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Will Bernie feel the squeeze in Charlotte?
by Roland Lazenby / February 14, 2006

The undrafted rookie out of West Virginia University felt he had shown the Charlotte Bobcats in training camp that he could help. Then the team’s general manager and coach, Bernie Bickerstaff, called Fischer into his office and told him the news. The Bobcats were releasing him.

Bickerstaff told the rookie he had promise (especially with his long arms, defensive instincts and dependable face-up shot), but the team had to have a third point guard. So he had to go to make room on the roster, despite the strong showing Fischer had made in camp.

Then Bickerstaff did something that not every GM does.

“He hugged me,” Fischer confided.

Okay, okay, on the list of character traits for NBA general managers/coaches “willingness to hug” doesn’t rate too high with hardcore fans eager to see a major offseason free-agent acquisition. In fact, “hugginess” may come as a negative for fans expecting to see dramatic improvement in the won-loss column for the second-year expansion team.

Still, his handling of Fischer’s difficult release is just another piece of evidence in a long career. When you go to basketball insiders, you just about always hear the same thing about Bickerstaff.

Bernie’s a good man. A smart man. An honest man. A man who knows what he’s doing.

Of course, he’s going to have to be all those things and more if he’s going to make the Bobcats winners early in their expansion life. History shows the odds are against Bickerstaff. Most expansion coaches and GMs never survive to see the fruits of their early labor.

When the team plunged into a 13-game losing streak earlier this season after a string of key injuries, the death watch for Bickerstaff’s tenure picked up a little momentum. That only stood to reason. Lose a lot in any league, and you’ll find yourself out of a job.

Still, as Red Auerbach used to point out, it doesn’t matter how good of a coach you are, if you lose your key players to injury, you’re usually not going to win.

For the record, Bickerstaff survived that losing streak (ended gloriously with a home win over the Lakers in early February) and saw his patch-work roster dig out a couple more victories over the coming days.

That surely helped ease the pressure on a franchise that has taken on the challenge of rebuilding pro basketball’s reputation in North Carolina. It’s certainly not an easy task, but not an impossible one either, as Bickerstaff and his Bobcats are showing.

Winning games always helps, but Bickerstaff opted for a conservative approach to personnel that didn’t waste money on high-priced but underperforming talent. Instead, he put together a young, athletic, inexpensive roster that has produced some nice touches, including first-round draft pick Emeka Okafor being named Rookie of the Year for 2005.

Okafor himself, however, is emblematic of the Bobcats’ problems this season because he has missed long stretches of games due to injury. Ditto for Gerald Wallace, the team’s most athletic player.

In fact, Bobcat injuries have mounted to the point that referee Luis Grillo turned to coach Bickerstaff before a recent tip-off and asked, "Do you want me to dress?"

Actually, at times it seemed the franchise has had to look for any warm body to put on the floor.

“We’ve had some challenges,” admitted Matt Carroll, a former NBA Development League MVP who has found a role coming off the Charlotte bench.

Carroll said the atmosphere is good around the team, with a good chemistry, despite the losing, and that the players seem eager to get out into the community to help sell the Bobcats to Charlotte.

“The community seems to be responding pretty well,” Carroll said. “But it’s going to take some time and work.”

Veteran pro hoops observers will recall that the Hornets opened shop in the city in 1988 in the then brand new Charlotte Coliseum and found a virtual lovefest. The Hornets began selling out the 23,000-seat Coliseum almost instantly and went on to lead the NBA in attendance for seven straight seasons, selling out 364 consecutive games. Then stars Anthony Mason and Derrick Coleman got into trouble with the law, and team owner George Shinn endured a heavily publicized civil sexual assault case. Add to that the crumbling of a successful team due to free agency defections and trades, and the Hornets’ attendance plummeted.

It was truly ugly at the end, in 2002, just before the Hornets escaped town for a new life in New Orleans – which made the challenge for the expansion Bobcats quite steep.

Media magnate Robert Johnson knew the challenge well when he paid $300 million in 2003 for franchise, more than double what an expansion team had cost nine years earlier. Johnson also knew that Carolina folks loved their hoops, so he figured it wouldn’t take too long to overcome the bad air left by Shinn and his Hornets.

Now, in the midst of their second season of full operations, Johnson and his co-investors must have some concerns that their investment has remained flat in value while Forbes estimates that the average NBA franchise has appreciated 31 percent.

First, there was the negative of playing their first season in the Hornets’ old arena, the Coliseum, a beautiful building erected in 1988 that is scheduled to be razed. The Bobcats finished with an 18-64 record and drew only 14,400 fans a game, next to last in the league.

"We were in the old place of the old team. It didn't allow us to start with the type of momentum that you get with a new building," explained Bobcats president Ed Tapscott. "It was the challenge we were handed."

Corporate sponsors turned up their noses, and that was followed by a big blow. Last June, the team was forced to shut down its regional sports channel, C-SET, due to an unworkable deal with Time Warner.

These development didn’t bode well for the second season. And the trouble might have worsened had there not been the huge success of Charlotte Bobcats Arena, the brand new $340 million arena in downtown Charlotte that seems to be a mix between a basketball gym and an IMAX theatre. It is simply the handsomest, most fan-friendly arena in the NBA (except in the upper level where sound issues remain a problem).

Nevertheless, the team’s attendance has jumped despite its spotty record. Now the Bobcats rank 20th in the league in home attendance, just over 16,200 per game on average, with better than 80 percent of the seats selling as opposed to 62 percent last year.

Still, it’s not hard to find fans on the Internet complaining that Bickerstaff has been too conservative in building the team, that he hasn’t signed enough players. It doesn’t help that one of the team’s first-round picks from last year, Sean May out of the University of North Carolina, has spent much of the year on injured reserve with a bad knee. (The other Carolina rookie, Raymond Felton, has begun to show promise as a pro guard.)

Still, a lot of pro basketball veterans in the know admire what Bickerstaff has done. They know that the key moment for him and the franchise he leads will come this offseason, when the salary cap space he has so wisely saved, will be available for use to sign free-agent talent.

Bickerstaff will ultimately be judged on the roster he puts together and how it performs for the key third season. He doesn’t have to win championships, just show nice progress.

Nice, of course, is a key word in recruiting free agents (cash is another excellent word).

And that’s when the “hugginess” factor will finally come to the fore. Yes, D’or Fischer likes and respects the man who cut him on his birthday. The rookie, now in the Development League, wouldn’t mind the opportunity to work for him again.

If one or two big-time free agents get the same kind of vibe, then Bernie’s world will be just fine.

Roland Lazenby is the author of The Show: The Inside Story Of The Spectacular Los Angeles Lakers In The Words Of Those Who Lived It, recently released by McGraw-Hill

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