Michael Jordan Taking a Beating Lately
By Matt Hamm
Michael Jordan has been taking a beating from all angles lately as his Charlotte Bobcats threaten the NBAs all time worst winning percentage. Jordan purchased majority stake in the Bobcats just over two years ago. The team has one playoff appearance in history and were thrown out of the playoffs in one round as an eighth seed.
Jordan then blew up the team and started over. The result, the team is awful and has very few building blocks. What they do have is cap room and a roster that spell NBA Draft Lottery for the next couple seasons. As a player, Jordan once played for a team that lost just 10 games, going 72-10 with the Bulls. As an owner, his Bobcats will fail to win 10 games this season. Shortened season or not, that’s one horrible record and very un-Jordan like.
The reality is this, the Bobcats are not in Chicago, New York or LA, they are in Charlotte North Carolina. Not exactly a media mecca. This project is going to take time and Jordan understands that. He might not be a Jerry West as an executive yet, but he knows when he looks at a team if they can win the championship or not. Which is why his decision to strip the team of it’s veteran talent and more importantly, their salaries was a solid move.
Sure, Michael could have field a decent team with Gerald Wallace, Stephen Jackson and a couple other players he showed the door on the court. That decent team would have ended up between the 8-10 seeds and had maybe another year or two in its playoff window. That’s not winning to Jordan.
With around $20 million in cap space this summer, critics will again scream that Jordan didn’t do enough to help the team. That’s because they don’t get it. Free agents, the really good one’s at least, do not want to go to a rebuilding team in Charlotte. Even if Michael Jordan would be their boss. They want to go to a large market and play with another star and win championships while increasing their commercial endorsement potential. That’s today’s NBA and Michael knows it.
The Bobcats NEED to suck and suck bad for a couple years at least. They need to stack a couple top three picks together with Kemba Walker and sneak into the playoffs as a young, up and coming team, before a big time free agent will even consider Jordan’s dollars. It can be done, the Clippers are now a good team somehow, Minnesota has a lot of talent and upside. One thing Jordan didn’t have as a player was patience. The biggest takeaway I get from all this, Jordan has grown and has patience as an owner. While many choose to bash the greatest basketball player of all time, I choose to to believe in Michael Jordan. Jordan recently came out and defended himself against some of the criticism that has been directed at him recently, here’s what he had to say.
"“This was going to be a trying year – we knew that,” Jordan said. “But did we want to chase the most Ping-Pong balls (in the May 30 draft lottery)? No way.’’“Ever since I’ve owned the team (buying control from Bob Johnson in March 2010), I think we’ve made some very positive moves on the business side. We had to make a difficult decision to turn over the (basketball) talent.“This year the talent we had didn’t respond, but that doesn’t cause me to turn my back on the plan.’’“My success will be judged differently … I’ve come to accept I’ll be scrutinized more than any other owner,’’ Jordan said. “I know now that I have to have a tough skin about these things.’’"
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