Vincent Out…Brown In? by Kyle Butler

The Charlotte Bobcats fired coach Sam Vincent today after just one season as the team’s head coach. At the time of my last post, I assumed that Vincent would be around for next year. With each day that passed following the end of the regular season and no news out of Charlotte, it seemed likely that Vincent would get one more shot at jumpstarting this franchise that remains stuck in neutral. And he would have stayed on as the coach…except for this little story that came over the wire Thursday.

Larry Brown resigns as Philadelphia 76ers executive VP, expresses interest in returning to coaching.

It is no coincidence that barely 24 hours after Brown quit his job with the Sixers, Vincent found himself on the unemployment line. If Brown is not the next coach of the Bobcats, it will be a bigger upset than App St beating Michigan or Davidson taking out Georgetown. Brown has a long history with the state, playing his college ball at UNC and coaching the Carolina Cougars of the old ABA. He also has ties with Michael Jordan through the UNC connection, and MJ is almost certainly looking for a big name coach after Vincent, a coach with zero experience, couldn’t get it done in Charlotte.

I thought Brown should have been hired last year. Sure, he’s a carpetbagger. At times, it seems like he changes jobs every 3 days. But you can’t deny the man’s track record. Brown has a long history of success in the college and professional ranks, and while he couldn’t get it done with the New York Knicks, I would point out that no mortal being could have fixed that disaster of a team in Madison Square Garden.

If Brown is the next coach of the Bobcats, there will still be issues. He’ll probably only stick around for 2 or 3 years at the most. But in that time, he will almost certainly bring something new to Charlotte, something that hasn’t been seen in quite some time.

A playoff berth.

 

Even In Pathetic East, Bobcats Fall Short by Kyle Butler

The neverending odyssey known as the NBA Playoffs kicked off this past weekend. In a scene that is becoming all too familiar, the Charlotte Bobcats are nowhere in sight. Despite playing in a pathetic Eastern Conference, Charlotte’s season ended in disappointing fashion once again. There was lots of excitement surrounding this year’s team. A new coach in Sam Vincent. A new star guard in Jason Richardson, and a solid supporting cast. Yet the Bobcats (32-50) actually finished with one less win than they’d had the year before. What the heck happened? A lot of factors, but mainly these three…

1- Injuries. The Bobcats dealt with these all season. Sean May and Adam Morrison were done before the year even started! Gerald Wallace missed 20 games with various ailments, including his 4^th concussion in 4 seasons. While the team almost certainly would be better with those three on the court instead of the trainer’s table, the Bobcats still had plenty of talent to make a playoff run. Enter Reason #2.

2- Coaching Inexperience. Sam Vincent may end up being a good coach, but he clearly wasn’t ready for the task this season. Far too often, the Bobcats seemed unmotivated, displaying no energy or confidence. These problems existed under Bernie Bickerstaff as well, but a young, energetic coach figured to turn the mindset around. It didn’t happen. Vincent also made the bizarre choice to shuffle Raymond Felton between PG and SG. That would be ok, except Felton is a poor outside shooter, and the team already has a great SG in Richardson. Keeping Felton at PG where he’s effective makes sense, but not to Vincent for some reason.

3- Where’s the Height? Blame for this can rest squarely on the shoulders of Michael Jordan. The Bobcats were already thin inside before May was lost for the year. But MJ and the Bobcats waited far too long to address the team’s height issues. Nazr Mohammed was finally acquired, but with the injury history of May and Emeka Okafor well documented, Jordan should have anticipated, and fixed this problem in the offseason. The help was far too little, and came far too late to help the Bobcats.

It’s hard to say what the future holds in Charlotte. Okafor is demanding a huge deal. Richardson’s contract takes up a huge chunk of cap space. Another concussion could be the end of Wallace. MJ did make a great move in acquiring J-Rich last summer, and he’ll need to make a few more like it this offseason. Otherwise, the 2008-09 season will end just like the past 4…with Charlotte sitting at home for the ridiculously long NBA Playoffs.

 

UNCG Big Man Puts On A Big Show by Kyle Butler

The Southern Conference saw firsthand over the past four seasons what kind of player UNCG’s Kyle Hines was. Now, the rest of the country might not be far behind. Hines put on a dazzling display at the Portsmouth Invitational Tournament this past weekend, and though his team lost in the title game, one could argue that the former Spartan was the big winner of the event.

The 6′6 PF averaged a shade over 17 ppg at the PIT. That’s great, but even better was that Hines did so with tremendous efficiency. Hines shot a stellar 78% from the field during the event, the highest FG percentage in the tournament’s 56 year history. That history of the PIT includes a few players you might have heard of. Folks like Rick Barry, Dave Cowens, John Stockton, Dennis Rodman, and Scottie Pippen. Those guys went on to be future all-stars and hall of famers, but none of them can say they shot a higher percentage than Mr. Hines.

The tournament pits teams made up of college seniors who are looking to showcase their talents in front of scouts and GM’s from every NBA team. He may not be listed on most NBA mock draft boards, but without question, Hines gave himself a boost with his play this weekend. The all-time leading scorer in Spartan basketball history gets another chance to show off his skills later this month. Hines is slated to participate with a number of ACC players in a barnstorming tour around the state. While he may not be as well-known as some of the guys he’ll be on the court with, don’t be surprised if Hines ends up being the best player on the floor in those games as well. Expecting otherwise would be doing something Hines rarely does on the court…missing the mark.

The Best Final Four Ever? by Kyle Butler

I fill out a lot of brackets. There’s one for the competition against my old high school buddies. One for CBS Sportsline, and Sports Illustrated. Yahoo lets me fill out 5 more, and ESPN.com has a maximum of 10. Needless to say, I can come up with all sorts of combinations for my final four. The most obvious grouping would be to pick all four #1 seeds…except that’s never happened before. No chance of that, right? So in every single bracket I filled out, not once did I have UNC, Memphis, Kansas, and UCLA all advancing to San Antonio.

Needless to say, I will not be winning any pools this year. For the first time since the field expanded to 64 teams, all four #1 seeds survived their respective regions. What does this mean? Quite possibly, the greatest final four of all time, at least from an overall record standpoint. UCLA and Kansas both went 35-3 this year. That’s a 92% winning percentage. It’s also the worst mark among the four participants. The four teams combined have a ridiculous overall record of 143-9!

With such little disparity between the four schools, predicting who will ride out of San Antonio with the title is a tough call. And with my predictions to this point falling somewhere between sad and pathetic, let’s instead point out what each team has to do if they want to celebrate Monday night.

North Carolina: The Tarheels are probably the best team here. They have the player of the year in Tyler Hansbrough, great guards in Wayne Ellington and Ty Lawson, and the best sixth man in the country in Danny Green. The key guy? None of them. Deon Thompson is the X-Factor. In the three ACC tournament games, tough, hard fought wins for the Tarheels, Thompson scored a total of 8 points. The NCAA tournament has been a different story. Thompson has scored 47 points in the last four games, and not surprisingly, UNC has rolled in three of them. Two big nights from the Tarheel sophomore will go a long way towards a title for North Carolina.

Kansas: The big key for the Jayhawks is head coach Bill Self. Most of the media’s attention is focused on the Jayhawk head man. He’s the only coach here who hasn’t been to the Final Four before, he’s facing the coach who he replaced at Kansas, and his name has been prominently mentioned as a candidate for the Oklahoma State job. Self needs to block out all these distractions and keep his team focused on the task at hand. It takes a nearly perfect game to beat UNC, and the Jayhawks were far from perfect against Davidson on Sunday.

Memphis: This is an easy one. Free Throws, Free Throws, Free Throws. Coach John Calipari insists that his Tigers make them when they need to, and so far, he’s been right. Success at the line is one thing in the early rounds. Making critical foul shots in the Final Four is a horse of a different color. Even solid shooting teams can struggle at the line in this spotlight (see Kansas v. Syracuse, 2003) The Tigers aren’t a solid shooting team, and aren’t likely to blow anyone out in San Antonio, so foul shots will be critical.

UCLA: The Bruins get a whole lotta Love, but that will only get them so far. Yes, super freshman Kevin Love is a great player, but UCLA is going to need at least two other guys to step up. This didn’t happen in any of the first 3 rounds, but Darren Collison and Russell Westbrook came up big against Xavier. UCLA has the experience factor on their side in this, their 3rd straight trip to the Final Four. If Collison and Westbrook give Love the support he needs, it’s hard to envision a team other than UCLA cutting down the nets.

Whatever the outcome, you know it’s going to be exciting. Enjoy this year’s Final Four, potentially the best we’ve seen in quite some time.