10/30 Bobcats v. Rockets Preview

The NBA season is finally here, and starting lineups are almost set! The Bobcats start out the season on Wednesday, October 30, at the Houston Rockets with an 8 p.m. ET tip-off.

After the preseason, the starting lineups appear to be:

        Bobcats                                                   Rockets

PG: Kemba Walker                                         Jeremy Lin

SG: Gerald Henderson                                    James Harden*

SF: Michael Kidd-Gilchrist*                          Chandler Parsons

PF: Cody Zeller                                              Donatas Motiejunas

 C: Al Jefferson*                                             Dwight Howard

(*: Listed on NBA's injury report)

Out of the three guys listed as injured, it looks like Harden and MKG will both play. However, although Jefferson said "The ankle felt good," after Monday's practice, he is still listed as questionable to play Wednesday night. If Jefferson is a scratch, Biyombo should take the start at center.

Even if Jefferson plays, this is a brutal game to start the season with for the Bobcats. Most Bobcats fans should remember Howard with fear from the 2010 playoffs. The Bobcats, in their lone playoff series, threw just about everything at Howard to keep him in foul trouble for all four games. The extra attention on Howard limited him offensively, but opened up the floor for Vince Carter, Jameer Nelson, and Rashard Lewis to hit wide-open threes.

With a healthy D12 seemingly motivated and ready to flip the page with the Rockets, the Bobcats are going to struggle. Zeller and Jefferson are not notably strong defensive players and certainly cannot match Howard's athleticism (after all, few if any other centers can). Biyombo is still a raw prospect, even on the defensive side.

The main reason the team needs to worry about D12 is the same reason he destroyed the Bobcats in 2010—while only putting up 5 points in Game One, 15 in Game Two, 13 in Game Three, and 6 in the clinching Game Four. It's the space he opens up for the shooters around him. The Rockets are built to make opponents choose whether they want to lose by D12's improved post game with pick-and-rolls regularly sprinkled in, or by sharpshooters Harden and Parsons drilling threes from outside.

For away games against championship caliber teams, the Bobcats' best bet this season will be to focus on developing Kemba, MKG, and Zeller as a core of young talent—especially when Jefferson is questionable.

Three Things to Look Out For this Bobcats Season

1. Ben Gordon Trade

The good news here is that Gordon is definitely, per the Charlotte Observer, going to be ready to play the season opener. The even better news is that Gordon has one year left on his contract and is due $13.2 million. This makes for one heck of an expiring contract and there are some major free agents coming up next year (see: Bron Bron and Melo) that teams might need to shuffle around cap space to swing at.

The bad news is that Gordon hasn't been an above average NBA player since '07-'08. He's averaged less than a 15 PER ever since then, and his lack of effort last year with Coach Dunlap shows he isn't one of the character veterans teams try to fill rosters with. When Gordon's career winds down in the next 2-4 years, he's going to fall off a cliff productivity-wise. This won't be a gentle decline.

At this point, the Bobcats' best option is to unload the overpriced contract as quickly as possible for a future pick.

2. Jefferson's Shadow

The Bobcats' big new signing is confusing, to say the least. This team has been tanking and trying to improve through the draft for the past several seasons. It's been a painful process that has cost more than one coach their job. Then, the year before the light at the end of the tunnel comes out through the draft (see: Andrew Wiggins), the team overpays for Jefferson.

This isn't all bad. At the end of the day, Charlotte is not a free agent destination. It's a small media market, and doesn't have the night life of cities like Atlanta. The team will have to overpay, and Jefferson at least has one of the best low-post games in the NBA. He's been posting around a 20-22 PER for the past six seasons and seems like he'll keep that up for the length of the contract.

So, the problem here isn't Jefferson. It's that Jefferson is going to hurt the players around him. Jefferson's best skill, his low-post scoring, requires other players to space out of the low block and tailor their play to him. MKG's inability to post anything close to a respectable shooting percentage from anything outside of a layup or a dunk is going to be on full display in 2013. Also, Cody Zeller is going to have to figure out some way to develop while having to play alongside a big who can't play defense and needs the ball in his hands on offense. This is a problem.

3. Can Kemba keep it up?

One of the biggest bright spots of last season was Kemba's improved play. He became a true slashing threat and improved his shooting from the elbows significantly. His PER jumped from 14.98 in year one, the definition of league average, to a promising 18.86. If Kemba can get up to a 20+ PER in year three, he will start to turn some heads as one of the better PGs in the league.

The room for improvement comes mostly from his shooting percentages. Kemba improved his true shooting percentages from 46.4% in year one to 51.7% in year two. The growth is promising, but could certainly keep improving with Mark Price's coaching and has to keep improving to make up for MKG's feeble percentages. If Kemba can keep improving his shooting, the team will space more effectively and create lanes for MKG to slash through along with room for Jefferson to maneuver around on the block.