one of them, we probably don't draft Kemba two years later. So I don't think we benefit from anything here.

2010- our idiots traded our 2010 pick so we could draft Ajinca in 08. lol. Missed out on Bledsoe and Avery Bradley, again, no can't miss talents.

2011 - we get Biz and Kemba. No complaints whatsoever about Kemba, but this year was the time to crush the draft and we whiffed on Biz instead of Klay Thompson or Kawhi Leonard. Either one of those guys paired with Kemba gives this franchise a completely different look right now. Kawhi doesn't become who he is today without Popovich, but he would be a consensus top 20 player no matter who drafted him. An underrated note- is that we likely go big in 2012 had we drafted two guard/wings in 2011 which brings me to...

2012 - Davis is the transcendent talent picked at #1, we predictably picked #2. But with that #2 pick, I have always felt some regret passing on Drummond. Beal may fit this current iteration of the team better, but Drummond has always been the guy that I felt had the talent to be transcendent. He hasn't gotten there, but he's close to a franchise-altering piece. Aside from Biz over Klay/Kawhi, MKG over Drummond has been the biggest miss for this team.

2013 - we are back to the "who else were we supposed to take?" refrain. Cody Zeller, picked 4th, had Anthony Bennett (epic bust), Oladipo (wow who saw this coming?), Porter (solid, but nothing more) picked ahead of him, and worse players in Len, Noel, McLemore, KCP, and Burke taken with the 5 picks after. CJ McCollum has been great for Portland but few saw this coming from him. The big guys from 2013 are Giannis (was considered a reach at 15, now considered a transcendent player) and Rudy Gobert at 27. We were not in a position to draft either one. Half the league passed on Giannis in this crap draft, and nearly the entire league passed on Gobert in this crap draft. Nobody with a working mind would've picked either one of them at #4 at the time, and I'm sure neither Milwaukee or Utah expected what they got out of those two.

2014 - not really concerned about anyone we passed on in 2014 when we got Vonleh, to flip him for Nic a year later. Would LaVine or Gary Harris have been a nice get? Sure. A healthy Batum, however, is better than either one. In the long run, hardly makes too much of a difference, unless of course, we sell super low on Nic this season for something completely horrible. Then that becomes an asset problem, not a draft problem.

2015 - jury's still out on whether Booker and Turner are transcendent talents. I lean towards no. Future all-stars? Potentially. Hell of a lot better than Frank though.

2016 - we move our 1st for Belinelli. Nobody left on the board would ever start for us- I feel pretty confident saying that- but this team could've used Brogdon (rookie of the year), Ulis, or DeJounte Murray at backup PG the last couple years.

2017 - way too early to judge anything. Our rookie is 19 and has major upside, more than I can say about any of our picks in the previous 4-5 drafts. Is there a bit of regret over Donovan Mitchell? Maybe but who's to say we don't bench him like we've benched Monk? That's a coaching problem. There's also the fact that Mitchell has more experience (age 21) and seems to play like a veteran already. Either way, I don't think we were in a position to draft a franchise talent.

--

To break this all down, our best case scenario for our draft positions for let's say 2009-10 (the peak of that core) would be:

-draft Wallace in expansion draft
-Iguodala over Okafor (this one is a reach as it is, don't remember Iguodala being anywhere near the conversation for #2 but let's roll with it)
-stay with Felton
-Roy over Morrison (this will be great until 2010 then it goes downhill fast, I'll get to that)
-Joakim Noah over trading the 2007 pick for Jason Richardson
-Blopez over Augustin, Batum over Ajinca
-Jeff Teague over Gerald Henderson (I think this was another Iggy/Okafor level stretch, don't remember him ever being in that convo but let's roll with it)
-no picks in 2010

How unlucky does your franchise have to be when drafting in the lottery for 6 years in hindsight yields this as an absolute best case scenario?
Brook Lopez/Joakim Noah
Gerald Wallace
Andre Iguodala/Nicolas Batum
Brandon Roy
Raymond Felton/Jeff Teague

That is a really good team in 2010, but it doesn't even come close to winning a championship. Now keep in mind that team would then see Brandon Roy decline rapidly and retire a year later, Gerald Wallace signing a huge contract and falling off a cliff right around the same time, Andre Iguodala leaving to join the Golden State Warriors soon after, Brook Lopez missing 2 season in 3 years due to foot problems right after Roy retires and Wallace declines, and Joakim Noah blowing up around the time everyone else goes down, only to fall off a couple years later. By 2013, this team is essentially Jeff Teague, Nic Batum, and whichever of Noah/Blopez we decided to not trade, with no picks good enough to improve the team substantially. Even the best case scenario of this Bobcats team, was a 4-5 seed for a few years, followed by a whirlwind of huge contracts and injuries that drop this team back into 6-10 range again. The Bobcats quite literally could not win.

Pretty solid analysis but you left out the most important one.

Declined Utah's offer of the third pick for #5 and #13 so we could draft Sean May and Ray Felton instead of Chris Paul or Deron Williams. An absolutely indefensible move at the time that looks even worse in retrospect.



Also, you're underrating Noah. He was a top 5 MVP candidate one year and the best player on a 62 win #1 seed Bulls team that put up all close games against the Lebron/Wade/Bosh Miami Heat.

Also, you're underrating Porter. Merely solid? He's one of the better players in the league now.

Lastly, Gary Harris is on another planet than Nic Batum. Harris broke out and is one of the top players in the league as well. He's an excellent shooter, defender, and overall player. He's a top 20-30 overall player while Batum is barely playable anymore.