We just watched the end of the Bobcats. Charlotte could have drawn the Bulls - an injured though resilient team. They could have drawn the Pacers - a team shook; full of halfway crooks. They could have drawn the Raptors - a young, beatable team.

Instead, they drew the Heat, the only team in the East that Charlotte cannot beat. And while beating them early on in Game One, the only thing that could not happen? It happened.

I won't guarantee a Game One victory if Al Jefferson had not torn his Plantar Fascia, nor will I even guarantee a victory in any of the other games. The Heat likely would have swept the Hornets-Bobcats in any scenario barring an injury to LeBron James.

That said, the end of Game One never would have gone down like that.

Without Jefferson, this offense is lost - a child in lawn seats at a James Taylor concert searching fervently for its parents. While Kemba Walker came out gunning and Al braved through a shot to keep him playing despite being obviously gimpy, Charlotte had to rely on too many bad shots and long, empty possessions to contend. Any team in the playoffs would have beaten them in the 4th quarter on Sunday, even Atlanta.

Still, the fans will admire this team. Even down 20, Charlotte fought and scrapped until the overwhelming weight of their deficit finally forced them to submit. Sad camera footage of Jefferson, his downtrodden face staring into the middle distance, popped up on social media and Bobcats-Hornets fans groaned in unison. His lifeless expression, his hands folded, his awkward, limping gait as he left the floor to Glenn Frey's "The Heat is On," these understandable responses tore at the heartstrings of a city that learned to love a flawed team.

The Heat's strategy after Al's obvious struggle only slightly changed. Obviously, a healthy Dwayne Wade - since he skipped most of the season to stay healthy (yeah, prove he didn't) - and LeBron James took the lion's share of shots while Erik Spoelstra played James Jones as a stretch power forward to keep busy hands like Josh McRoberts and Cody Zeller from disrupting Wade and James' dominant drives to the paint. Jones made the Bobcats pay for nearly every double team and killed any momentum Charlotte had built with Walker's beautiful play to start the third quarter.

Defensively, once Al disappeared, the Heat threw multiple defenders, Norris Cole/Mario Chalmers coupled with James, on Walker at the top of the key. Walker, during the critical times in the second half, struggled to get to the rim and to get his shot off. While his numbers may look fine, he also disappeared during the tough stretch that saw Miami pull away. The fact that they paid so much attention to Walker enhances his impact on the game. He came out of the locker room ready to take the slack that Jefferson obviously left, but the Heat's talent and size crushed that spirited attempt.

To say, as many analysts did/will, that Miami "went to another level" to beat Charlotte rings totally absurd. Al, pre-injury, abused every big man on the floor. The team played generally well until a Miami spurt post-Al injury. Miami had a crazy foul differential, the best player in the world, Wade's remarkable recovery from the litany of fake injuries he's had all year AND an injury to the best post player in the East and still had to go hard for part of the fourth to bury the 7th seed.

No, I won't guarantee a Bobcats victory if Al had stayed healthy. But I will guarantee this: Not one of these games would have been a blowout with a healthy Bobcats club playing this series.

This sweep will prove nothing about the Heat. They will win just as they were supposed to, and decisively. But for one glorious quarter the world got to see the Bobcats-Hornets team that played in the second half of the season. They saw the team that should have beaten the Pacers last night, or the team that should have high-fived after winning in Toronto. Fans saw a team with a rookie head coach that drew the worst possible playoff assignment (0-16 now against the Bron-Wade-Bosh Heat), lost their best offensive weapon and still played with the valor and conviction that defined their season.

The casual fan will shrug Charlotte off and submit that they sucked anyway. New fans will always have Josh McRoberts becoming a New God and Kemba's crossover on Jones. But the loyalists know that at their best, this final Bobcats team should be remembered as an armada. Not one that won a war, but one that battled until the last boat went down. The next three games will look bad - really bad - but these tattered ships will sail again.

On Sunday, we watched the end, but in name only.

Had the regular season ended Wednesday, the Bobcats would have been an amazing story; finishing top six in the East and over .500 with a real possibility at a series win. Unfortunately, the schedule never ends. The NBA calendar year is a terrifying marathon that outlasts all known possibilities. The infinite trudge toward the end claims all hope and rusts even the well-oiled hinges on the gates to prosperity.

For example, Washington had every reason to crush the Bobcats-Hornets last Wednesday. Revenge on their mind and playing at home, the Wizards played a phenomenal third quarter, took the lead and looked poised to put a cap on their own nice turnaround season as the most likely sixth seed in the Eastern Conference.

Earlier this year, Charlotte would never have bounced back from such a terrible showing in the third. They had been dismal in 4th quarters: unable to score, unable to stop the three and unable to stop good players from making plays. The second half of the season produced much better results, though. Despite injuries and a lack of depth at key positions, the Bobcats-Hornets played their best basketball of the year in the second half.

John Wall, silent against Charlotte all year, came alive and the return of Nene Hilario made Al Jefferson's night tougher than expected. Nene consistently, and with lots of team defense help, pushed Jefferson outside of his comfort zone when he posted up and Wall neutralized Kemba Walker quite well after allowing a hot start early on. The fourth quarter looked like a lost cause for Charlotte, as it had so many times earlier in the year.
That's the way the season works, though. Good teams get better.

Using Steve Clifford's constant preaching of ball reversal, Charlotte snapped out of a half-long funk in the fourth with long threes from Gerald Henderson, Walker (well contested though it was) and a nice turnaround jumper from Jefferson to allow Charlotte to force overtime.

That's when Washington went ice cold. Charlotte didn't shoot particularly well at any point of the second half, but they did enough during the Wizards' 0-7 start in OT to pull away. A win moved them to sixth in the East, with a tiebreaking 3-1 record against the Wizards. Everything went so well, in fact, that pundits on ESPN even shouted out Jefferson during halftime of a different game. The team had a benchmark win and a new reason to believe in a longer postseason run.

Then they went to Boston. The Celtics played without Rondo, came off of a wretched road trip and stood in the wake of a nine-game losing streak. They had no reason to win. Tanking their season to look for a better draft pick, they rested a core of veterans hoping to compete but not too well.

They still won.

To Charlotte's credit, they were missing their point guard as well. The NBA season provides so much continuity in its long grind, that missing a key player can alter your DNA so violently that nothing makes sense. Walker does not defend well, but Charlotte could not stop anyone at the point all night without him. He does not run the offense like a pass-first point guard, but the ball seemed to never get into the right hands all night.

Walker is nursing a few small injuries as most players do after 77 games. His return will be very soon, so nothing to worry about, but his absence hurt more than it should have. A Washington victory vaulted them right back into sixth with a game lead and only three to go.

Completing (finally!) their last back-to-back of the season, Charlotte allowed a Philly team replete with failures to hang around for a whole game. Luke Ridnour, Walker's replacement, played valiantly, but the team looked offensively lost most of the night without Walker. They won, but they looked exhausted and beaten still.

That reflects on how tight the team plays together when healthy. Any injury at this point will likely murder any kind of chance at a playoff series victory. As of now, the Heat still lurk as a first-round possibility, which would be an unmitigated disaster and a definite sweep. The Pacers could draw the Bobcats, which could mean a win or two in the playoffs for the first time in Bobcats history. But the sixth spot could mean avoiding them and playing either the Bulls or - please please please - the Raptors, two beatable teams.

The last two games of the season - a soul-crushingly long season - have arrived. They pose an important question for the team. Are the playoffs enough? Or does this team have a desire to make the run they were built for? They play two playoff-caliber squads to finish - at Atlanta and home against Chicago. They gotta hope for a Wizards loss. They need Walker next week. The need some help. The Bobcats can still be an amazing story, they just need to win and get a little luck.

Every amazing story needs a little luck, even the agonizingly long ones.

Just at the mouth of the metaphorical mountain of champions, teams can stop at an overlook. It allows .500 teams to earn a look at the journey ahead. Teams can see the former world-title holders above them, urging the current hopefuls on. You can see fading teams' legs tiring as the climb thins them out. You can see the most steep and dangerous path lies ahead: the playoffs.

Since the reinstatement of the NBA in Charlotte, only one team has ever made it to the hardest part of the allegorical climb. They fell off the mountain in grand fashion (a first-round sweep). This year's squad has already proven to be a better, more entertaining team. Now, by clinching a playoff berth on Saturday, the team can prove it played the best basketball the Bobcats name will ever know.

Since the quest for mediocrity began last fall, the Bobcats-Hornets had a daunting task ahead of them. In the 2014 Eastern Conference, finishing the season with a losing record and making the playoffs does nothing to control Charlotte's stigma as a bad team. Fans just watched the darkest ages of ball in Charlotte. Using the above metaphor, Charlotte's season in 2011 would have seen them hike a short, flat trail around the bottom of Championship Mountain before succumbing to dysentery.

So Saturday's game against the Cavaliers had implications beyond even the playoffs. It took overtime and overcoming a truly virtuoso performance from Kyrie Irving. It took dueling scores form Al Jefferson and Kyrie in that OT. It took a combined field goal percentage that honestly reads like a Division II college game. It took some clutch free throws. The end result, though, turned into a playoff berth, an over .500 record and a realistic chance at the 6 seed.

Welcome to respectability.

There have been flashes this year of a return to old Charlotte form - a recent loss to Orlando after a few days rest, the MKG-less series of losses during the West Coast road trip around Christmas and giving up over 60 points to one player twice all come to mind. That said, those reminders of the Era of Despair only heighten the excitement of the Era of Mediocrity's spoils. We will play a meaningful game on Wednesday with 6th place on the line. If we win at Washington, we take over 6th place with tiebreaker rights. If we hold on to that position, we get a winnable series with Toronto in the playoffs.

So, then, Wednesday's game at Washington becomes the most important game of the season. For a team that played in exactly zero meaningful games in the past two seasons, they've certainly made a jump.

But none of this would be possible without them proving their season narrative. At the beginning of the year, they looked like an NBA litmus test. Each sport has one or two of these teams - they beat up on bad teams and struggle to beat good teams. When healthy, the Bobcats played good teams well, but they generally lost to the elite teams in the league.

This week placed the Bobcats in Philadelphia and Cleveland and gave them a home game against Orlando - a bevy of bad teams. Cleveland being the only squad with a shot at the playoffs, this had to be a 3-0 week for Wednesday's game to decide control of the 6th seed.

Talking at all about the Philadelphia contest would assume that Philly's team tried in the game, and I won't honor that notion other than to say it defined the term "Blowout."

Orlando had beaten the Bobcats-Hornets a week before, but last week lost their starting center before playing in Charlotte. This left Al Jefferson (29/16) to severely dominate in the post while Kemba Walker recorded a triple-double. 91-80 doesn't really describe how much better Charlotte really was throughout the game.

The Cleveland game provided the biggest challenge against a desperate opponent, but, as mentioned earlier, the Hornets-Bobcats won in OT to complete a 3-0 week. That gives them multiple days of rest coming into the biggest game of the season.

That's how it will go from here on out. More than likely, they will be playing the biggest game of their year on any given night until their season ends.

The climb toward respectability involved a ton of struggle, but the real struggle begins anew Wednesday. The energy, the defense, and the scoring all have to improve to compete in the most grueling basketball tournament in the world. This team may not finish the climb, but they have gone farther than most expected them too. Charlotte and its fans are seeing an unfamiliar part of the mountain.

Crazily enough, they can still go up.

Startling confession: I skipped the Orlando-Charlotte game. The Bobcats-Hornets had just played one of their best offensive games of the season against the Nets - a game that featured unbelievable performances from both teams. A loss in Orlando with a rare day's rest? Implausible.

But here we are. The NBA, like most professional sports, has too long a season, and talent tires. With the grind of the regular season nearly over, Charlotte has only a few chances to make a charge at playing a beatable team in the playoffs. As of right now, the 5th seed gets the Raptors, an imminently beatable team winning the worst division in the league. The 6th seed gets the injury-leveled Bulls, a semi-beatable team that will likely outlast whatever team they draw.

The Bulls present the worst matchup of the two hopeful ones. Joakim Noah can actually handle Al Jefferson, placing the offensive load squarely on Kemba Walker and Gerald Henderson. Get ready for a lot of fadeaway baseline jumpers and long contested threes. Get ready for a lot of 87-79 grinders that sportswriters complain about on Twitter and a Bulls five-game series win.

The Raptors present the best opportunity for a series win in the Bobcats-Hornets vapid history. They present no challenge to Jefferson and few challenges at other positions. Cody Zeller, Walker, Henderson, and Michael Kidd-Gilchrist (defensively) all have the chance to dominate the person opposite them so long as the ball movement stays as clean as it should. Get ready for a lot of 97-85 games where one team pulls away late and a Bobcats-Hornets six-game series win.

While the Pacers have hit a tough spot, it's hard to imagine they won't hit another gear once the playoffs start. They took the eventual world champion Heat to seven games the past two years and have a deeper team than ever before.

The other playoff scenarios involve the Pacers and Heat, likely four-game sweeps. While the Pacers have hit a tough spot, it's hard to imagine their next gear they have hit the last two seasons to challenge the eventual back-to-back champions will not be there. The Pacers are deep and immensely talented. Best-case for Charlotte would be to win one game in that series and lose the deciding game in convincing fashion.
Still, it would be a win in a playoff series, something Charlotte has never seen in this incarnation of the team. Right now, we would have to play Indiana. Charlotte sat a spot out of sixth place behind Washington coming into Monday night.

With their playoff seeding on the line, the Bobcats-Hornets played a miserable second quarter. They allowed 40, went down as many as 16 and looked entirely listless as the game slipped away. The Wizards' 33-9 run crippled Charlotte.

The 3rd quarter saw them battle back to within 10 multiple times, only to take terrible shots and throw the ball away. As the 4th quarter started, the game looked like a hopeless blowout waiting to happen. Even the bright spots - Zeller's excellent game and Chris Douglas-Roberts' nice run in the third - were abnormal and pointlessly timed.

Then, with around 8 minutes left, the Bobcats began whipping Washington's ass. I hate to sound so crude, but that's what happened. The Wizards missed every crucial shot and the Bobcats-Hornets mixed a series of offensive rebounds with critically-used possessions. They went to what worked - Douglas-Roberts and Zeller contributed heavily, Jefferson's struggles allowed Walker to attack the rim and the defense collapsed around the middle after giving up countless first-half dunks.

In one of their worst performances in months, Charlotte won. And they pulled within two games of the sixth spot in the East. Truly, the road to respectability cannot get less bumpy than that.

The rest of the schedule lines up favorably. Games against Boston, Philadelphia (twice), Cleveland, Washington (again), Orlando (again), Atlanta and the final game of the season against Chicago, who will likely already have clinched their spot in the playoffs, leave the Bobcats with a real shot at moving up depending upon the play of those above them. Only three of those teams have a realistic shot at the playoffs and Atlanta has struggled mightily as of late.

As the Bobcats-Hornets prepare for the playoffs, the celebration begins. The postseason! Playoff seeding! Joy! Above .500 and a tournament against one of the best basketball teams in the world await. They just have to shake off the worst teams in the league and take care of business.

As we learned in Orlando, that's not always the easiest task.