Since Michael Jordan took over as owner of the Bobcats in the winter of 2010, things have not gone particularly well in Charlotte. The team reached the playoffs that spring for the first (and only) time in franchise history, but regressed the following year, as Larry Brown was fired and the Bobcats wound up 34-48 and out of the postseason. And last year, the bottom dropped out, with Charlotte’s 7-59 performance and .106 winning percentage, the worst in league history.
But, according to an article in ESPN The Magazine, things might be changing for the Bobcats.
For too long, the Bobcats went with a bare-bones approach to scouting on both the pro and college level, and when it came to the draft, Jordan would tend to simply choose the guy he liked most in the NCAA Tournament — thus the Bobcats chose players like Kemba Walker and Adam Morrison.
Now, though, the team has committed to a more thorough approach, with Jordan and his whims stepping aside and allowing general manager Rich Cho and his staff to make decisions.
As the article states, “In order to win basketball games, Michael Jordan has removed himself from the equation. He’s promised his front office staff that he’ll let them do their jobs without his shadow looming over their war-room marker boards. More unlikely still, he’s handed over the reins of the Bobcats to a next-generation GM, armed with high-level metrics, to do for Charlotte what he helped do for Oklahoma City — and in doing so, salvage Jordan’s flagging basketball reputation.”
Cho has already put his mark on the team, using the No. 2 overall pick to draft Kentucky swingman Michael Kidd-Gilchrist — who had up-and-down numbers during the tournament — over Thomas Robinson of Kansas.
And with Cho, the hope is that Charlotte can rebuild the way Oklahoma City has done, as a small-market team unlikely to draw major free agents. At one time, the feeling was that Jordan would be a great recruiting tool for the Bobcats, and that he could personally get big-time stars to play for his team.
That has never been the case, though. As Cho told the magazine, “In today’s world of restricted free agency, that’s much tougher to do than it used to be. It’s a system where a team that has a player isn’t going to lose that player easily. That limits the shopping list. A young guy isn’t going anywhere because a team is willing to spend on potential. So we have to find potential.”
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