We pause to celebrate gross incompetence, which in today's NBA can only mean the Carolina Bobcats.
This is a bad team, painful to watch, with little talent and little hope for the future. They could, however, make the worst kind of history if they do not win a game before the season concludes.
The Bobcats are 7-52 and have lost 16 consecutive games. Included in that run of futility was a 28-point loss to the league's second-worst team, the Washington Wizards, and a home loss to a Celtics team who left their three key veterans - Kevin Garnett, Ray Allen and Paul Pierce - back in Boston yet still won by 12.
The best thing that can be said about Charlotte's season is that it ends on April 26. But if the Bobcats do not win one of their final seven games, a 7-59 record would leave them with a lower winning percentage (10.6) than the 1972/73 Philadelphia 76ers (11.0), who are usually considered the worst team in NBA history.
The Bobcats are bad from top to bottom, saddled with veterans on the back side of modest careers and young players who have yet to make an impression.
Their best hope would be to capture the No 1 pick in this year's draft lottery, although there may not be a real game-changer out there. The Bobcats are desperate for a top-quality player.
They are shaping up as the worst thing ever to happen to Michael Jordan, the owner. The greatest player of all-time is presiding over perhaps the sorriest team ever assembled. Put that on a shoe.
