Bobcats News, In Brief

And…here…we…go!

– Tyrus Thomas got married over the weekend, it is unknown whether or not any of the Bobcats organization was invited or attended but he had former Bobcat/current free agent Garrett Temple as one of his bestmen along with Glen “Big Baby” Davis.  They were all team mates on the 2006 LSU team that made the final four.  All this according to Tyrus’s Twitter account.

–  The Bobcats are laying people off/firing them.  Sad, in this lockout and the economic “climate” that good people are leaving the organization that I follow, but such is life.  The biggest blow seems to be the one that’s least explained and the one that hits me personally.  Michael Thompson had been the Bobcats director of corporate communications since the beginning.  He reached out to “Ziggy” and I at BobcatsPlanet.com as well as posting on the forum itself under his own name.  He was as good a person as I’ve dealt with on any level, in any aspect of my life and our one connection was Bobcats.  I’ll really miss him.

Interesting that he’s been let go after two others left the organization recently, and they were more high profile because they were both on Twitter.  Mike Irr was the Bobcats strength and conditioning coach for the past few years and he left to pursue other avenues, something about a new job and then going back to school.  Hannah, or as most of us might know her as @BobcatsHannah (I don’t actually know her last name…) left and she has something in the works with another marketing person.  She had served as the Bobcats director of Social Media or something along those lines.  Cool chick, she was on top of the ticket giveaways, gave our site some shout outs on Twitter, made a hilarious video riding Boris Diaw’s Segway through the Bobcats’ offices, just all around cool.

I’m only speculating here, but those three losses, the only ones I know about because MT was one of the only people I spoke to regularly at 333 E. Trade, might be all lockout related.  Or they could just be 2 people leaving for greener pastures and one let go for other reasons all together.  Either way, things are not well over there.  While they’ll snatch up Rich Cho, thankfully, they’ll let some good people walk in this lockout is not a good sign for the franchise’s heath or the labor situation.  Their job site used to have something basically all the time, whether it was IT, marketing or ticket/suite/season ticket sales, there were always job openings with the Bobcats, but nope, not now.  Pretty sad.

–  I came across this, umm, I guess you could call it a story.  Bill Simmons takes a dump on the Bobcats, but that’s not new.  Bill Simmons wanting to move teams and marginalizing smaller markets, not really news worthy.  Another writer taking a throw-away paragraph in his story and running with it isn’t new either.  What is interesting is that the Bobcats charge about a third what the Bulls do for tickets.  I mean, account for age of the franchise, levels of success, current hype surrounding them (reigning MVP) and probably cost of living (assuming folks in the Chicago area make and spend more than those of us in the Charlotte area), I guess that’s right but are Boozer, Rose, Noah and Deng three times more fun to watch than Augustin, Jackson, Wallace…wait strike that, Augustin, Henderson, Thomas, Diaw…yeah just made the dude’s point for them.

I swore I wouldn’t read anything at “Grantland” whatever that is/means, but they have some good writers I guess, other than Simmons running it, I’m not totally averse to it.  I read that thing that Jonah Leher wrote about advanced stats and JJ Barea that everyone subsequently ripped apart, it wasn’t bad.  I guess all that Malcolm Gladwell stuff has rubbed off, just in the questioning nature of what little I’ve seen plus the look of the site looks like the covers on Gladwell’s stuff.  I don’t know.  I hate to be a party pooper, I mean it’d be an awesome gig to work there, under the ESPN umbrella without really being in the World-Wide-Leader’s Deathstar, but I just shake my head when they aren’t talking about stuff like the Yankees or Lakers.  It’s all big picture, big market, marginalize everyone and everything else.  Literally making the rest of us fly-over country.  Then sprinkle in either self-depracating humor or some cool quotes from Saved By the Bell or something and you’ve got a post that hundreds of thousands of people (Millions?) will read?  Yikes, I guess that is good writing these days, or at least popular.

–  Ricky B (Bobcats beat writer, Rick Bonnell of the Charlotte Observer) had a little post about how having DJ Augustin and Kemba Walker won’t preclude the Bobcats from going after Chris Paul in free agency, or in that limbo world when you know a guy is about to leave and they spend months trying to get a trade together.  I just think about that stuff differently I guess.  I look at it like “Man, wouldn’t it be great if Kemba developed into like a Chris Paul, but maybe not a clone but got to that level?”  I’m a realist and know DJ Augustin isn’t there, won’t be there if he hasn’t after 3 seasons.  I don’t have like legitimate thoughts of Kemba being the starting PG on Team USA in the next Olympics but I’d rather draft and develop talent than trade “assets” for one guy.  Don’t get me wrong, if Chris Paul somehow made it known (sort of like Carmello) that he wanted to be a Bobcat, I would not fault any move short of taking the roster and draft picks down to bare bones to get the guy.  I just feel more warm fuzzies about doing it on our own, in our way.

It’s like Fansided’s founder Adam Best said after the Jeter 3,000th hit “Hate the Yanks, but love Jeter. He’s a homegrown Yankee, not one of these scumbag mercenaries. Plus, just tailor-made for the Apple. Smooth.”  I’d much rather have a guy that the Bobcats drafted turn out to be a star than selling the farm to trade for a superstar.  But I guess, the devil you know is better than the devil you don’t.  As in, knowing Chris Paul is great and will win you a lot of games is better than hoping Kemba Walker will be good enough to win you some games.

That’s all for today, as always keep up with RobertoGato.com for all your Bobcats news!

Andrew Barraclough is lead writer for RobertoGato.com.  Follow him on Twitter @bigcatbobcat and @therobertogato and don’t forget to “Like” the site on Facebook.