With Davis, Bobcats Could Change Overnight

If Charlotte Bobcats draft Kentucky’s Anthony Davis, things could change overnight

By Tom Sorensen
tsorensen@charlotteobserver.com
Posted: Monday, Apr. 23, 2012

I’m writing this before Charlotte’s NBA game Monday night against Washington. So if the Bobcats upset the Wizards, congratulations. And if they didn’t, this isn’t the night that matters.

The night that matters is May 30. The evening will be the most important in the team’s eight-year history.

Across the river from Manhattan, in the NBA’s Secaucus, N.J., studios, the league will place 14 pingpong balls in a drum. If the balls roll right, Charlotte will receive the No. 1 pick in June’s NBA draft.

That pick will be 6-foot-10 Anthony Davis, the former Kentucky star. Davis is Manhattan. Compared to him, every other player is New Jersey.

The Bobcats have only a 25 percent chance of winning the pick. We like to say that people, and teams, make their own luck. We lie. Good fortune is underestimated in the NBA and every other sport. San Antonio did a great job of packing talent around Tim Duncan, Chicago around Derrick Rose. But without Duncan and without Rose, the Spurs and Bulls are merely a collection of nice players.

I wrote on Twitter last week that Davis will be as transcendent a basketball player as Panthers quarterbackCam Newton is a football player. Readers begged to differ, although they didn’t beg.

There are differences, of course. Newton was almost 22 when the Panthers used the No. 1 pick to take him. Davis will be 19 when an NBA team uses the No. 1 pick to take him.

Davis won’t have Newton’s immediate impact at the gate or in the standings, at least not if he plays in Charlotte. Although the Panthers were almost as bad in 2010 as the Bobcats are this season, the Panthers had several good parts. The Bobcats have potentially good parts.

Also, Charlotte – like almost every city – cares much more about the NFL than the NBA. If I want the best-read blog at this newspaper, all I have to write is: “Carolina Panther quarterback Cam Newton lives in a building on a street,” and I’m golden.

Some of my Twitter critics believe that nobody unproven ought to be compared to St. Cam.

But a year ago many of Newton’s (now) biggest fans were ripping me for writing that the Panthers should draft the unproven quarterback from the simplistic college offense.

The NBA has a draft lottery because of players such as Davis. To win him, teams will find a way to lose games.

Davis is a defensive phenomenon. He blocks shots not into the third row to impress the cameras but into the hands of teammates to impress everybody who knows the game.

Is Dwight Howard going to knock Davis around? Of course he will. Davis has to add weight and the strength that will come with it.

But Davis will evolve. A guard until a late growth spurt, he can shoot from the outside, handle the ball and go to the basket.

He will be an annual all-star, and if Charlotte is fortunate enough to take him, he will transform this team.

The Bobcats have never had a major star. Gerald Wallace, a thrilling player, was good, and so was Stephen Jackson. But they couldn’t lift the team. Even the Charlotte Hornets, at their best, did not have a player such as Davis – not Larry Johnson and not Alonzo Mourning.

You want to know how good Davis will be?

This is how good.

If the Bobcats get him, owner Michael Jordan will again become a courtside regular at his team’s home games.

Read more here: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2012/04/23/3193429/with-davis-as-pick-bobcats-could.html#storylink=cpy