Bobcats' performance prompts flashbacks to '50s

Nov. 3--Yes, an NBA team has previously averaged less than 80 points. Yes, an NBA team has previously finished a season shooting worse than 40 percent from the field.

Of course, that happened in a time of bow ties, black-and-white televisions and Ed Sullivan. It's called the 1950s. It predates that quaint Kennedy era portrayed on AMC's "Mad Men."

Four games into this season, the Charlotte Bobcats are in historic territory. They're simultaneously last in the league in points per game (79.8) and field-goal percentage (36.0 percent). Combine that with a negative assist-to-turnover ratio (59-to-77) and you have some strikingly bad offense.

Chances are the law of large numbers kicks in: They have 78 regular-season games to revert to the NBA norm and just be manageably lousy offensively. Yet you wonder: What if this is them, here and now, and off in the future?

That scoring average: It was the 1953-54 season. The NBA was an eight-team league, including such metropolises as Fort Wayne, Syracuse and Rochester. And there was a team up in Milwaukee with a scoring problem.

It averaged 70 points and finished the season 21-51, last in the Western Division. Fifty-some years later, with the NBA expanding to 30 teams, no franchise since has failed to average 80. In fact, there were seasons when it was rare for a team to fail to average 100.

The recent standard for offensive ineptitude was the 1998-99 Chicago Bulls. That was the season after the Bulls blew up the Michael Jordan-Scottie Pippen-Phil Jackson triangle. This was a seasonlong hangover after the six-championship party: The Bulls averaged 81.9 points on 40.1 percent shooting from the field.

Final record; 13-37. (It was the lockout winter, thankfully shortening that Bulls season by 32 games.).

That shooting percentage: So really, is it possible for an NBA team to shoot worse than 40 percent for a season?

Actually, yes, and even succeed doing so. Leaf through the 400-some pages of the NBA Guide and you discover the 1958-59 Boston Celtics. They shot an abysmal 39.5 percent for the season and that didn't stop them from sweeping Minneapolis in the NBA Finals.

Of course, that Celtics team had a guy named Bill Russell, who might have been the greatest defensive center ever. And as badly as the Celtics shot, they still averaged more than 116 points per game.

When you're last in scoring or shooting: In the 20-some seasons since Charlotte was first part of the NBA -- 1988-89 with the Hornets -- not one team that finished last in points per game or field-goal percentage has qualified for the playoffs that season.

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