ERR JORDAN
Mike will sell Bobcats if he can’t build winner
MICHAEL JORDAN apparently has an exit strategy to leave the Bobcats, which will undoubtedly make Charlotte fans take to the streets for a mass celebration, provided His Airness keeps his word. Nearing the end of another lost season as Bobcats owner, Jordan recently told his GM, Rich Cho, to start planning for a rebuilding campaign. He also dropped a bombshell, telling Cho and other deputies that if this one doesn’t produce a winner and he continues to lose millions over the next “three to four years,” then he intends to sell the team.
“I told Rich to make us better,” Jordan told one associate recently. “If that doesn’t work and I can’t make a profit in the next three to four years, then I’m selling.”
This is a change of plans for Jordan, who over almost the past year has been seeking a buyer to purchase half the team. The Bobcats lost $20 million last season and they’re headed for more big losses this season. Jordan’s decision to give the assignment of rebuilding to Cho means that Rod Higgins, his longtime president of basketball operations who goes back to when he ran the Wizards, is on the outs. Jordan told Cho, the Thunder’s former assistant GM who arrived in Charlotte last June, to “follow the Oklahoma City model.”
Good luck with that, because there was some major luck involved in Oklahoma City’s ascension to the top of the Western Conference. The Thunder was most fortunate that Portland passed on Kevin Durant in the 2007 draft, instead opting to take Greg Oden with the top pick. The Blazers once passed on Jordan, and they might end up never living down their Oden pick.
Jordan had falsely advertised his team before the season as playoff-worthy. But at least he has come to the conclusion that he needs to blow it up a nd start over. His roster is comprised of backup-quality players. Entering t he weekend, the Bobcats had only seven wins, fewest in the NBA. They are on pace to finish with the second-worst point-differential per game since the NBA and ABA merged in 1976. They’ve been losing games by 13.1 ppg, with only the 1992-93 Mavs getting crushed by bigger margins (15.2 ppg). They’ve lost 15 games by 20 or more points.
Because Jordan has been such a failure as an owner — even drawing rare criticism recently from his best pal, Charles Barkley — there will be plenty of fans in Charlotte who hope this next rebuilding campaign is a flop. Just so that he sells and gets out of town.
LINSANE TREATMENT
The Knicks need to stop treating Jeremy Lin like a star and start making him talk to the media. In Atlanta on Friday, Lin breezed into the morning shootaround wearing earphones, retreated to the privacy of the trainers room and refused to speak to reporters about the knee injury that KO’D him from his third straight game. He hasn’t done enough in his 10 minutes in the NBA to get away with not talking. When he was talking, he told reporters that his first piece of advice to Tim Tebow would be “don’t read the papers.” He couldn’t have been more clueless. Where does he think “Linsanity” started, any way? Lin did speak Saturday when the Knicks announced the guard would be out six weeks with a meniscus tear. . . . Mikhail Prokhorov might be unhappy to learn that when the Nets set off on their current four-game West Coast trip, no reporters from the area went to cover the trip. Then again, Prokhorov is never around the Nets himself, so why should he care? But the NBA should care very much. . . . At the AllStar Game on Feb. 25, David Stern said that the league expected to have its new owner of the Hornets “in the next week or 10 days. That’s the period of time we would like to hopefully have this deal for the sale of the club come into much sharper focus.” We’re still waiting. . . . Former Cavs GM Danny Ferry is being touted as a candidate to run the Wizards when owner Ted Leonsis cleans out his front office, starting with team prez Ernie Grunfeld, after the season. Ferry has been assisting Gregg Popovich in San Antonio.