Here’s a dirty little secret - prior to the start of the season, I really thought the Bobcats had a great chance of making the playoffs in the east. I thought that Emeka Okafor would be a major force in the middle, that Adam Morrison would be a big-time contributor on an offense that typically sputtered last year, and I thought that Sean May would be a solid bench player and give them some real muscle night in and night out.

All three of those things have happened, yet the Bobcats are a miserable 5-12 and dead last in the Eastern Conference!  We all know where a lot of the blame is going to go, and we’ll get to Gerald Wallace in a bit.  But in a more macro-sense, what’s going on here?  If I’m Michael Jordan, I’ve got to be thinking about how effective Bernie Bickerstaff really is here.  Sure he’s got a young team, but he’s got a lot of players with great tools and he should be winning more than he is.  That said, imagine Greg Oden and Vince Carter on this team 12 months from now.  Is that a title condender or what? A starting five of Knight/Felton/Carter/Okafor/Oden, with Morrison, May, and Gerald Wallace coming off the bench?  Good lord, that team would win the East by a mile.

But this is still 2006, and with no Vinsanity or Odenanity, we’ll have to settle for reality:

Emeka Okafor: Full disclosure - I’m an Okafor owner.  That said, I amtotally sold on him as a solid C1 over the rest of the year.  He’s no longer the only option on offense as Morrison, Felton and even Sean May are all contributing plenty, whereas while Okafor was healthy last year he was pretty much all there was on offense for the Cats.  So I think his FG% will continue to hang close to 50%, though it may drop a bit.  His blocks will also probably come down but he can certainly be a 2.5 bpg kinda guy.  His FT%, meanwhile, should end up somewhere in the low-mid 60’s, as there’s no reason to think he’ll continue to shoot as bad as he has over the first month.  There are probably a few Okafor owners who will be itching to sell on Okafor and if I could get him for a late third-round value I’d probably do it.  VERDICT: BUY.

Gerald Wallace:  Well this has certainly been a major dissapointment, huh? We predicted a fall to Earth for crash here at FBB but even we didn’t see this coming.  Despite seeing his usual minutes, his number are down significantly across the board.  He’s settling for more jumpers, as evidenced by his poor FG%, and his blocks - once his major strength - have just fallen completely off the board.  People are attributing this to his having to play more on the wing now, but he played on the wing 2 years ago and had 1.3 blocks, so I’m not buying that theory.  I think the real problem for Wallace is that he’s a little freaked out from his concussion and might be holding back a bit rather that going full-speed all the time.  I mean, injuries are nothing new to this guy, and maybe he’s decided that playing a little slower and staying healthy is the best way to go.  Who knows if he’ll ever get it back, but for now if I could get a solid starter for Wallace,
I’d probably do it.  VERDICT: SELL.

Raymond Felton: Again, full disclosure - I’m a Felton owner as well.  So if you want to call me a homer for putting “buy” verdicts on the two guys that I’ve got on my squad, so be it; but first hear me out.  Felton has a couple of things going in his favor right now.  First, he’s slightly underperforming.  His per-minute averages are down across the board, and that’s not even accounting for the fact that he steadily improved all of last year.  Second, even with his struggles, he’s still seeing 35 mpg.  Third, if there’s one guy who screams “trade bait at the deadline,” it’s Brevin Knight, meaning more minutes at the 1 for Felton.  Finally, his back problems mean tha a lot of owners will want to cut bait but I’m holding out hope (for no real justified reason) that he’ll be OK.  Felton can likely be had at a slight discount (say, 6th round value) and I think I would buy at that price.

Adam Morrison: To paraphrase Dennis Green, he is what we thought he would be!  Meaning, an asset in points and threes and little else.  Two things that Morrison has going for him:  One, he is bound to improve from the stripe.  There’s nothing different about that shot in the pros and he shot north of 75% each of the last 2 years of school.  He’ll improve from his 67% clip over the course of the year.  Two, he’s already putting up nice numbers and his career isn’t even 20 games old!  He’s got plenty of room to improve, particularly from a FG% standpoint, and I’d expect Morrison to be in the top 75 on the player rater come the end of the year.  If you drafted him, congratulations.  VERDICT: HOLD.

Brevin Knight:  Call it a hunch, but when a 31 year old guy starts playing career-best ball, it usually doesn’t last.  Knight is always (and rightly so) considered an under-rated fantasy asset, because it’s easy to look past his incredible steals and assists numbers and see a guy who doesn’t score much and posts goose eggs from three point land.  He is typically thought of as a decent PG3 where really he’s a PG2.  Now, people may be considering hima poor PG1 when really he’s still that same PG2, he’s just off to a hot start.  Between his age, his sure-to-come-down percentages and the likelyhood that he’ll be dealt and see a cut in minutes, now is a great time to sell on Brevin.  VERDICT: SELL.

Sean May: Other than Okafor, May has been the most beneficial player of the year for the Cats, according to 82games.com, and if Gerald Wallace continues to struggle and/or gets hurt, May would be in line for a nice uptick in minutes.  He’s been playing great ball all year and at 30 mpg would have value as a Utility guy.  He’s a fine guy to stash on your bench if you’ve got an extra spot.  VERDICT: BUY.

Primoz Brezec: If “looking like you’re about to collapse even though you just came in to the game” was a fantasy stat, Brezec would be a mid-round value.  Unfortunately, the reality is that there are other guys that are simply contributing more for Charlotte than Primoz.  He had one game where he saw 35 minutes but other than that he’s struggled to really get on the court, and until that changes you can probably leave him on your waiver wire.  VERDICT: HOLD.