FanHouse Larry Brown

I would say this is poor timing for the Bobcats, but really, is there a good time to have any of your players tear a wrist ligament? Because to me, what Raja Bell suffered this week, a partial tear in his left wrist in a preseason game against Utah, is not something that's ever good.

But the implications are more than just "lost a veteran player" for the Cats. This injury impacts them on multiple levels and springs more than one leak on the good ship Bobcats.

Plus, it probably hurts a lot, too.

Earlier this week, the NBA fined Washington's Gilbert Arenas $25,000 for refusing to speak; today, it fined Larry Brown and the Bobcats a combined $120,000 for Brown talking too much. Brown hasn't been happy with the NBA's replacement referees all preseason, and his frustration boiled over on Monday when he was ejected from Charlotte's game against the Hawks in a contest that featured 61 fouls and five total technical fouls.

In a Charlotte Observer story this morning, Bobcats coach Larry Brown tells beat writer Rick Bonnell that certain NBA rules have strangled the game's beauty. Brown most recently blew up at a replacement referee who wouldn't look him in the eye, but the coach is now putting on the pose that the game is not entertaining fans because of ... illegal defense rules?

Brown tells Bonnell that the league needs to force the game into a more "up-and-down" style, to reignite flow into the sport by allowing any type of defense and moving in the three-point line. Hey, maybe he's right. I'm not opposed to a free-flowing game. But my Hypocrisy Radar is bugging out, and you can't just ignore a Hypocrisy Radar.

An hour before the Phoenix Suns were set to play their first preseason game of the year, I asked the team's head coach, Alvin Gentry, how he felt about the prospect of replacement referees calling the games. His response?

"You think I'm touching that one?" Gentry joked. "You want to see the memo I got from the league?"

Actually, I did, but he didn't have it handy. The point was, replacement referees are a touchy subject, and complaints about them were supposed to be kept to the bare minimum by team personnel.

Apparently, Larry Brown didn't get the memo. Because he flipped out and was ejected by the replacement refs during his Bobcats' preseason game Monday night against the Atlanta Hawks.

FanHouse previews all 30 NBA teams in advance of the 2009-10 season.

The Bobcats are a playoff contender. I know it sounds weird. If you need to take a few minutes to repeat that to yourself in order to suspend belief in pursuit of finishing this column, feel free. I'll wait.

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Ready? Okay, let's begin. The Bobcats are a playoff contender, and have been since Larry Brown decided to dump his best player (Jason Richardson) to Phoenix for jack-of-all-trades-master-of-awkward-spacing Boris Diaw and older than dirt Raja Bell. When that trade occurred, there was universal questioning of what in the carolina blue blazes Larry Brown was thinking. You don't ditch your best player!

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CLEVELAND -- The Shaq show was overshadowed.

Center Shaquille O'Neal made his preseason debut for Cleveland on Tuesday night, looking good in a 92-87 win over Charlotte at Quicken Loans Arena. But most of the talk after the game centered on Delonte West's continued troubles and Bobcats coach Larry Brown's frustration with replacement officials.

A source said after the game that West will not be at Cavaliers practice Wednesday, and it's possible his absence could continue beyond that. The source said he will be in the Washington D.C. area Wednesday to address legal matters concerning his Sept. 17 arrest in Maryland after police said he was pulled over for speeding on a motorcycle while carrying two loaded handguns and a loaded shotgun in a guitar case.

Sean Deveney of The Baseline reports that Charlotte point guard Raymond Felton plans to accept the $5.5 million qualifying offer presented by the Bobcats at the start of free agency. The qualifying offer allowed Charlotte to match any offer sheet from another team signed by Felton. But Felton never found a team willing to pay what he desired. Felton will be an unrestricted free agent next July.

While this result is hardly surprising, there remains a herd of elephants in the room. There's D.J. Augustin, the lottery pick successor to Felton entering his second season. There's Larry Brown, the notoriously trigger-happy boss of the team. And there's Felton himself, who has proved if nothing else over his four seasons that he is just not very good.

Tip-Off Timer counts down the days until the first game of the 2009-10 season. On Tuesday, there are 42 days remaining.

The uniforms arrived. The sneakers showed up. So did the basketballs.

Well, there was one problem with them. They were the wrong color.

Try and hang on here, because this is a little more complicated than the naked eye would leave you to believe.

Now, the easy way to do this would be to have headlined this sucker 'Report: Allen Iverson Close To Signing With Bobcats'. Dime Magazine broke that story Saturday night, claiming a league source informed Aron Phillips that a deal is done, but can't be announced till next week.

Nice, and simple, right? Let's all start the Larry Brown-Iverson reunion discussion. And that could very well happen. But the fact is, this thing is a bit more complicated. And why wouldn't it be? It's only been going on for three months.

Emeka Okafor was introduced to the New Orleans media yesterday, and in his few minutes at the podium he managed to say all the right things, complimenting his new fans ("Yesterday was my first time actually getting to see the city, and I was surprised at how charming and how warm and receptive everybody was"), the local cuisine ("I actually had rabbit gumbo yesterday, and I wasn't even aware I liked rabbit!") and, of course, his new team ("They're already a contender, so I just hope that I can do my best and make them an even stronger contender").

What he didn't say (at least explicitly) was how happy he was to leave Charlotte, a perennial loser that's made incremental progress at best the last few years. Despite being one of the most consistent players in the game (he's one of three players to average a double-double the last five years), Okafor is one of the most overlooked and underrated big men in the game -- even by his former coaching staff.