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While the Charlotte Bobcats have shown flashes of brilliance over the past few years, they have yet to reach the playoffs. Moving toward that end, the big news for the Bobcats was their trade of Emeka Okafor for Tyson Chandler. With Chandler in the lineup, Charlotte gains a couple of more inches and some extra offense at center. If this is to be the year, it will be due to the young Bobcats developing into solid NBA players. It will be interesting to see how good second year player D.J. Augustin will be, while this year's first-round pick, Gerald Henderson from Duke, could be the future star in Charlotte; he should be able to step in right away at shooting guard where the Bobcats are in desperate need of a quality player.

Last season, the Charlotte Bobcats' fifth in the NBA, saw the team briefly flirting with the postseason, a feat almost as impressive as actually making the playoffs. While their expectedly poor 7-16 start led to early speculation of a year filled with growing pains under first-year coach Larry Brown, by the end of the season the only pain being felt in Charlotte was that of just missing a spot in the Eastern Conference playoffs.

The main turning point seemed to have come in mid-December when Brown – always one to substantially sculpt teams according to his specific preferences – acquired Boris Diaw and Raja Bell from the Phoenix Suns. The next 51 games following the deal resulted with the Charlotte Bobcats going 27-24. Finding themselves right on the playoff bubble by the end of March, and at 34-40 for the year, the team felt they had a legitimate chance to play deep into postseason.

While one more push through April would have undoubtedly brought this team to the playoffs, a devastating two-point overtime loss at Boston on April 1st seemed to have drained the life out of a group which was expending a great amount of energy just for the outside chance of gaining a playoff berth. Unfortunately the Bobcats followed with a 1-7 finish to the season, which resulted in a 35-47 mark. While this did end the Bobcats' chance of a dream season, few in Charlotte were found to be disappointed, given the immense progress made by the franchise.

There is definitely reason for optimism in 2009-2010, as Brown has begun to rebuild the Bobcats as he has successfully done with just about every team found on his coaching resume. Given a second season on the Charlotte bench, Brown needs to show Bobcat fans the signs of the team's resurgence that he is famous for implementing.

The first sign would be better defense, which will hopefully be provided by newly-acquired Tyson Chandler. The second is improved team offense, due to the fact that Diaw and Bell will be Bobcats for all 82 games this season. Most important, the last sign needs to be complete buy-in from the entire roster; if the young Bobcats strictly follow Brown's direction, there's no reason to think that Charlotte won't be able to make a run toward a .500 record at the very least, and a spot in the Eastern Conference playoffs.

The Time Warner Cable Arena will undoubtedly be the site of another better season, full of tough defense and some exciting offense. Get your tickets for the new and improved Charlotte Bobcats and support them in their journey toward the franchise's first playoff appearance.