The creepiest part, by far, is that the decapitated head is still smiling.

Mixed in with the discarded filing cabinets and old cracked coffee tables in the trash behind the Charlotte Hornets practice facility in Fort Mill, S.C., is the dismembered remains of one of the team’s bug mascots. The severed legs sit on an old chair, pointing upside-down. A lone hand waves to a wall. The bloated teal torso is ten feet away from the rest of the appendages. And the head is stuck in the grass like a lawn dart, smirking at visitors as they make their way into the building.

While reporting on the Hornets for a feature in the latest issue of The Magazine, I had to pass by this monstrosity several times, and what I came to realize was this is the perfect metaphor for what’s being done to this team and its fans. It’s as if some slightly disturbed modern artist (aren’t they all?) has jumped the fence and constructed this sickening sculpture as a form of protest ... Swatted Bug, 2002, ode to a dismembered franchise.

"I call it, As the Charlotte Coliseum Turns," says Charlotte city councilwoman Lynn Wheeler. "This has become an absolute soap opera. It’s got everything -- sports, sex, money and intrigue. It doesn’t have murder -- yet -- but it has everything else. The story here changes every day."

At first (and by that I mean, like, five long years ago) the whole thing was kinda interesting. Charlotte is a booming, beautiful town full of bankers and bible bangers who, because of their own inferiority complex, thought they needed the national spotlight professional sports would bring. Well, this isn’t exactly what we had in mind. The worst part being, at a time when we need the escape of sports more than ever, following the Hornets saga isn’t fun anymore -- it’s exhausting. For everyone. Even the team.

"For us now it’s come down to this," says coach Paul Silas, who at the time was pedaling hard on a stationary bike -- another perfect metaphor for the 34-33 Hornets. "We just want to be appreciated. Whether that’s here or in New Orleans ... we just want to be wanted."

My neighbors and I here in North Carolina have actually begun to tune out all the back-n-forth rhetoric (I mean gosh, we just got rid of Jessie Helms and now this?) in favor of other, nobler pursuits. Like, say, The Osbournes, the brilliant new MTV show that chronicles the disturbed and delightful family life of Ozzy Osbourne.

Personally, I’m with Hornets all-star guard Baron Davis. "When you’ve been left in a gray area for so long you just want the thing to be over with," he told me. "It’s become so frustrating it’s to the point that you don’t care what happens -- you just want something to happen. You want the rollercoaster to stop."

But where will it end?

While reporting on this story I noted that even the Herculean efforts of local sports shock jock Mark Packer can’t get more than 14,000 fans inside the Coliseum for a good cause (to honor a local teenage NBA fan who died in a car accident). They’re gone.

Initially, New Orleans fans respond to the Hornets like prohibition. The TV market in the Big Easy would be the NBA’s smallest. The business climate is much worse. The mean income is below the national average. The last time I was in New Orleans I stepped in barf. They’re staying.

City leaders in Carolina create a new arena deal, with one middle-finger caveat to Hornets owners George Shinn and Ray Wooldridge -- the place is only for new owners. They’re gone.

BET founder and billionaire Robert Johnson makes a bid to buy the Bugs for more than $225 million. This lily-white city and the NBA salivate over the possibility of minority ownership. They’re staying.

Wooldridge tells me the team is not for sale and will be in New Orleans next year -- no matter what. They’re gone.

Wooldridge also promised not to negotiate with other cities when he bought into the Hornets, and then revealed he’s been talking to New Orleans for several years. They’re staying.

The team can’t seem to muster an "Us Against the World" mentality like, say, the Houston Oilers did when they lame-ducked it to Tennessee and two years later made the Super Bowl. They’re gone.

Former Hornet Muggsy Bogues joins a local group fighting to keep the team in town. "It used to be golden here," Bogues says. "That kind of spirit and loyalty is still here -- it’s just hidden. Those seeds are all buried now, but they could bloom again." They’re staying.

In an example of the worst kind of political posturing, local small-time politicians rush to align with business leaders in Charlotte to cover their butts. In the end, so to speak, the visionless leadership in Charlotte is as much to blame for this debacle as George and Ray. They’re gone.

Rumors are swirling now that Shinn and Wooldridge are losing votes on the relocation committee and, forced to stay in town and continue to bleed coin, they’ll have to sell the team. They’re staying.

Yet as powerful as he thinks he is, NBA commish David Stern can’t restrict trade. He can’t prevent a business from moving. The recommendation of the relocation committee means nothing. You can’t stop a business from moving -- at least not in a free society. Someone tried that in Houston with the Oilers and the judge chuckled a bit, then tossed that writ out like a frisbee. If ShinnRidge is indeed determined to move the team, there isn’t a single thing anyone can do about it, and somehow the city of Charlotte will just have to get by as the nation’s banking capital. They’re gone.

And all we can do is wave goodbye, right back at that Hornet mascot’s dismembered hand.

David Fleming is a senior writer for ESPN The Magazine. E-mail him at flemfile@aol.com.