Bobcats Update: Draft Workout #3 and Charles Oakley

I just realized, I didn’t report anything after either of the pre-draft workouts.  You know why?  It’s all relative and while it matters to the team, the fans don’t have much interest in what happens there.  It’s basically a practice with 5-6 guys most of which (if any from the first three groups) will not be contacted by the Bobcats on draft night.  Hell, DJ Augustin didn’t even workout here and he was picked #9 overall by the ‘Cats.  Not saying it doesn’t matter, it does, greatly but I’m just saying we won’t get much info out of the club and if we did, it would be questionable.

Teams play games around draft time.  Just like this CBA stuff, you’d like to know what are the deal breakers, what they’re together on, what they’re having issue with but they won’t talk about it with the media.  Paul Silas made some comments after the workouts, very intriguing, very interesting about some of the guys but they’re just bumper stickers when fans want a constitution.

They worked out 6 more today, Andrew Goudelock (College of Charleston), DeAndre Liggins (Kentucky), Malcolm Lee (UCLA), Jacob Pullen (Kansas State), Mustapha Farrakhan (Virginia) and Kevin Anderson (Richmond).  Check out Bobcats.com for all the info there.  The most interesting thing to come out of today is something I speculated but didn’t post back when this whole deal went down and that’s assistant coach Charles Oakley coming out and saying that his back problems that kept him away for the final 13 games was directly related to the incident at the Aria hotel and casino.

This story is bizarre to me.  I didn’t get it back when Oakley went out.  He was on the bench, getting up to work out a player and he just collapsed.  6’9″ tough guy, fought with Shaq http://youtu.be/B10qzaH5eQk , MJ’s bodyguard on the floor, crumpled like a bad idea on a legal pad and had to be helped to the locker room by two players.  I thought something horrible must have happened to him health-wise, a heart attack, something.  It was his back, sciatic nerve.  Massive amounts of pain kept him away.  He could barely walk, let alone teach Kwame Brown how to be a big-man in the NBA.

Then this story broke where he’s suing the Aria Hotel/Casino, which is a corporate partner of the Bobcats.  The Aria is the big massive place part of the MGM/Grand group and located within the new super chic CityCenter collection on the Strip in Vegas.  I joked with Nic when I saw their name in the ring at the arena, “Wonder if MJ had some debts and put their name up there.”  It’s unclear whether or not Oakley and Jordan were there together, if Oakley was there sort of as a representative of the Bobcats or anything along those lines.  I wouldn’t speculate that much, but I did start to question the timing.  The season ends, Oakley sues, the incident took place in May 2010, he became  active with the team in late December, that horrible scene on March 19…something didn’t jive.

When the lawsuit was brought up, I guessed that the two were related, but quickly dismissed it.  Now, Oakley is saying that they are definitely related.  He alleges that he was beaten, handcuffed, embarrassed (lawyers call it defamation) and that it was a 6 on 1 gang style beatdown.  It sucks but it happened.  My issue is that it all seems sort of shady.  I’m very anti-law suits.  I mean if something happened, you have to deal with it, if something happened and it caused you to lose time at your job, yeah you have to sue.

Back-room beatings at a casino in Las Vegas (it was pool related not casino, for the record) seem to be something out of a movie.  I guess the fact he sued after the season, after he had missed time, and might not be available moving forward, that makes it more legitimate to me but it’s still questionable in my mind.  Somehow, it just doesn’t seem right and I don’t want iffy shady stuff around this basketball team.  Sorry, I just don’t.  I hate to be judgmental with such a big name and such a qualified assistant that we can actually attribute at least one player’s serious improvement (Kwame Brown) but I have a bad feeling about it.

I guess what I really think is Aria is a corporate partner/sponsor of the Bobcats.  We need all the help we can get in that regard.  Oakley is MJ’s buddy.  We all know that.  It seemed a bit like cronyism when he was hired, however he did well, everyone acknoledged it.  I just have such little tolerance for any bad press around this team, not that it’s a referendum on the team, but when a high-profile individual within that organization sues a major corporate partner, that’s an issue.

Just some fan-sided (get it?) speculation on my part.  I don’t know any more about it than what I read from Mike Cranston or on Bobcats.com.

Check those stories out so you can get the whole picture and make up your own mind, please feel free to share your thoughts below.