ESPN.com’s Marc Stein is reporting that the Bobcats have certifiable interest in Stephen Jackson:

…further checking reveals that the Bobs have seriously explored the prospect of trading for Jackson, apparently undaunted by the fact that they weren’t mentioned when Jackson announced late in the summer that he wanted to be dealt to Cleveland, New York or one of the three Texas teams.   It remains to be seen how far the Bobcats are willing to go, since taking on Jackson’s contract doesn’t exactly sound like owner Bob Johnson’s kind of move.

For the record, the remaining years on Jackson’s contract are: ’09-’10 $7.65 mill, ’10-’11 $8.45 mill, ’11-’12 $9.26 mill and ’12-’13 $10.06 mill.

Stein goes on to report that the Bobcats might be dangling Boris Diaw as trade bait, as Larry Brown has supposedly grown frustrated with the laissez-faire Frenchman.

First of all, I hope that this is one of those rumored trades that gets reported in the media, but never comes close to happening in real life.  I’m by no means a Boris Diaw fanboy (too many TOs, not enough rebounds), but he’s far from the biggest problem with the Bobcats.  Additionally, it would likely mean that we’d go small with Gerald Wallace playing at the 4 — going small is always fun, but it’s also risky for the wispy, reckless Wallace.  Oh, and I can’t decide what’s more insane, Stephen Jackson’s contract, or Stephen Jackson himself.

On the other hand, it does make some sense.  A motivated Jackson would go a long way towards improving our offensive output.  (Not saying Jackson would necessarily be motivated here, just saying hypothetically, a motivated Jackson would solve some of our offensive issues.)  And a trade with Jackson and Diaw as the principals is a lot more likely than many of the super-dreamy fantasy trades that get bandied about here on Bobcats Baseline.

If we expect to get a little financial relief (by also dumping in Nazr’s contract) and improve our offense in one fell swoop, it’s probably going to be by taking on someone else’s malcontent (i.e. Stephen Jackson, Prince of the Malcontents).  We’re not going to get the young, squeaky clean, 40pt scoring cornerstone of another franchise (Kevin Martin or Andre Igoudala).

-Dr. E