When the Hornets and the Bucks tip off tonight inside the Charlotte Coliseum for Game 3 of their NBA playoff series, there could be close to 10,000 empty seats.

And should the Hornets continue to sleepwalk through the first half of games or attempt, as they did the other night, to compete with just four players, they could face the possibility of trailing 0-3 in the series and playing on Mother's Day inside a half-empty Hive.

This, my friends, would be my fair city of Charlotte's finest hour. In a nation of zombified sports sycophants, seemingly tired of the greed, the lies and the outlaw athletes but unwilling to do anything about it, one brave town will have finally stood up, turned its back to all that is bad in professional sports and said, simply, "No thanks."

The most powerful lobby in sports is the ticket-buying public. But it is a voice that has gone almost completely unused. Why? The only way to make changes in pro sports is to hit teams where it hurts -- in their pocketbooks. And to do this requires sports fans to be 100 times more sophisticated, savvy and hardcore than the face-painted sports sheep that live in most cities.

Remember, withdrawal in disgust is not the same as apathy.

Players beat their wives and girlfriends, we buy season tickets. Drivers die, and we go out and buy more souvenirs. Ticket prices escalate. Role models evaporate. Owners hold us hostage and threaten to leave town, and we tailgate. Entire seasons are lost to strikes and we smile, wipe the loogie off our faces and say, "Gee, wow, a real sports loogie, coooooool."

It has to stop somehow. It has to stop somewhere.

I'm hoping history will show that the revolution started in Charlotte. And that same perspective will show that the Hornets have no one to blame but themselves.

Back in 1988, Charlotte embraced this team like no city has ever supported a professional sports franchise. For eight of the next nine seasons the Hornets led the league in attendance, selling out 358 consecutive games in the 24,000-plus seat Hive.

And for their support the Hornets rewarded their fans by never advancing past the second round or even sniffing a championship.

The sellouts stopped.

Surely just a fluke ... why, this city is lucky to have us.

Too cheap to keep their superstars, the Hornets let Larry Johnson, Alonzo Mourning, Vlade Divac and Eddie Jones pass through town on their way to bigger and better things.

The crowds dipped below 20,000.

An anomaly, yes, that's it, an anomaly. Fans are like drug addicts, they'll put up with anything to get their fix.

Instead, the team signed perpetually troubled guys like Anthony Mason and Captain Charlotte himself, Derrick Coleman, who will collect $8 million for a season he started grotesquely overweight and finished by leaving the court during a crucial one-point playoff loss without bothering to tell anyone.

Attendance dipped into the teens.

What the hell is wrong with these people? Throw some free junk at at 'em or something.

Somewhere during all of this, beloved guard Bobby Phills was killed racing his car down a city street after practice and the owner, who forces a prayer on fans over the PA system before games, was appearing on Court TV for alleged sexual improprieties.

The team was forced to put up a tarp to try and hide the cavernous effect of so many empty seats.

Wait, wait, uh, someone tell all these folks that you can't be a world-class city without major league sports teams, right?

To top it all off, recently the team began threatening to leave for Memphis if Charlotte -- a town with crumbling infrastructure, nearly non-existent arts and overflowing schools -- didn't spend a quarter-billion dollars to build a replacement palace for an arena that is only 13 years old.

But wait, there's more -- after the team withdrew its application to move to Graceland and came crawling back, the condescending NBA commish said Charlotte was darn lucky it didn't lose the team.

Even though tickets are still available for as little as $12, the phones aren't exactly ringing off the hook. And so, on the day before Game 3 the team was reduced to having radio yahoos beg and bully fans into buying tickets. Here's a slogan: "The Charlotte Hornets and the NBA playoffs: No Waiting!"

How many fans will show up?

It doesn't matter.

They will all be drowned out by the deafening message sent by those 10,000 empty seats in the Hive.

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