[Bobcats of yesteryear. Credit: TAI's Adam McGinnis]

Whether or not the Wizards win on Saturday night—and that’s TBD—something unusual already happened at Verizon Center: The Charlotte Bobcats came to town with a winning record.

How rare is that?

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Here to provide the DC Council Opening Statements for Washington’s sixth game of the season against the Bobcats in Charlotte are TAI’s Kyle Weidie (@Truth_About_It) and guest Spencer Percy (@QCsportscrave), who writes about the Bobcats for the TrueHoop blog Queen City Hoops. John Converse Townsend (@JohnCTownsend) also drops in with a game prediction.

Wizards Starters (0-5):

A.J. Price, Bradley Beal, Trevor Ariza, Trevor Booker, Emeka Okafor

Bobcats Starters (2-3):

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[Editor's Note: This is Andrew Abramson's Truth About It.net debut. Andrew has been around basketball his entire life — he's a Wizards fan, having grown up in Alexandria, Va. — and has experience working in the basketball industry. Andrew will provide insights on the business side of the NBA as well as salary cap analysis, which you'll get a taste of below. You can follow him on Twitter at @AndrewA91. —John T.] 

When the Portland Trail Blazers drafted seven-foot center Sam Bowie with the second overall pick in the 1984 NBA Draft, they were filling a position of need. Sure, there was a clearly more talented shooting guard still available who was ready and waiting to become a Blazer, but Portland already had All-Star, Jim Paxson, and a young Clyde Drexler returning at that position.

Ouch.

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There are no guarantees in Bradley Beal the player. There’s also no denying that Beal is a top three — if not top one — NBA Draft target of the Washington Wizards.

So, as reports surface that the Cleveland Cavaliers have theirs sights set on trading up to steal Beal, and that their presumed trading partner, the Charlotte Bobcats, have a new coach going on record saying that trading down from the No. 2 pick “makes a lot of sense,” Wizards fans, at least those in favor of Beal, are starting to hit the panic button.

Even today, a local sportscaster for Cleveland’s Fox station, John Telich, is tweeting: “Hearing Cavs /Bobcats talking. ‪#Cavs‬ want #2 pick..would give #4 #24 #34 ‪#NBADraft‬.”

So, despite reports from ESPN’s Chad Ford that the Cavaliers are hesitant to give up the 24th pick (and that the Wizards themselves may be willing to give up the 32nd pick to ensure their selection of Beal), the latest signs point to Beal being Cleveland’s for the taking. How bad do they want him playing next to Kyrie Irving?

Yesterday on TAI we wondered which player should be the Wizards’ Plan B if Beal is off the board when they pick. Michael Kidd-Gilchrist’s 36.7-percent of the vote barely eked out the 32.3-percent who preferred Harrison Barnes. (BTW, if Washington’s Chris Singleton were drafting for the Wizards, he’d take Barnes over Beal, with Kidd-Gilchrist off the board at No. 2. More on that in the “If I were the general manager…” feature by ESPN The Magazine that asked NBA players to mock draft for their respective teams. Beal went 19th to the Orlando Magic, selected by J.J. Redick, if you must know.)

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Chris Jackson, later Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf, was the third overall pick in 1990. Where will the Washington Wizards go with the No. 3 overall pick in 2012?

Over the weekend reports surfaced from news outlets in both North Carolina (The Charlotte Observer) and Ohio (The News-Herald) that the Cleveland Cavaliers, who hold the fourth overall pick in Thursday’s NBA Draft, will trade up with the Charlotte Bobcats, who own the second overall pick. Charlotte would reportedly get the 24th pick from the Cleveland as part of the deal. Such a move by Michael Jordan’s Bobcats could screw the draft hopes of the Washington Wizards.

Coming off last week’s trade for Emeka Okafor and Trevor Ariza, Washington’s camp may have revealed a preference for Bradley Beal out of the University of Florida, leading their old nemesis, the Cavs (who are targeting Beal themselves), to believe that they’ll have to sacrifice an asset to get their man. And there’s nothing the Wizards can really do about it other than settle for what’s left.

People, myself included, might make something out of Washington’s draft preference — a pick that, if chosen wrongly, could significantly setback rebuilding — resting in the hands of former Wizard Jordan, but it would be a smart move by the Bobcats. Charlotte GM Rich Cho, as well as the team’s vice chairman, Curtis Polk — who used to be an agent for David Falk, a former rival of the Washington franchise and Abe Pollin — are smart people. They know that Charlotte needs just about everything, and if this means trading down to settle for two out of three prospects being available between North Carolina’s Harrison Barnes, Kentucky’s Michael Kidd-Gilchrist, and Kansas’ Thomas Robinson (along with getting the 24th pick, which comes with more value to a team like Charlotte), then the move is a no-brainer. If Wizards fans want to be irked at someone screwing them, it should be directed toward Cleveland owner Dan Gilbert and not necessarily Jordan. Both are easy targets in any case.

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[Editor's Note: This is J.D. Jackson's first post for Truth About It.net. J.D. is 29 and lives in Baltimore. He's previously written for Most Valuable Network and All-Baseball.com and has hosted podcasts on 360thepitch. Though he's been a casual NBA fan for most of his life, he's become a more serious fan of the game and the Wizards. You can follow him @jdjackson on Twitter. Also note: this post was written before today's trade between the Wizards and the Hornets with Washington sending Rashard Lewis and their 2012 46th pick to New Orleans in exchange for Emeka Okafor and Trevor Ariza. —Kyle W.] 

When draft day rolls around in about a week, the Wizards aren’t expected to make any crazy moves at the No. 3 pick. It will likely be a choice between Bradley Beal and Michael Kidd-Gilchrist (possibly depending on what those crazy, crazy Bobcats decide to do).

It’s almost a denouement to the day. Having a new, highly-touted player will be exciting, for certain. But like last year when everything on the planet pointed to the Wizards taking Jan Vesely, there’s just not going to be much surprise with the Wizards on the clock. Not that it’s a bad thing, necessarily, but at least there was some intrigue with their second selection at No. 18. It ended up being Chris Singleton, but there were about 50 different directions that the team could’ve gone, and it was a riveting few minutes on the clock.

So, if you’re a Wizards fan and you’re looking for that little bit of drama, where will you get it? The Wizards own two second round picks (32 and 46 from Dallas) in what is expected to be a pretty deep draft. Last year’s draft class was, by most accounts, a significantly leaner class. And yet, between the countless trades that happened at the back end of draft day, what was lost is just how much of an impact the players taken in the second round had for their respective teams last season. Of the 30 players taken in the 2011 NBA Draft’s second round, only eight did not log any minutes last season. That number was 12 in 2010. In fact, in the lockout-shortened season, 2011 second rounders played a total of 10,048 minutes. In 2010, second rounders in their rookie seasons played a total of 4,681 minutes — 2,541 of those minutes were logged by Landry Fields. You’d expect the lack of training camps after the lockout to hurt rookies the most, but it seemed to have the opposite effect. Most of the second rounders who didn’t log minutes from the 2011 class were stashed overseas as well, leaving only Jon Diebler (Trailblazers, No. 51; signed to play in Greece last August) and Chukwudiebere Maduabum (Lakers, No. 56; drafted from the D-League and traded to Denver) as the players who inexcusably failed to show up. Kyle Singler (Pistons, No. 33), the third non-Euro to not log any minutes last season, actually wound up overseas himself. He split time between CB Lucentum Alicante and Real Madrid and may be headed to Detroit soon.

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John Wall contemplates…
Who the Wizards should take.

Anthony Davis would have been nice, very nice. But the world is not always nice. Sure, the Wizards technically “slipped” one spot to third in Wednesday night’s NBA Draft Lottery. But, looking at the odds going in — a 19.9-percent chance to land the first pick, an 18.8-percent chance to land the second pick, a 17.1-percent chance at third, and a whopping 31.9-percent chance to slip to fourth — you can live with the results. I woke up this morning feeling more than content with either Bradley Beal or Michael Kidd-Gilchrist — almost anxious for either/or to happen already.

But, there could be other options. Thomas Robinson anyone? OR… what about a trade?

Twitter is for excitement and overreaction, sometimes. So, in the hype, a conversation between myself and user @UGotTheseIn10 quickly advanced in the direction of sending the third pick to the Portland Trailblazers for Nicolas Batum and the 11th pick (assuming UConn’s Jeremy Lamb would be available at 11) — the idea of jettisoning Andray Blatche to Portland as part of the deal even surfaced. Of course, the unison of such thoughts heavily weighted with Wizards sensibilities means the scenario would most certainly be too good to be true.

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