I don’t have much to say about the Bobcats. They’re coached by former Indiana coach Larry Brown. They were rumored to have almost traded DJ Augustin to the Pacers last year on the day of the trade deadline. They have one really good player in Gerald Wallace and another pretty solid guy in at-least-one-time-fan-puncher Stephen Jackson. They have Tyrus Thomas who dunks quite often.

And … that’s about it.

Honestly, they rival the Cavs and Pistons for most boring roster in the NBA and seemingly have no interesting future to speculate upon. Sure, last year they made the playoffs and were the best defensive team in the NBA, but so far that hasn’t translated to 2010-11. I’m sure they will pull it together.

But hopefully not this evening.

Pacers vs Bucks By the Numbers

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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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Glossary: Offensive Rating | Defensive Rating | eFG% | Pace

No extensive preview today. It’s Sunday. Daddy’s drinking.

But I wanted to at least throw the pre-game stats up. And, honestly, what else do you really need to know about the Bobcats? Their offense makes even Indy’s look like the 2006 Suns and they now have our boy Cpt. Jack. That’s pretty much the only stuff of even marginal interest about this team other than perhaps Gerald Wallace being fun to watch, them having two decent, diminutive point guards (DJ Augustin and Ray Felton) and the fact that our old friend Larry Brown is running the team. And, oh yeah, they have lost seven straight games so they are probably looking at the Pacers coming to town the same way Indy is looking at going to Charlotte: a good chance to pick up a much-needed win.

Aside from than that, all you need to know is they are one of the worst teams in the NBA and the Pacers should beat them.

UPDATE: Oh yeah. This is also Tyler’s return to North Carolina. I suppose that’s interesting sorta.

Getting back to the above stats for a minute, though, are there other things you would like to see before each game? I added “average scoring margin,” aka, margin of victory, because I think that’s perhaps the best barometer of how well a team is playing in the regular season, but I wasn’t sure about some other stuff. This is still a new, evolving blog after all, and the game previews are more for your benefit than something I get a ton of joy out of doing.

What will make them more helpful/informative? You want other team player breakdowns? More stats? We have a ton of numbers. Are you all cool with eFG% or do you want regular FG%, too? Essentially, eFG% is just FG% that accounts for the fact that 3-pointers are worth more points and, thus, have a higher risk-reward potential. It’s pretty simple really. Just think of it as FG% adjusted for to account for threes. Similarly, yall cool with offensive and defensive ratings? They are good, yet admittedly imperfect, barometers of just how effective a team is on each side of the ball. Would you like to see anything else? Turnovers per game? FTs per game? Rebounding differential? Would you like me to ask more questions in this paragraph?

Ultimately, I don’t want to overload you with stats you don’t find useful or stuff that might confuse people, but we got numbers for days. Any thoughts you have on the matter or any insight into how you prepare to watch a game would be great to hear.

Comment below or shoot me an email to 8pts9secs@gmail.com to let me know about this stuff or any other thoughts you have about 8p9s thus far. We started July 15, so we just hit our four-month anniversary recently and I think we’re starting to get into the groove. But any suggestions, critiques or praise you have about the site would be very helpful, so please do reach out.