This was supposed to be the turning point.

The Charlotte Bobcats, finally healthy again and armed with a little more talent and a little more experience, headed into their third NBA season with smiley faces and enough potential to warrant legitimate talk of at least competing for a playoff spot. And that may yet happen.

But for the moment at least, with six games in the books, the Bobcats say they are searching for a place to turn around.

That is the warning sounded in recent days by two veteran players as the Bobcats, frustrated by a 1-5 start, head out on the road for three tough games this week.

“We got off to a slow start,” said forward Gerald Wallace. “(But) there are about eight or nine teams in the league that are top teams that are on the same road we’re on. We can get off this road, try to get on the right road and turn things around before we dig too big of a hole.

“Everybody getting on the same page is the first thing it’s going to take. We’ve got to get back to what we know how to do as Bobcats. That’s putting the team first, coming out and playing and competing hard every night.”

Said point guard Brevin Knight: “We have no stars on this team. Everybody out here…we don’t have anything except a bunch of people that needs to work hard in order to win. That’s the bottom line.”

The Bobcats have played well in spots in every game this season. And they have played miserably at times.

They have been bolstered by the strong return of a leaner and quicker Emeka Okafor after an injury-abbreviated 2005-06 season and the continually savvy, efficient play of Knight. Their shooting, despite some ugly point-blank misses in recent games, is improved and they have actually hit a better percentage than their opponents in the five losses. And overall they have defended well as a team.

They have benefited from the aggressive play of Wallace, who emerged last season as Charlotte’s scoring leader and is now getting back on his game after being hurt in a bad early-season fall on the court.

They are more talented with the addition of rookie Adam Morrison, who figures to be a major scoring threat as he gains experience in the pro game. They have two key pieces for the future in second-year players Raymond Felton and Sean May, who are already making major contributions and figure to only get better down the road.

But…

The Bobcats, for the moment anyway, admit they have strayed from the identity they built in their first two seasons in the league. You remember those teams. They played hard, played smart, played together. They won some (18 games in 2005-06, 26 in 2006-07) and they were in the fight to the end on a regular basis.

So why now have they befuddled head coach and general manager Bernie Bickerstaff, who wondered aloud about a week ago, “You’re searching. And what you’re searching for is energy.”

And, after the most recent loss on Sunday to Denver, he said, “I don’t know where the energy is…I think the bottom line is our energy level, for some reason. It’s like there’s no stamina.”

In other words, the hard, competitive play of the past is lagging, and there has been far too little of the smart play marked by the Bobcats’ care of the basketball – they turned it over 29 times, giving up 26 points in the process, against the Nuggets.

“We’re careless,” Bickerstaff said. “This is not the way we play basketball. And it’s not what this team talks. One thing we always talk about is, we have to maximize possessions.”

There are only four new players on Charlotte’s 15-man roster and only two of them, Morrison and savvy 11-year veteran Othella Harrington, play regularly. So why the change?

“We’ve got to understand who we are,” Knight said. “Winning one game (against Cleveland) and playing well in the next game (an overtime loss at Boston), that doesn’t mean we’ve arrived. We’ve got to play hard every night.

“As a coach, (Bickerstaff) can only do as much as he can. He puts guys out there on the court for them to produce and that’s what we’ve got to do. And the good thing is, we have a coach here who, if you go out and give 100 percent and play hard on the defensive end, if you’re doing everything to the best of your ability, he’ll ride with you.

“But when you go out there and don’t do that, what else can he say? That’s the position you’ve put him in.”

Wallace said some serious soul-searching among players is in order.

“We’re not competing as hard as we used to. We used to know that we were outnumbered and we knew that we were outmanned. But we would compete. We would play hard.

“Guys are kind of down on themselves now. Guys are worried about how everything is going. Guys have to dig deep down and look at ourselves. All 15 of us. We have to look and see what we can do for this team. We’re all in this together.”

And with 76 games remaining, a turning-point season is still a realistic goal, even if it is a little difficult to see today.

Leonard Laye covered the NBA, ABA and college basketball for more than three decades for the Charlotte Observer and the old Charlotte News until his retirement from writing sports fulltime. He will write a regular column throughout the season for BobcatsBasketball.com for his second straight year.