If you drove past Guilford College's campus on Sunday, you may have seen two grown men hoisting jumpers at a shaky rim. Maybe they looked harmless and carefree, putting up 12 to 18 footers against the wind.

Maybe one of them looked particularly onerous - favoring his right knee, relying on muscle memory. Maybe he shot for the first time in two years after a massive and devastating knee surgery. Maybe his personal life recently marred his ability to go out and experience the good days. Maybe the weather did too.

Maybe he was the happiest man on Earth, watching the ball sail at the rim and bound away.

But we do not know his story. All we know is that he stood, essentially alone and shot the ball, uncontested. With no one to pass to, no team around him calling for the ball or wanting to set up plays. He shot the ball without conscience, without hesitation or fear. He performed basketball's simplest task.

He took jumpers.

I imagine that's how Carmelo Anthony felt on Friday night while he poured 62 points on the Bobcats-Hornets at MSG. The Knicks' problems melted into the void as Melo popped jumper after jumper, attacking the rim so few times that the Bobcats defensive strategy shifted into assumption - he had to start missing 18-footers at some point, right?

He did not miss. He played on an island, toiling over several defenders who must have seemed imaginary after awhile. He went 23-35 with an unbelievable shot chart consisting of 15-25 foot shots all over the court.
The crowd chanted his name on every possession, knowing that the Madison Square Garden/Knicks' franchise record of 61 points laid well within reach.

Did he hear the crowd? Did he hear his teammates cheering him on? Or was the world around him a blurred mix of meditative silence? Did he feel anything other than instinct?

After the game, Anthony tried to explain his zone by sputtering buzzwords and team speak. He could have told us anything, though. The interview could have ended with him describing the desolation of being the only man pounding the rock, turning and firing the ball toward the rim. He could have told fans that he was the sun and the fans would have believed him. He had no teammates, no coaches, no intention of anything but shooting until he went cold.

The noises he heard may have been like traffic rolling by a tiny outdoor court, or nothing at all.

No matter what he heard, a franchise record set at the behest of the Bobcats filled the sports airwaves for days after. People debated the merits of this game - He had zero assists! He is still a selfish player! The Knicks still suck! - but they missed an important point. Melo proved that the Knicks have a commodity. Next year he might be gone, but right now, they have an unbelievably talented pure scorer. Irrelevancy should not be an option for a team with a star of his caliber.

The Bobcats-Hornets do not have that right now. What they earn, they earn without the grace of shooters that can get what they want.

The closest thing they have, though, has played an unbelievable stretch despite team struggles. Al Jefferson has become the offensive weapon they wanted and so sorely needed over the past three or four years. He's healthy and hitting his jumpers while attacking with an array of post moves that his ankle would not allow early in the season. His efficiency, his intimidating skill set and his ownership of the "best offensive player on the floor" have all burgeoned as the season has progressed.

Unfortunately, this comes while Kemba Walker sits with his own ankle problems. Ramon Sessions has filled in admirably on offense, but cannot replace the two-man game that Walker and Jefferson have nor can he replace Walker's innate scoring ability. Plus Sessions plays an important role on the bench, which now relies heavily on minutes from guys unused to shot-heavy Jannero Pargo.

This speaks nothing of the pressure on Sessions defensively. DJ Augustin, a player who feared for his NBA life just a month ago, put 28 points on the Bobcats-Hornets in starting minutes. That means a bulk of his points - and his 15 in the 4th quarter - came on Sessions.

If Anthony could not be stopped in the Knicks game, that makes sense. Augustin scoring 28 for the Bulls? That sounds like pure nonsense.

That said, nonsense ruled the Bobcats past week. Augustin's performance notwithstanding, Charlotte saw Jannero Pargo hit four straight tough jumpers against New York... in a 4-11 performance. They saw 62 from Amelo. They saw the best of Al Jefferson and the worst of Josh McRoberts.

And all of it centered on losses to teams just ahead of them in the standings. The playoffs look exceedingly less possible until Walker returns and the team shakes off the anomalies of a week that got them all the wrong coverage.

Last week looked like like they had to toss their jumpers against the wind.

Look directly into the eyes of mediocrity, and you may see Josh McRoberts taking an advised three because his team has a dearth of shooters. You may be Jeff Adrien, coming in for "energy minutes" due to a dearth of talent, or Kemba Walker as a "star" due to a series of high picks in lesser drafts.

Really, we can boil mediocrity down or ignore it all we want, but it consumes every human, from conception to the grave.

The Bobcats-Hornets must understand who they are immediately, or redefine themselves entirely. An injury to their best ballhandler - their best player - might sideline their quest for respectability. Last week tells us little.

About last week: instead of celebrating a two-win week, Bobcats-Hornets fans looked forward to a matchup with a much better Miami Heat squad. Hoping to beat the Heat actually played directly into the hands of mediocre thinking, i.e. the only way the Bobcats could beat the Heat in a one-off game relied on a poor-quality effort from the Heat and a fantastic performance from Charlotte.

This kind of game already happened earlier in the season. Chris Bosh just happened to destroy all hope.
In highly entertaining games, the Bobcats beat the Magic and Knicks. In a deplorable effort, they lost to the 76ers on the second-night of a back-to-back. And in another second night of a back-to-back, they lost to the best team in the NBA.

This 2-2 week perfectly defines how the team operates. A good defense and bad offense can only drag you so far in the NBA. One must score to win too.

That said, as the week unfolded, Charlotte certainly had some extraordinary performances.

We can definitively describe Jefferson as "on a tear." Walker had been better lately until he left the Heat game with an ankle injury. Ramon Sessions dunked on Lebron James and had a pretty solid performance against the Heat once Walker left.

Accepting our understanding of how this team will operate without Walker for two weeks could go a long way toward understanding Charlotte's place within the NBA season. If they can sustain a .500 record in his absence - likely 8-10 games - then we can count on a Bobcats team in playoff contention in the Eastern Conference quagmire until March. If not? We might see a team relegated to remnants of the Era of Despair.

The NBA defines success and failure so stringently, as all sports do, that this modicum of Charlotte's success actually buries the team. Being 17-25 would be cause to hang it up and begin the long and tedious search for a new savior (whether via draft or free agency). But this year? Mediocrity reigns. Withstanding a tough injury and working toward a playoff goal still hangs heavy over this squad.

The Bobcats-Hornets have chosen mediocrity. They've chosen to fight.

The fans have a stranger choice. Do we embrace mediocrity or do we hope for better times amid the franchise remodel?

The choice cannot linger much longer. Either this team will fold under the pressure of Kemba's absence or invigorate themselves at the behest of fate.

Normally, when Al Jefferson rolls his eyes and drops his head, he's about to start working the refs. After the game on Tuesday night, he did it out of relief.

The Bobcats-Hornets beat the Knicks to end a particularly pathetic losing streak, but he did not look relieved for that. He scored 35 - the most of any Bobcats-Hornets player this season. It wasn't that either. They snapped a nice win streak for the Knicks - who were sneaking into playoff position, but Jefferson sighed contemplatively for a whole different reason.

He dropped his head and rolled his eyes after sideline reporter Stephanie Ready asked him about the return of Michael Kidd-Gilchrist.

"Oh, man. He's our defensive captain," Jefferson said with a quick smile.

Anthony Tolliver, highlighted in the postgame with a slow-motion embrace of Kidd-Gilchrist and said, "We're so glad to have you back**."

His smile looked a little more effusive.

For fans, Charlotte looked like a different team entirely with Kidd-Gilchrist. That starts with his position mates.
The forwards on this team played a beleaguered month plus with patchwork schemes and rotations that included Chris Douglas-Roberts. Though his name contains a hyphen too, he did not have a professional job until Kidd-Gilchrist and Jeffrey Taylor (Achilles, out for the season) went down with injuries.

During the latest 1-8 stretch that I chronicled, the Charlotte defense fell apart in nearly every game. Without a stopper at any forward position, bigger teams bullied the paint and quicker teams got to the rim or used slash-and-kick offense to create open shots.

What Kidd-Gilchrist brought back with him made an immediate impact on both of those styles. The Knicks - albeit playing an altogether listless second night of a back-to-back - could not score in the paint since Jefferson and the power forward crew could relax on protecting the rim as much. New York also lost their midrange and three-point shooting games to Kidd-Gilchrist's effort against Carmelo Anthony.

His style of defense uses a lot of recovery. Vacillating between help defense and fantastic footwork in front of his man, his dexterity rivals the best defenders in the league. Therefore, his job has been to guard the best forwards in the league. On Tuesday night, he held Anthony to 20 points on a ton of shots.

Some of that certainly had to do with tired legs, but watching Kidd-Gilchrist work against the best pure scorer in the league (by many accounts, anyway) brought life into my fandom and, obviously, into the team.

With the big men able to stay at home, the guards could gamble more too. Kidd-Gilchrist had 2 steals, Kemba Walker could use his quickness to go under screens and still recover knowing Raymond Felton could not get straight to the rim. The pick-and-roll did not work at all for the Knicks. They had zero fast break points midway through the 4th quarter.

The defense advertised earlier in the season looked crisp, the rotation back to a minimal use of Tolliver and Douglas-Roberts and the energy ran higher than it had in weeks.

Kidd-Gilchrist may not resurrect the season, but he certainly makes it much more entertaining. As the team trudges toward the completion of the first half of the season, they have their lynchpin back.

Stephanie Ready had to ask Jefferson how he felt about MKG's return even though she knew the answer already.

She had seen the game.

*- Obviously, I wrote this before the awful Philadelphia game. Ugh.

**-I can clearly read lips.

My faith shaken, my emotions stirred, I may have watched the effective end of this Bobcats season well before I thought I would.

Every team has the stretch that defines them. This year's Bobcats team entered the holiday season with a chance to show that they could hang with respectable teams. They had .500 well within their grasp and had one of the better defenses in the league. Kemba Walker had a hot streak going, and the team fought in every game; scrapping for respectability in a league that has none for them.

I have lukewarm feelings for the holidays. Nowadays, I have a small family obligation and with no spouse/kids and minimal fiduciary responsibilities for the gift-giving season. Really, I just have to eat and relax.
Couple that with a short break from my 40-hour-a-week job, and I had all the time in the world to focus on the Hornets-Bobcats. I planned on writing a long posit on the way the team's defense has matured even without one of the best defensive wing players in the game. I planned on writing about Kemba's recent shooting tear.

Oh, the articles I planned.

Then the Bobcats played the worst ball they've played all year. Positively awful games against the Jazz, Clippers and Blazers coupled with tough losses against the Hawks (OT) and Thunder made it impossible to find joy or mirth in the Bobcats-Hornets this holiday season.

Topping the many lowlights were a missed three by Josh McRoberts to kill the chance to win over the Thunder (which I argued the merits of on Twitter to be ganged up on by more prolific and better sportswriters) and Cody Zeller's horrific missed dunk shown to thousands on Deadspin.

This is the road Charlotte has chosen in the past - they lose a few on the road, maybe out West or in the conference - and they begin folding up to prepare for the draft and offseason. The fans begin arguing over prospects. The coaches talk about toughness on the roster as they try and play spoiler. The seasons end the way they usually begin: full of loss and woe.

The past week could be the beginning of all that. If not for an offensive explosion against the Kings on Saturday that included Chris Douglas-Roberts' unlikely double-digit point total in a starting role, the team would have lost six in a row. And they would have gone 0-5 in their West Coast road trip.

The reality, actually, plays out far more grimly for the Bobcats if they continue their slide. The East teams putrid early veneer refuses to wash away and the Bobcats-Hornets, right now, would play the three-seed in the Eastern Conference playoffs. They cannot continue to lose the way they did last week. I still believe they play better than this current streak and that they will likely get healthier.

The lottery looks beautiful for the teams mired at the bottom of the Eastern Conference. A sure-fire chance to improve awaits them. The Bobcats-Hornets must forget that world, even as they lose 5 in a row. To get to the bottom seven picks, the Bobcats would have to lose continually like they did during this tough stretch, and hope that two or three bad teams below them catch moderate fire to ascend.

Rumors of the Knicks willingness to break up their team (no matter how feeble and stupid the stories are) to improve their lottery chances, the Nets widening gap between how they play and how they should play, the Bucks' putridity, Philly's awful roster, Boston's awful roster, Cleveland's locker room problems and regression, Orlando's also-awful roster - every team worse than Charlotte deserves to be worse.

Remember, also, Charlotte's offseason improvements only hinder their ability to lose. Now add in those Kemba Walker hot streaks, Michael Kidd-Gilchrist's inevitable return, the smart signing of Douglas-Roberts, the team defense, Cody Zeller's long-term improvements, Steve Clifford continuing to coach fairly well. They all remain hindrances.

So, after a holiday cold streak, Charlotte stayed one of the best eight teams in a pathetic conference. And the choice to tank still exists, though it would be a poor one.

The Age of Mediocrity took a huge blow over the holidays, but the choice now remains in the hands of the Bobcats.

If they turn this tough stretch around, the five-seed remains theirs for the taking. And because of the arcane laws of the Eastern Conference, they would get to play whatever terrible team wins just enough game to take the Atlantic division, the four-seed.

Right now? That would be the frisky, yet inherently flawed Toronto Raptors, an easily beatable team.

That's right. Even as badly as Charlotte played these past two weeks, they could be a playoff-series winner. The culmination of a few teams falling apart and one team playing up to their mediocre level might still lead to triumph.

If the holidays prove to be any indicator, the results will be awfully tough to watch either way.