I’ve been watching a lot of bad TV here lately. If there’s not a race or a Panthers game on, I’ll likely have the TV tuned to A&E. I’m talking about Storage Wars, Hoarders, Beyond Scared Straight, Intervention. It’s all about obsessive behaviors I guess. Storage Wars is the most interesting and least pathetic, based on the main characters. The sad part is that it’s like an extension of hoarding; you see the way these people have filled up a storage unit, you wonder what their houses look like. But obsessive behavior, yeah, I don’t know. The only thing you might say I obsess about are the Charlotte Bobcats.
I don’t concern myself with the whole NBA or basketball in general. I am into the NBA and basketball, but it doesn’t affect me. The impact is less. I see all of that stuff through a Bobcats tinted filter. Like when I went to the NC Pro Am over at NCCU this summer, I kept thinking to myself “Well, I better know these guys game just in case I have to talk about them if they were to be drafted by the Bobcats.” Or, “If they come to play against the Bobcats here in a couple years, I’ll know what I’ve seen from them in a gym in Durham, NC.”
So based on this Bobcats centered point of view, I have a different perspective on success and disappointment. While you think Adam Morrison or Sean May as the Bobcats most disappointing player of all time, my brain goes directly to my personal anger and disgust rather than expectations based on national or college-successes. My disappointment goes directly to the 2007-2008 season.
That season saw the least turnover of any year the Bobcats have had. There were 15 guys who suited up for the Bobcats that year. For reference, the year before there were 18. The year after, 2008-2009, Larry Brown’s first year, there were 24 different players to play for the Bobcats. You’d think the perceived stability would mean good things for the Bobcats. Au contraire.
’07-’08 was the year of Sam Vincent. It was the second year with Michael Jordan as Director of Basketball Operations and while MJ sat back and let Bernie Bickerstaff coach out that initial contract, but be assured, 2007-2008 was the year Jordan wanted to put his mark on the franchise. MJ hired his buddy Rod Higgins, who he played with as a rookie in Chicago. Next, he hired Sam Vincent, another teammate from part of ’87-’88 and all of ’88-’89. These two guys must have had some impact from their short time in Chicago. When you think about it, his “best friend” Charles Oakley was only a teammate for 3 years.
That was the set-up. The issue at hand, the crux of the whole thing was Jeff McInnis.
I have never hated a single player in the league more. He made me so mad. The Charlotte native, a product of the basketball prep-school, Oak Hill Academy and UNC, played in 54 games for the Bobcats, worse still, he started 26 games. This year, was his last in the NBA. I actually had to look up, if McInnis had similar ties to Jordan’s playing days to his General Manager and Coach. Then I checked for connections otherwise and all I can figure is the Carolina connection.
I obsess over this guy. If he hadn’t been relied on to start and for 26.1 minutes per game in those 54 he saw time in (good for 5th most minutes per that year), if someone like Jared Dudley or Walter Herrmann or Ryan Hollins had been allowed more time, could the Bobcats have actually made the playoffs, despite their coach and front office? We’ll never know.
McInnis’s points per 36 minutes was second worst on the team only to Primoz Brezec, who along with Walter Herrmann was traded for Nazr Mohammed after about 20 games. It was ugly. His player efficiency rating was third worst ahead of only Brezec and Othella Harrington’s corpse. A man who started 26 games and averaged 26 minutes per game averaged 4.5 points. He did dish out 4.4 assists per game, but this was almost half of Raymond Felton’s production that year.
You can blame the front office for not having any other options at point guard. I believe that was the year we saw Gerald Wallace, Jared Dudley and Derrick Anderson share ball handling responsibilities in a game on the West Coast road trip, basically because Raymond Felton’s ankle or something was too swollen to get in a shoe and McInnis had a hangnail. That’s the way I remember it anyway.
Jeff McInnis makes me violently angry when I think about him, that’s why I think he’s the most disappointing Charlotte Bobcats player ever. It wasn’t his fault. I mean he got out of the league the next year. He wasn’t resigned, no one else wanted him. He was forced to start and play, and play heavy minutes by a horrible coach and a front office who couldn’t swing a deal for take-out lunch, let alone a serviceable back-up point guard.
Andrew Barraclough is Senior Editor for RobertoGato.com, a Charlotte Bobcats Blog on theFansided Network. Follow him on Twitter @therobertogato and Like the site on Facebook.