There are several people concerned with the apparent move of the Charlotte Hornets to New Orleans to become the Fighting Turtle Soups, the Battling Beignets or the Delta Hellweasels. They live in Charlotte and New Orleans.
|  | | Hornets owner George Shinn, left, thinks he'll have better luck in New Orleans. |
Which is fine. They should be concerned. It's their team, more or less.
But for the rest of us ... well, a team in purple-and-teal by any other name is sort of like the Cincinnati Royals. Out of sight, out of mind.
If that seems harsh to you, well, that's fine. But we have evidence that more and more NBA teams are touching fewer and fewer people, and at the present rate, the NBA will consist in 10 years of Shaquille O'Neal, Kobe Bryant and Michael Jordan preserved in Lenin's Tomb.
If that's your idea of a good time.
The NBA in New Orleans is, of course, nothing new. How do you think they came up with the Utah Jazz, for God's sake? And the NBA going to smaller TV markets because of owners who couldn't make a go in bigger ones
is equally historical. See Kings from Kansas City to Sacramento, Jazz from NO to SLC, and most recently, Grizzlies from Vancouver to Memphis.
In fact, let's wallow in that one for a moment. Michael Heisley couldn't make Vancouver sit up and love his Grizz, even though they were far more Grisly than Grizzly at any stage. So he left in a huff, and went to Memphis, where the city fathers, mothers and unemployed uncles sitting on park benches promised to sit up and love them.
Except that, no, they haven't. The Grizz sold out its home opener against Detroit, which only figures since it was the first NBA game played in the state of Tennessee.
Then it sold out its game against Allen Iverson, and its game against Michael Jordan, and its game against KobeShaq. The rest of the time, it is averaging only slightly more in attendance than it did last year in British
Columbia, where the basketball tradition runs as deep as the samba tradition.
Now I don't know how that affects dinnertime at your house, but where I live, it one of those things that makes you go, ""Hmmm ... "
Then you look and see that not only are the Grizzlies proving eminently resistable, so to varying degrees are most of the other teams.
There are currently only four teams that automatically announce sellouts -- the Kings, Knicks, Lakers and Wizards. Of that group, the Kings are fun to watch and the only show in town. The Knicks are old and in the way, and there is evidence of empty seats being unbused by people who bought them, which in itself is a bad sign. The Wizards have Mikey. And the Lakers win nearly every game.
There are also a few teams who sell out fairly routinely, like the Bucks, Mavericks, Timberwolves and Spurs. They are also good teams on the come, and in the cases of the Bucks and Mavs, good teams following a long run of not-good teams. As any marketer will tell you, nothing succeeds like following failure.
But there are a lot of teams that, even allowing for the fudge factor of announced attendances, cannot fill their building very often. Former automatics like the Suns, Blazers, Heat, Rockets, Sonics, Jazz, Celtics, Hornets, Bulls, Pacers and Magic are that no longer, and the same ongoing problem spots, like the Warriors, Hawks, Cavaliers, remain so.
Add to that the troublesome TV ratings for any teams not featuring Mikey or Shaqobe, and you can see why David Stern isn't doing his old stand-up routine as often as he used to.
Does he have reason to think Louisiana will do for Shinn what North Carolina stopped doing? If he does, it's not a very good one. New Orleans' pro sports history is short and largely unpleasant, as any Saints fan will testify.
Is he nodding to Shinn just to get off the phone? Yeah, probably. Shinn can give you a headache through the mail, as any Hornet fan will testify.
Is he thinking that the league will be better off with its players exposed to the joys of Bourbon Street and Casino Alley? Yeah, sure.
Besides, he's got all he can handle noticing the number of large-market teams who are trying desperately to avoid the playoffs. The Knicks, for one. The Bulls, Warriors, Rockets, Sixers, Nuggets, etc. for others. The spectre of a Bucks-Spurs final still confronts NBC like a pit bull that just got its property tax bill.
So the idea of the New Orleans Church Gargoyles doesn't bother David Stern all that much. It's the same lunch on a different plate -- as unsatisfying as it would have been in Charlotte.
As for the rest of us, we feel Charlotte's pain, just as we feel New Orleans' anticipation. Then we lie down for a minute and it goes away again.
Ray Ratto of the San Francisco Chronicle is a regular contributor to ESPN.com.
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