Moore is absolutely right: the Cap’n Jack to Char Town deal is weird. And to a lot of people, it brings a special kind of hell to the Bobcats and financial relief to the Warriors. And hey, who am I to disagree? Paying Stephen Jackson’s contract is going to be a mega bummer, and GS was lucky to get such financial relief despite having little to stand on (sit on?) at the negotiating table. A few years down the line, when Jackson’s contract appreciates and his value depreciates, this trade will really hurt. It will likely prevent the ‘Cats from having the financial flexibility they clearly want, the locker room may be in shambles, and yet another franchise will be held captive to Jackson’s inflated sense of self-worth.

Tomorrow is forecasted cloudy, but today? Unlike just about everyone else on the planet, I’m seeing sunshine.

Let me begin with a disclaimer. As long as you take the Bobcats’ inept front office as a given, this move is a good one. Even if Larry Brown’s track record is decent (as Moore pointed out), he’s not long for this job. Any given season could be his last, making the Bobcats the worst team with a supposed sense of urgency. But the rest of those sitting in front of the control panel, or in Michael Jordan’s case, sitting in Chicago with his feet up and a cigar in his mouth, have shown little besides ineptitude. They trade away quality role players (Jared Dudley, Shannon Brown), ditch talent for a buck or two, and generally draft at a second grade level. Those have been the few constants throughout the brief history of the Charlotte Bobcats, and until there is a dramatic shift in management/ownership, we should only expect more of the same.

So I’m not expecting the Bobcats’ expiring contracts to become productive players with reasonable contracts, or draft picks that will be anything other than blown, or the combination of cap space and team charisma necessary to lure a quality free agent. I haven’t known those things to happen in the history of this franchise, and I wouldn’t expect them to tomorrow, either.

Provided you’re on board with the assumption that the Bobcats’ personnel decisions will likely be misguided for the foreseeable future, Jackson makes sense. He’s a shooter, which Raymond Felton and Gerald Wallace are not. He’s capable of facilitating the offense if need be, which could free up D.J. Augustin into more of a scoring role, which suits him. And I do think he’s capable of creating shots at a higher level than most of the players on this roster. That’s something that you could never say of a spot-up threat like Raja Bell, even if he did fight through injury and play pretty well for a team stuck in limbo. Jackson is going to use up more shots and use up more possessions than Bell, but he’s also a better player and a better scorer. Is he good enough to be a team’s first offensive option? Probably not. Is he going to be good for this team’s future, given his track record of sulking? Probably not. But I do know this: the Bobcats are in a better position to succeed this season than they were a few days ago, and that’s something. That something is probably good enough to make the Bobcats watchable this season, and why that may not amount to much, I’m sure it means an awful lot for a franchise that still struggles to sell tickets and amass a fan base. Taking on Jackson’s contract (and his ego) wasn’t the smartest plan in the world, but it didn’t exactly come from the smartest guys in the room. As long as you resign yourself to the fact that this organization isn’t going anywhere without significant changes from the top down, Captain Jack’s mug starts looking awfully pretty.