For Five Days in June, the Charlotte Bobcats Can Become Relevant

Every team experiences its time in the sun. For the New York Yankees, it started a hundred years ago and it’s still going. Ditto for the Montreal Canadiens and Manchester United.

For some teams, you have to fight and claw your way below the solar system’s biggest body. The New Orleans Saints had to survive a hurricane to get noticed. Brett Butler propped the Kansas City Royals up, and now they’re dead again.

For the Charlotte Bobcats, this NBA Draft is working out just the way they need. Everyone wants what they got, which is a No. 2 overall pick. They apparently have five offers for the pick, which they say aren’t good enough yet. Even if they were, isn’t that just the perfect answer? Fame is fleeting, and the Bobcats are ripping a page out of the playbook of every nothing franchise, which is to hold all the cards and pretend you have a Royal Flush, even if you’re holding two 2′s, a Queen, a 5, and a 10.

You don’t even have to hear what Bobcats general manager Rich Cho said to know what he said.

“We haven’t received a good enough package… we value our pick very high… we’re not going to sell our future…”

Something like that.

Brian Burke’s a pro at this, or at least he thinks he is. Nobody overvalues his own underwhelming players like Burke, which is sick on some way because it was Burke who traded for them or signed them.

So, look at Charlotte. ESPN has them on the front page, the NBA Draft will be focused on them, and Michael Jordan will push off Bryon Russell to get to the front of the podium. It’s easy to forget that they just finished 2012 with the worst single-season winning percentage of all-time – a meager .106. Wow, congrats, guys. Do you know how bad that record is? It’s so bad that their 23-game losing streak seems impressive when put next to it.

Of course, now we’re at the Draft, and the Bobcats are cool. They even have new uniforms, which aren’t great, but they look gorgeous compared to what they were just wearing. They haven’t had this much swag going on since the 1990′s and Starter was making their jackets, hats, and garbage bins.

Then again, that was when they were the Hornets.

Go, Charlotte! Go!