No fouls: to win in Charlotte, the Bobcats can't afford to take a page from the Hornets' playbook.

• Author: Maley, Frank
• Position: Cover Story

Ed Tapscott has been waiting for this day almost 18 months. He stands stage left in Founders Hall, waiting for the show to start, decked out in a dark suit with a white hankie peeking out of the breast pocket. In his trade, he's conspicuously short--just 5-10 1/2. He's also a little fidgety.

He rubs his hands together several times, straightens his fingers and puts them to his lips as if praying. With a shave and a halo, he could be a caricature of corporate saintliness in a city that loves its successful businessmen. But Charlotte also is a place that has turned on successful people who don't behave the way it thinks they should. He knows this--so far, only from what he's heard and read.

Tapscott is about to become a father of sorts, sire to the city's second National Basketball Association team. In a few minutes, fans will learn the identities of the players from other NBA teams that the Charlotte Bobcats have chosen in the expansion draft. General Manager Bernie Bickerstaff, the head coach, put together the list with input from scouts and other staff, including Tapscott, president of Bobcats Basketball Holdings LLC. He's Bickerstaff's boss.

They have a tough enough job trying to build a team from scratch. But the Bobcats feel pressure to build it with players who are good off the court as well as on it. That's because Tapscott and his charges inherited an unfortunate legacy from Charlotte's first NBA team, the Hornets.

Its owner, George Shinn, alienated both the business community and the fan base with his behavior and demands. Though he won a lawsuit against a woman who accused him of sexual assault, his trial, played out on Court TV, embarrassed the city. So did a series of ugly events involving players. The team, unable to win voter support for a new, publicly financed arena, left for New Orleans at the end of the 2001-02 season.

But most of the pressure comes from Tapscott's boss, Robert L. Johnson, the founder and CEO of the Black Entertainment Television cable network, who paid a $300 million franchise fee to start the new Charlotte team. He has said that he expects it to be profitable immediately--and that it will win a championship. Not only that, but when the team's name, logo and colors were unveiled in July 2003, he vowed: "My organization, myself and my players will never embarrass or let you down."

"Let me reshape what I think Bob actually said," Tapscott says. "Bob has said we are committed to getting people here who will not cause issues. Nobody can guarantee anybody's behavior on any given day, as we all know. However, that is a very important prime consideration in our selection process--the character and values of the members of our team."

Sounds nice. But nice isn't necessarily what wins in the NBA, and winning is what sells tickets. While Johnson is back in Washington, D.C., running BET for New York-based media giant Viacom, Tapscott is the man who must make it happen in Charlotte, a city the Bobcats are catching on the rebound just two years after its bitter breakup with the Hornets. Fans are unlikely to be as forgiving of on-court failure as they were during that team's early years.

Facing that task is a 51-year-old who came into the job with little experience running an NBA club. Like Charlotte, Tapscott's only other long-term relationship with a franchise started well but ended badly. After nine years with the New York Knicks, he was fired as vice president of player personnel. "It was a mess," he says. "So we're all better off having moved on." He's trying hard to make sure that he doesn't one day have to say the same thing about his experience in Charlotte.

In some respects, he seems ideally suited to run the Bobcats. Even Jeff Van Gundy, the former Knicks head coach whose ire Tapscott claims caused him to be fired, has nice things to say about him. "He's really bright," says Van Gundy, who now coaches the Houston Rockets. "He's hardworking, and he does have the type of character that Bob Johnson says he wants."

To hear Tapscott tell it, you might think he grew up on Walton's Mountain rather than in Washington, D.C. "I've just got the very best parents any one person could ever ask for," he says softly, earnestly. "The interests of their children were always first. And they stressed all the correct values: Be unselfish, be hardworking, be modest, respect other people. All the correct values were seamlessly given to us." The oldest of five kids, he swears he wasn't a bossy big brother. "Sharing was a huge part of our...