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NBA teams play 82 games, so not every one can be a referendum. Was Charlotte's domination of Atlanta last week indicative of the quality of basketball it offers or was Tuesday's performance against Orlando?
The Magic ran to a 22-point second-quarter lead and handled Charlotte 93-81. If the Bobcats had a flaw, Orlando exposed it. And the Bobcats have flaws.
Although they have three players 7 feet or taller, only Gerald Wallace can or will post up. And Wallace, 6-7, doesn't post up often.
DeSagana Diop, 7-0, appears to have been born without instincts.
Nazr Mohammed, 6-10, hit some baskets in the lane.
Starting center Tyson Chandler's line sounds like something Duke fans would yell at a visiting player: "Five fouls, two points." But it would be funny when they said it.
Chandler was matched against Orlando big man Dwight Howard. Chandler picked up his first foul less than three minutes into the game and his second 33 seconds later. He picked up two more in a 27-second span in the third quarter.
I ask Larry Brown if all the fouls are legitimate.
"Come on, man," he says.
Brown and the team were fined $60,000 apiece for his preseason diatribe against the replacement referees. He apparently did not want to risk another by criticizing the real ones.
The Bobcats are not terrible. They aren't good. When all the parts work, when the guards penetrate and the passes are deft and the jump shots go in, they're entertaining and effective, as their 20-point victory against Atlanta attests.
And when all the parts don't work ...
They shot only 14 free-throws Tuesday, same as the 3-point loving Magic.
"We've got to figure out how we can get some respect," Brown says.
You could post up and penetrate. You could attack. You could snap the ball around until it lands in the hands of the player with the open shot. You could watch the fans intimidate the officials and revel in the benefits.
But that would have been tough at Time Warner Cable Arena on Tuesday. On the box score NBA teams distribute are two numbers on top of each other. The first is the length of the game and the second is attendance.
The rain-soaked crowd was so sparse I thought 2:02, the length of the game, was the attendance.
The Bobcats turned tough in the third quarter. Raymond Felton hit four of five from the field, scored 12 points and added two assists and a steal.
"That's how we have to play every quarter," Felton says.
They ran, they challenged and they went to the basket as if the shot-blocking Howard wasn't there. They cut the Magic lead to six.
But after scoring 30 points in the third, they scored only 10 in the fourth. They made four baskets and missed all seven 3-pointers, and Chandler picked up another foul.
Seven games into the season, what's it mean?
It means the Bobcats fall 31/2 games behind the Boston Celtics but lead the Carolina Panthers by half a game.
