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Bobcats

Other People’s Words: A Virtual Business Trip to Charlotte

by Tim Donahue on November 12, 2011 at 12:32 pm · 3 comments

From 2003 through 2008, I worked for two different companies that had plants in the Charlotte area. As a result, I visited the Queen City dozens of time on business. While I don’t miss the business travel, I do miss both the people and the city of Charlotte.

So, it was nice when Brett from Queen City Hoops asked if I’d sit in for a question on their 3-on-3.  QCH writers Mathew and Spencer joined me in answering:

How are small market teams valued in the CBA, and should it be more/less?

A tough question, but one very important not only to Bobcat fans, but also the followers of the Blue-and-Gold. Here’s a taste of my response.

Truth be told, small markets like Charlotte (1.2 million TV households) and Indianapolis (1.1 million) are of dubious value in a league whose revenues are increasingly dependent on local TV revenue. Each would be doing well to get a local TV rights deal that gives them in ten years what the reported new Time Warner deal gives the Lakers in just one. It seems relatively clear that the NBA is far more important to these two markets than these markets are to the NBA.

Don’t worry…that’s not all. I don’t sell us down the river. Click on the link above, and head on over.

Matt Moore of Hardwood Paroxysm and David Walker of  Bobcat site Rufus on Fire answer the other questions.

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TJ Ford & Brandon Rush for DJ Augustin, Gerald Henderson and Nazr Mohammed ??????????????

by Jared Wade on February 18, 2010 at 3:01 pm · 1 comment

Updating on the previous post of “serious” discussions between Indy and Charlotte that are now “close”…Here’s another tweet from Woj:

Charlotte and Indiana is close, but sources say not done. FIve players for now, including Ford and Rush for Augustine, Henderson and Nazr.

As reported here, this is a no-brainer for Indy.

Rush has been playing a little better since January started, but losing him isn’t a big deal. There’s not a chasm of difference between his potential and Gerald Henderson’s potential, although I have admittedly not watched a ton of Charlotte this year and you do have to wonder why Larry Brown would be willing to punt on a lottery pick so quickly. Perhaps they want to try to make a real run in the playoffs and think TJ can do more for them than DJ Augustin and feel, like I do, that Rush for Gerald is a wash at worst?

I don’t know. The whole thing seems dubious from a “why would Charlotte do this?” standpoint, frankly.

Regardless, I like DJ Augustin as a promising young PG with NBA starter potential. He suffers from some of the same size issues as TJ, but could at worst be a fresh face in Conseco and be a good option to run the team from a “change for change’s sake” perspective. He would immediately challenge Earl Watson for the starting role and, as a guy still on a cheap rookie deal through 2012, could likely remain a solid back court option that doesn’t really affect the cap for the next few seasons. Indy could let Earl Watson leave this summer and then have DJ and AJ Price as two PG options, which would lessen the urgency of drafting a PG, which is currently the major priority for the team. I’m not saying DJ Augustin is a guy you want running your team for the next five years and PG would still be the number one priority, but it would leave the front office less hamstrung to only focus on one position and give Indy some stability — which is exactly what TJ Ford was supposed to be, yet unable to be, when he was acquired for Jermaine O’Neal.

Nazr Mohammed is signed through the Summer of 2011 for $6.8 million, but that’s less than TJ would make anyway so the cap affect is a net (slight) positive for the Pacers — and obviously Nazr is a guy that Indy could desperately use immediately and next year in it’s MASH unit front court, whereas TJ is in the dog house.

Interesting stuff.

We’ll see…

UPDATE: Two new tweets from Woj:

Number One:

Indiana players believe trade is near, telling friends even that deal’s done. Front offices still talking. Charlotte may need convincing.

Number Two:

Charlotte has been insisting that they won’t do a deal here, and time is running out. One final Larry Bird-Michael Jordan showdown?

IT’S JUST LIKE THE MCDONALD’S COMMERCIAL.

UPDATE II:

…and Wells awakes from his slumber to squash all hopes and dreams:

Pacers-Bobcats tried to work out a deal, which was first reported by @WojYahooNBA, but they couldn’t reach an agreement

Well…that was fun.

Now you know why I think trade rumors are stupid and a waste of time.

UPDATE III:

…and just to give Woj a final word on all the commotion:

Indiana wanted desperately to move T.J. Ford — and loved D.J. Augustine — but it appears they’ve just run out of time, source says.

I still think they can move TJ this summer if they try hard enough, but, yeah, this deal seemed too good to be true from the very start. Oh well, back to reality.

Horrible, depressing, bleak, no-hope-for-more-than-12-months reality.

eeyore rain cloud

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UPDATE: Pacers at the Trade Deadline: You Get Nothing? Good Day, Sir … I Said “Good Day” (or….MAYBE I’M WRONG AND INDY TRADE’S TJ FORD FOR DJ AUGUSTIN??? QUESTION MARK)

by Jared Wade on February 18, 2010 at 2:26 pm · 1 comment

UPDATE: Woo-hoo. I’m perhaps wrong about all the stuff I wrote below, and Charlotte may have some interest in TJ Ford for some reason. I’ll believe it when I see it, but says Yahoo’s Adrian Wojnarowski:

Charlotte and Indiana in serious talks on deal that would send T.J. Ford to Bobcats for package that includes D.J. Augustine, source says.

Stay tuned….

(And that “woo-hoo” will could definitely change to “oh poop” if the Pacers are taking on money in this deal. I like DJ though.)

————

As expected, it looks like nothing’s happening today in Indianapolis.

And really, it’s probably for the best.

Grabbing a late first-round pick and a low-level “prospect” (like a JJ Hickson-type young’n) would have been nice, and it could have helped to shed a contract (like Murphy) so as to proactively ease the potential luxury tax burden next year, but there wasn’t ever much chance of any major acquisitions coming in anyway. The players Indy (hopefully) doesn’t care about for the long-term (Murphy, MDJ, Ford, Foster, Watson, Diener, Solomon, Head) are simply not desirable to other GMs. Danny Ferry of Cleveland and perhaps a few others certainly had a little interest in Troy as a back-up plan to add a little more offense for a playoff run. And I’m sure some executives at least respect Troy’s high-level skills (shooting and rebounding) enough to have a conversation about acquiring him, but that $12.5 million salary he’s owed next year is a pretty big financial burden for anyone to accept. So it really shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone that Bird wasn’t able to get anything out of Murphy. Not in this economic climate at least.

Simply put, outside of Danny, Hibbert, future draft picks and perhaps — to a much lesser degree — Rush, Tyler and (maybe) AJ Price, this franchise has nothing of value.

Well, that’s not exactly fair.

Conseco Fieldhouse is pretty sweet. Unfortunately, you can’t include buildings in trades under the current Collective Bargaining Agreement. Or at least I don’t think you can…

/runs off to email Larry Coon

Wait?!?!? We still have 41 more minutes. So … THIS IS ALL SUBJECT TO CHANGE**!!!!! (Don’t hold your breath)

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Save the Dates: Analyzing Next Year’s Schedule

by Jared Wade on August 5, 2009 at 2:06 pm · 2 comments

The 2009/10 Pacers schedule was released yesterday, and it actually looks pretty promising early.

Nine of the Pacers’ first 14 games are at home, and only five of the first 13 games are against opponents who made the Playoffs last season. For a re-tooled roster featuring at least five new faces, starting off the season well is important. Hopefully, a manageable November schedule will help them gel early and set the tone for more wins this year.

It looks like Santa has blessed the team as well. Just following Jesus’ birthday, from December 31 – January 15, the Pacers have a eight-game stretch where they play Memphis, Minnesota, New York, Orlando, Minnesota, Oklahoma City, Toronto and Phoenix. Obviously, those teams may have improved over the summer, but the Magic are the only Playoff team from last season that the Pacers will play during that run.

On the other hand, the post-All-Star Break Playoff push is pretty brutal.

Feb 17  San Antonio
Feb 19 at New Orleans
Feb 20 at Houston
Feb 22 at Dallas
Feb 24 at Chicago
Feb 25  Milwaukee
Feb 27  Chicago

Mar 2 at L.A. Lakers
Mar 3 at Portland
Mar 5 at Denver
Mar 6 at Phoenix
Mar 9  Philadelphia
Mar 12 at Boston

Indy starts the second half of the season with nine out of 13 on the road and, even including the home games, the Bucks are the only cupcake team of the bunch. Injuries and other things could easily re-route a team like Portland, for example, towards mediocrity, but I think we can circle these 13 games on the calendar as a barometer to gauge how far the team has come.

In other news, the Pacers will play 22 back-to-backs, five of which are road/road and none of which are home/home. (Home/home back-to-backs are actually very rare. The NBA tries to avoid them, possibly because there is a belief that a home crowd would be burnt out/not show up for two straight nights, and there are only two home/home back-to-back sets scheduled across the entire League next season, both of which happen to hosted by the Bobcats in Charlotte.)

Sure, 22 is a lot of back-to-backs, but the average is about 20 per team and a few teams actually have to play 23 sets of them, so it could be a little worse. Here’s the full list via TrueHoop.

  • Charlotte Bobcats 23
  • Chicago Bulls 23
  • Detroit Pistons 23
  • Atlanta Hawks 22
  • Indiana Pacers 22
  • Houston Rockets 22
  • L.A. Clippers 22
  • Denver Nuggets 22
  • Milwaukee Bucks 22
  • Toronto Raptors 21
  • New Jersey Nets 21
  • Washington Wizards 21
  • Philadelphia 76ers 20
  • Memphis Grizzlies 20
  • L.A. Lakers 20
  • Golden State Warriors20
  • Sacramento Kings 20
  • Minnesota Timberwolves 20
  • Dallas Mavericks 20
  • Phoenix Suns 20
  • Orlando Magic 19
  • Utah Jazz  19
  • Portland Trail Blazers 19
  • New York Knicks 18
  • Boston Celtics 18
  • Miami Heat 18
  • Cleveland Cavaliers 18
  • Oklahoma City Thunder 18
  • San Antonio Spurs 17
  • New Orleans Hornets 16

And in what is likely the most important factor in gauging the national interest in the Indiana professional basketball, the Pacers, for he second straight season, have a total of zero games on either ABC or TNT. Their final game of the year in Washington on April 14 will be shown on ESPN, however, for whatever that’s worth, and they do have two games that will be broadcast on NBA TV at least — which I believe is twice as many as the one Pacer game that the League-run site aired last season. (The two games are Indiana @ Golden State on 11/30/09, and Utah @ Indiana on 3/26/09.)

I’m not sure Pacers fans should be surprised by any of this, honestly. Jimmy O’Brien’s offense is fun to watch, sure, but all the outside world (aside from Kelly Dwyer) really sees in Indiana these days is mostly boring, mediocrity.

And white people. They see lots of white people.

conseco fieldhouse

Hopefully, more people show up to the 41 games in Conseco this season.

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