Ira Cronin WCNC Sports

Let me first say that I have nothing against Sam Vincent personally but it was far past time for him to go. Having watched Bernie Bickerstaff coach this team the first three years, doing a masterful job with an expansion team it was hard to watch Vincent fail to get the same kind of effort of this year's team that was clearly better than last year's team.

I would say the team quit of Sam but that wouldn't be accurate. While the Bobcats did finish with one less win than last year they did play hard down the stretch. It would be more accurate to say the team began to ignore Sam and play for themselves despite the playoffs being a lost cause.

I love watching the PR game that seems to be playing out right now from the team. In my opinion there is no way the decision to fire Sam was reached on Saturday morning April 26th before 9am. That's just not how it works. Yet somehow, someone thought it was in the team's best interest to release the information on the same day as the NFL draft perhaps in order to have the story not get the kind of national attention it would have gotten if they had announced the firing lets say on Friday.

Does it really matter what kind of attention Vincent's firing gets? I say the more the better! The fact that hiring him was a mistake is evident in his results, not in the fact your firing him. I think it would have reflected far better on the organization if he would have been fired immediately after the season ended proving they knew it was a mistake and were working to correct the situation. Instead, it looks like they were trying to cover up and minimize the fact that Vincent was ever the team's coach and by trying to fire him quietly, people won't notice that hiring him was a mistake in the first place.

Let's just hope that moving forward this organization can finally get something right as they search for a new coach. The only thing that use to be right with the Bobcats, were the things that fell under Bernie Bickerstaff's control. Now it seems that despite having good players on the roster who are good guys this organization can't get out of it's own way.

I'm betting that Larry Brown will be named Head Coach before the week is out... Just how predictable will the Bobcats be? We'll see.

Ira

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