Hollinger's Team Forecast: Charlotte Bobcats

They had reason to. One particularly bizarre episode involved his heavy use of Jeff McInnis at point guard. Retained for the league minimum largely because the Bobcats were too cheap to spend money on a real backup (this was also why they let Brevin Knight go), McInnis nonetheless started for half the season -- after Vincent felt the urge to move Raymond Felton to shooting guard and start him at the point.

McInnis was dreadful, rarely scoring or assisting and playing virtually no defense, but somehow he stayed in the lineup until the front office mercifully stepped in and cut him just after the All-Star break. It was the second straight season in which the Cats gave huge dollops of playing time to a player who was perhaps the worst regular in the league -- Morrison held that distinction a year earlier -- and once again it was a major reason they failed to make the playoffs.

Once McInnis left, Felton was reinstated at the point and the Bobcats played much better from that point onward, even though their second-half schedule was the league's hardest. Charlotte improved from 26th to 16th in defensive efficiency after the All-Star break and had a far better point differential, despite the fact that most of the games were on the road against good teams. Unfortunately, the damage had been done and it was too late to mount a playoff charge; Charlotte finished five games out.

The McInnis episode wasn't the only head-scratcher. Vincent kept second-year forward Walter Herrmann glued to the bench, even though he had played well in a late-season run by the Cats a season earlier and the team was scrounging for quality depth. Eventually he and Primoz Brezec were dealt to Detroit for Nazr Mohammed -- and the three years and nearly $20 million left on his contract -- without so much has a draft choice coming back for Charlotte. They can't afford an extra million to keep Knight, but they can afford this?

Then there was the Gerald Wallace saga. After a midseason concussion -- his fourth -- the team got very worried about the pounding he was taking as a small-ball power forward and vowed that he'd only play small forward. They went back on their promise within a matter of days. While part of this was based the simple logic that their best lineup had Wallace at the 4, it also seemed to needlessly endanger their most talented player.

Aided by those blunders, Charlotte scuffled along in mediocrity. The Bobcats ranked 23rd in both offensive and defensive efficiency, and although they won 32 games they had the point differential of a 27-win team.

Offensively, the Cats were notable for an inability to make foul shots and a knack for rejection. Charlotte hit just 71.4 percent from the stripe, ranking 29th in the league, and what's strange about that is that they were an above-average 3-point shooting team. But key scorers like Jason Richardson (75.2), Wallace (73.1) and Emeka Okafor (57.0) couldn't seem to master the art of the wide-open 15-footer, and there weren't any high-percentage guys to offset their misses.

This was particularly damaging because the Bobcats got to the line a lot -- they had the league's 10th-best rate of free-throw attempts per field-goal attempt. If the Bobcats had been even average at the stripe, they would have scored more than one additional point per game, and likely would have had about three more wins as a result.

As for the blocks, Charlotte had 7.3 percent of its shot rejected last season, easily the highest mark in basketball (see chart). It's no secret why: Most of their players weren't good finishers around the basket, especially in the frontcourt. Okafor had 12 percent of his shots stuffed, an amazingly high total, while Wallace (9 percent), Mohammed (8 percent) and Matt Carroll (7 percent despite rarely driving) also were frequent victims.