08-01-2018, 07:21 AM
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#122
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Retro NBA Nut
OVR: 19
Join Date: Jul 2008
Location: Ireland
Posts: 1,533
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Charlotte should be granted Expansion Franchise.
Charlotte deserve expansion team.
April 23rd, 2002 | by NBCSPORTS.COM
What is different, one NBA owner thought this week, between what the Charlotte Hornets' ownership is doing to Charlotte and what Art Modell did to Cleveland?
Damn good question.
Which is why I believe the league should, after approving the Hornets' move to New Orleans grant Charlotte an expansion franchise.
I am not naïve enough to float such a proposal without trial-ballooning it past at least a few influential folks around the league. A lot of folks thought there was no chance the league would OK expansion, given that Charlotte doesn't have the history in basketball that the Browns, by way of comparison, had in the NFL. The league isn't especially interested in domestic expansion now; the next team added will likely need visas for their road trips. And there's no real desire to reward Charlotte, after all the bungling that has gone on there over the last couple of years, with a shiny new building and voracious new revenue streams.
I hear all of that.
I'd still put an expansion team in Charlotte.
And, boys and girls, more than one owner agrees with me.
This solves three problems. One, the new owners in Charlotte would not be George Shinn and Ray Wooldridge, the current owners, who will not have anything done for them by the city. Two, it would guarantee a new arena would get built in Charlotte with more of the luxury suites that every owner demands to have. Three, it would keep the league in a city that led the league in attendance eight years in a row during the '90s. And if former BET chair Bob Johnson, who put his name to a possible bid for the Hornets, was given an expansion team, it would provide a league already light years ahead of the other pro leagues when it comes to minority involvement with an African-American owner.
Shinn and Wooldridge are hated by the local populace in the Queen City to an extent you can't believe until you're down on the ground. I went down there earlier this month and I couldn't believe the antipathy for them.
The litany of where this hatred came from is laid out by local folk. The first sin mentioned by folks is the Hornets' trades of Alonzo Mourning, Larry Johnson and, perhaps most importantly, Muggsy Bogues, who had been one of the team's original players and its most beloved in the community. And each of those trades, along with the subsequent jettisoning of Glen Rice, led to the notion that the Hornets wouldn't pay top dollar for top players.
Second, Shinn bought out the local businessmen that had helped him finance the original expansion deal, creating bad feelings in the business community.
Third, Shinn was embroiled in his own personal troubles, including accusations of sexual harassment by several different women. He was ultimately acquitted of any wrongdoing, but the incidents stained his reputation.
Fourth, some Hornets players of more recent vintage were involved in embarrassing incidents. And tragically, Bobby Phills -- generally regarded as one of the league's best guys and good citizens -- was killed in January of 2000 after crashing his car just outside of the Coliseum while driving at excessive speed. The tragedy darkened the team's climate locally.
"Mayor Pat McCrory is more blunt.
"The current ownership team basically said 'eat my grits' to Charlotte," he says, "and that probably didn't sell a lot of tickets here in Charlotte."
For his part, McCrory says he and Shinn deserve some of the responsibility for what has happened in Charlotte. But not all of it.
"I think any time any situation fails, it meant someone did something wrong," he said recently. "But to say there are ill feelings about the franchise, that it's solely the blame of the owners ... I don't mean to be too strong here, but I find that to be absurd."
Charlotte's proposed arena deal would have put a new building downtown, where most of the politicians and business leaders want it. But it wouldn't provide naming rights or pouring rights revenues to the owners; that money would revert back to the three local companies who are, in essence, loaning the city $100 million to help with construction and other costs. And that made the deal, in Shinn's eyes, a non-starter.
"The numbers are the numbers," Shinn says. "They add a certain way. This does not work. It falls dramatically short of the revenues necessary for our ownership or any ownership to operate a franchise in Charlotte profitably."
Shinn says he put "in the range of six or seven million dollars" toward efforts to get an arena built in Charlotte. Inexpicably, just when it seemed the two sides were close to an agreement on a new building, the political leadership in Charlotte decided to put the matter to a public referendum in June of last year instead of hammering out a deal. Local cynics point out that many of Charlotte's city council members were up for re-election and didn't want to have an arena vote on their records.
When the referendum was bundled to other, less pleasant legislation, it was torpedoed by voters 57 percent to 43.
"So our choice was pretty well made for us at that point," Shinn says now. "We made a subsequent attempt to re-engage with the community, and were given the same answer. So at that point, we accelerated our plans to move to our alternatives and that's resulted in a move to New Orlenans."
McCrory says the new arena proposal was "exactly what they (Shinn and Wooldridge) asked for two years ago. The current NBA ownership team said they needed an arena with suites which would help them pay their bills. We are now building an arena with suites ... everything they've asked for we have basically offered them but we have to stay within the financial ramifications of what we can afford, especially during tough economic times."
Which means Shinn and Wooldridge couldn't get their hands on that juicy naming and pouring rights loot. And they'd have to keep playing in Charlotte Coliseum, where they claim annual losses of $15 million to $20 million, for at least two years while the new arena is built. That was a no go for them in the end.
Now though, Charlotte wants one more shot at presenting its proposal. This time it will be to a prospective new owner of an expansion franchise.
"It's very difficult, when you're in negotiations, for people not to choose sides. But again, the contracts that had been negotiated this past year, had been passed on and deemed as being fair by the NBA Board of Governors. So I think we all have to share the blame. But it's water under the bridge. The decisions have been made. And the franchise is moving to New Orleans. We need to get a team back in Charlotte and we are trying to pursue that with David Stern and the NBA."
There are still a lot of owners who have their doubts. This is by no means a done deal. But when the Hornets do leave now, the commish could ease some of Charlotte's pain. He should keep Charlotte in the game by making them whole again. The earliest a new team could enter the League is in time for the 2003-04 season, but Charlotte would need an ownership team in place very soon. It is more likely that a team would start in time for the 2004-05 season. If, Stern grants them a team that is.
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