Gerald Wallace and the Bobcats' special need

I'm not an expert on the NBA. You probably know by now that I'm not an expert on ANYTHING -- the old line goes, journalists don't know anything, they just know how to find out.

If you want expertise on the Gerald Wallace trade you should to go to Rick Bonnell or Tom Sorensen or Scott Fowler, or pretty much anybody else. I'm just a casual Bobcats fan -- I watch on TV every once in a while and go to one or two games a year. So understand that going in.

Here are a few things about the Bobcats that seem obvious to me.

1. They weren't going anywhere this year. Even with Wallace they were 25-32, a game and a half out of the playoffs. Even if they did make the playoffs they'd get killed by Boston or Miami or Orlando.

2. Not many people were coming to the games anyway. Against Toronto the other night, scads of seats in the lower bowl were empty. People who want to come see the Lakers or Celtics are going to come regardless of the Bobcats' roster. I'm not sure how many people bought tickets because Gerald Wallace played here.

(I should stop here and say that Wallace was my favorite Bobcat -- he was good at a dozen different little things and always hustled. I'm just talking about him as a ticket draw.)

3. The Bobcats need stars -- not just to draw fans, but to win titles. My buddy Joe talked about this the other day in the context of Carmelo Anthony going to the Knicks. It's been more than 30 years since a team won an NBA title without one or two of the top players in the league. Wallace was one of our two best players. Stephen Jackson is the other. I'm not sure either one would start for any of the six or seven best teams in the league. It's not 100% clear that Wallace is even going to start for Portland, which is 32-25 and seventh in the West.

4. No top free agents are going to come here. This might be the hardest to swallow for the diehard Bobcats fan, who dreams of seeing Dwight Howard or Chris Paul in the home team's uniform. But the Bobcats play in one of the smallest markets in the NBA, with one of the quietest home crowds, and no history of winning. Even a maximum contract wouldn't lure a truly great player here.

Those four points naturally lead to a fifth: The only chance the Bobcats have is to build through the draft. That's why the Wallace deal makes sense -- it brings two first-round picks in return. No question the Bobcats will be worse in the short term. But the absolute ceiling of the current team -- even with Wallace -- was winning a game or two in the first round of the playoffs.
That team wasn't worth saving.

But I think there's more to it than just taking the best players in the draft. The Bobcats have to be looking for a certain kind of player -- someone with the talent to be a star, but the personality to be happy in Charlotte.

Their role model should be the Utah Jazz. The Jazz have been a relevant NBA team for the last 25 years because of two draft picks: John Stockton and Karl Malone. Neither was a high pick -- Stockton went 16th in 1984, Malone went 13th in '85. But together they created one of the greatest two-man combos in NBA history.

They became stars who commanded huge salaries and could have played anywhere they wanted. But at the core, both were small-town guys -- Malone played college ball at Louisiana Tech, Stockton at Gonzaga. They knew they had a good thing in Salt Lake City. The Jazz kept their core, and filled in around them with role players. That Jazz team never won a title -- thank the Bobcats' owner for that -- but they went to the Finals twice, and Utah has kept winning even after Stockton and Malone retired.

San Antonio took Tim Duncan -- from Wake Forest, via the Virgin Islands -- with the first pick in 1997. He was immediately a star and could have gone anywhere. He stayed and the Spurs have won four titles.

That's why the worst moment in Bobcats history was taking Adam Morrison with the third pick in 2006. He was the right kind of guy, I think -- a quiet kid from Gonzaga (Stockton's old school). Only problem was, he couldn't play. A team like the Bobcats can't afford for any first-round pick to flame out.

The team has drafted better recently -- D.J. Augustin is a solid NBA starter, and with Wallace gone, we're about to find out if Gerald Henderson is, too. Michael Jordan, as owner of the Bobcats, has so far been all about saving money -- the Nazr Mohammed deal shows that. But it makes sense for now. Who's he going to spend it on? A couple more players who will get the Bobcats from average to decent? The big free agents who don't stay home are going to Miami or Boston or L.A. -- places with warm weather or free-spending owners or lots of history.

But you can still win in the NBA from the bottom up. The Bobcats' only chance is to keep adding picks, and keep drafting the right kind of guys, and hope. It seems like a mess right now. But there's a pony in there somewhere. And the Bobcats have to find it.