Portfolio review: This is the basketball equivalent of declaring bankruptcy. Michael Jordan mortgaged the team's future for one playoff run and the Bobcats are finally paying the ultimate price.
This is an atrocious team playing under a perfect storm of terrible circumstances (condensed season, injuries, not practice time) with nary a potential All-Star on its roster. On the bright side the team has almost purged all of its toxic assets and is under better management, leaving some hope the team can start stockpiling talent and finally begin to build the foundations of something.
Prime assets: Tyrus Thomas is the only player on the roster who might be able to fetch an established rotation player or mid first-round pick. Last year's draft picks Kemba Walker and Bismack Biyombo might be the perfect bankruptcy assets--players with defined NBA roles with room for growth beyond that whose immediate impact is so negligible that it won't prevent them from losing enough for their badly needed top-five pick.
Walker and Biyombo should grow to be perfect complementary players to the star or stars the Bobcats hope to draft in the next two years, or be good enough trade assets to find those players.
Toxic assets: At some point this summer either Corey Maggette or DeSagana Diop will be amnestied. The other shopped as an expiring contract. Boris Diaw is almost as bloated as his contract, which is thankfully almost over.
The rest: The Bobcats have an abundance of what I like to call trade filler across their roster. Rotation players with at least one viable NBA skill attached to a contract that might be slightly overpaid, but still falls within perfectly reasonable for a rotation player. Theoretically a team would attach these contracts to the prime asset in a trade to make contract figures work.
Gerald Henderson, D.J. Augustin, and Matt Carroll would all qualify. Unfortunately the Bobcats lack any prime assets to attach these valuable contracts to. The best thing about this roster is that it's almost completely liquidated.
http://www.hoopsrumors.com/
First of all, it underrates so many of our players IMO.
