Charlotte And The NBA

[Trauma-san]

Well, as most of you know, Charlotte, NC, was once home to the Charlotte Hornets, a pretty good ballteam, but never champions.  The group had it's first season in 1989, and played out of the Independence Arena, a smaller venue near downtown until their new arena was built.  After the first year, The Charlotte Coliseum, at the time, the largest Coliseum in America, was built for them... they sold out their first year, and the next 3 years in their new arena, and by doing so, set league attendance records for 3 years straight.  Most of this was on the backs of Charlotte's 2 fan favorites, Muggsy Bogues, and Dell Curry.  The Charlotte fans supported the Hornets to no end, Teal and Purple was all over town.

For the next few years, Charlotte continued to sell out everygame, even though the Charlotte Coliseum was no longer the largest NBA arena.  Then, things started changing.  Charlotte was gifted with a few choice draft picks, and quickly amassed a great team, Including Larry Johnson, Alonzo Mourning, Dell Curry (Named 6th man of the year), and several other key players who were all capable of consistently scoring over 20 points a game.  The Hornets did well, although they never had a sense of unity, they never played as a 'team' too much, although they were quite successful, and one year made it to the eastern conference finals.  Are mascot, Hugo the Hornet, revolutionized mascots when he turned into "Super Hugo" and won all the slam dunk competitions for like 3 years.  People used to come just to see him do a flip and dunk the ball, I'm serious.  

All along, a troublesome problem kept bugging the fans in charlotte, however... I know, because I was one of them.  Everytime the Hornets would get a good player, management and the player would have difficulties, and the owners of the Hornets would trade the player for whatever the hell they could get out of him. First, they traded Larry Johnson. Then Alonzo Mourning.  Then they traded Glen Rice.  They traded Dell Curry.  They Traded Eddie Johnson.  The hornets even had friekin' KOBE BRYANT for a little while, but the team was so horrible he wouldn't even play 1 game for them.  The Hornets have either Traded or fired Rex Chapman, J.R. Reed, Kendall Gill, Larry Johnson, Alonzo Mourning, Scott Burrell, Kobe Bryant, Vlade Divac, Glen Rice, Anthony Mason, Matt Geiger, Muggsy Bogues, Dell Curry, Kurt Rambis, Kenny Gattison, Randolph Keys, Eddie Johnson, Hershey Hawkins, David Wingate, B.J. Armstrong, Vernon Maxwell, and Eddie Robinson.

After the league struck, and games were cancelled for a while, the Hornets were never the same.  Fans stopped going.. .tickets started showing up everywhere for free.  The lack of management and a good ownership team had most eveyrone in town disgusted.  Then, along comes, of ALL PEOPLE, MICHAEL JORDAN, the greatest man to ever even say the word Basketball.  What did Jordan want? Oh, well, see, he played ball in Wilmington, and friekin' LIVED HERE For the first 20 years of his life.  He wanted to buy part of the team.  Are Bullsh*T perv of an owner (George Shinn, who had JUST been accused of sexually assualting half a dozen women... oh, yeah, he's married) REFUSED to even entertain the idea of letting Jordan buy half the team.   He didn't want to sell.  Jordan publically STATED, PUBLICALLY, that he wanted to buy half the team, transfer ownership rights for 1 full year, and play a comeback season as starting forward for the Charlotte Hornets.  PLAY FOR THE HORNETS.  Might I add Jordan's black.

About 3 months later, here comes Ray Woolridge.  Woolridge is white.  Guess what... Ray Woolridge buys half the team from George Shinn.  Would somebody like to tell me what the HELL HAPPENED THERE?  So, from then on, we have George shinn, the pervert who NO LONGER EVEN FRIEKIN LIVED IN CHARLOTTE, and RAy Woolridge owning the team.  Shinn refused to sell it to MICHAEL JORDAN (Just so you all get this straight) and sold it to an old white guy instead.  Yes, he refused to sell the team to GOD HIMSELF, and instead sold it to some noname we've never heard of.  Why? because he hates the fans.  Only possible answer.  Jordan played against the hornets a few months ago, He scored 51 points.  Maybe that tells you what he thinks of George Shinn.  If he can do that 4-5 years later, Imagine what he would have done for the hornets back then when he wanted to play for us? It makes me sick.

So, after George Shinn took a big steaming dump on Michael Jordan and the entire city of Charlotte, NOBODY gave a damn anymore.  The seats were half full, the team even hated themselves.  So, what's next? Well, Next, George Shinn gets the bright Idea, that he needs a BIGGER ARENA, because the 10,000 fans that ARE coming to the game apparently aren't making him enough money in his 27,000 seat arena he had custom built for the hornets 10 years ago.  

So, like any good business man, he tries to get the Charlotte City Council to o.k. plans to build a new arena, smack in downtown Charlotte, on prime real estate (the only place he wanted to move).  So, how much does he want us, the taxpayers, the fans that hate him to pay?  ALL OF IT.  He doesn't want us to pay 20%, or 30% like the City Council suggested; no, he wants us to pay for the whole damn arena.  For a team that trades every good player they get (I swear, the Charlotte Hornets were a friekin' petrie dish. Once they were grown, they were traded), the team that refused to let michael jordan play for them, even though at the time, he stated that "the only team he would ever play for besides Chicago would be the Charlotte Hornets".  The team that traded off players that weren't even WORTH anything, that the kids liked, just to piss people off (Muggsy bogues was NEVER anymore than competant, but yet, everyone in town idolized him.  So, of course, he was one of the first to go, even though charlotte got absolutely nothing for him).

So, next up, the Charlotte City council holds a vote.  Let the charlotte Taxpayers decide, if they want to build the Hornets a new arena, even though their other one is only 10 years old.  Guess what we voted?  Well, we voted a big HELL NO in the formal vote that was taken, and the Hornets threatened to leave, if city council didn't override the vote.  After months of begging, the City Council told the hornets they couldn't o.k. the arena, and the Hornets moved to New Orleans.  They played their last game last week.. and frankly, nobody cares.  It was a playoff game, and there were like 100 people in the crowd, LOL.  

So, the Hornets are gone.  Guess what? 1 week later, we already have 2 teams of owners begging the NBA to let them buy a franchise in Charlotte, One headed by Larry Byrd, one of the greatest players of all time.  League officials are saying they realize the problem in Charlotte wasn't the fans, and it's looking likely that we'll have another team, in a new, privately funded uptown arena in a year and a half.  George Shinn, can kiss my, and every other Charlotte Basketball fan's a$$, as far as we're concerned.  So, 2003, lookout for the Charlotte Bug Killers, coming your way.

[Javier]

didnt Stern say the most likely year Charlotte will have another team is in 2005.  Oh and wasnt Kobe traded the same day in the draft? I Dont think he refused playing in Charlotte

[Trauma-san]

He had stated before that there's no way he'd ever play in charlotte, that's why he was traded as soon as he was drafted.  He never played a single game, or as far as I know, even stepped foot in charlotte before he was playing against us.  He was never considered 'part of the team' and I frankly can't blame him for as much as we sucked at the time.  

I dunno about what Stern said, I'm just talking about what Byrd's said he's shootin' for.

[Sub-Z]

yea,kobe was traded on draft day..

[Doggystylin]

i wish kobe went to charlotte, lakers would never have won those championships without him

[E. J. Rizo]

i agree to a certain extent cause he is really important but i think i can argue that shaq with a good supporting cast could have done it cause i still believe that shaq is the leader of the team kobe hasnt quite gotten to that level yet and i think its gonna take a couple of more years but dont get me wrong kobe is a big time player........GO LAKERS IN 7 BABY!!!!!!!!(by the way its gonna be one hell of a game) and i see this as a rivalry for years to come Lakers and KINGS

[The Big Bad Ass]

Wow, that was an interesting read. I didn't know the history with MJ. And reading that part about all the talent they wasted made me laugh. It is a blessing for the city that they don't have to deal with that kind of ownership anymore.