"If the Charlotte Bobcats are going to avoid a freefall back into the land of NBA have-nots, it will be because of two primary reasons.

Their names are Stephen Jackson and Gerald Wallace, and they form the combustible core of the Bobcats. Jackson and Wallace serve as the acknowledged leaders of a team that made it to the NBA playoffs for the first time in 2010, only to get swept out in a hurry by Orlando.

"Jack" and "Gerald," as their teammates call them, already were the Bobcats' acknowledged alpha males during the playoff run. But the gap between them and the rest of the squad has grown even wider after the departure of point guard Raymond Felton, for Felton was the only other person in the Charlotte locker room last season who commanded unquestioned respect.

It's hard to see where the Bobcats improved themselves this offseason. Losing two starter-quality players in Felton and Tyson Chandler and acquiring the mixed bag of parts that the Bobcats did won't buy them a lot of credibility. Jackson and Wallace, however, remain the two Bobcats players whom NBA coaches must game-plan for each night.

Jackson is the more talkative of the two, and on Monday he predicted a return to the playoffs for Charlotte.

"I said it last year," Jackson said of the playoffs, "and I'm going to stick by it this year."

Wallace admitted the Bobcats will be overlooked once again this season.

"I know teams are looking at us like we didn't add any key players, and we lost one of our key players in Raymond Felton," Wallace said. But Wallace said that having Jackson for the first time for an entire preseason will be extremely helpful."