First and foremost let me get this out of the way, having a basketball team is in no way shape or form ever going to make up for the impact of Hurricane Katrina upon the city of New Orleans, the State of Louisiana and the entire southeastern United States. Don't get me wrong it is a beautiful thing for the people of New Orleans to have sports to entertain them and for them to lose themselves in other activities to reduce the levity of such a catastrophic event. BUT they don't even go to the games anymore and the Saints run that city and always have. That Superbowl win was the sporting equivalent of their return from Katrina and helped generate a lot of pride for the area. Not that a Superbowl will ever fix any of the problems that were created during that storm but its a nice reprieve.
Ok now it is just a farce that they still have a team and get the carte blanche treatment from the NBA and David Stern in regards to their struggling interest and support of their team. Its really a sad joke, nobody wants to invest in the team anymore because it is regarded as a lost cause until somebody comes up with hundreds of millions dollars to purchase them. The local economy has other fish to fry and more important issues to deal with than a faltering basketball team which never found its place in the city upon its return from Charlotte. That is another point of contention for me, George Shinn's stupid ass should have never been able to move the team from North Carolina and Stern definitely did not need to put the Bobcats in Duke/UNC/WOLFPACK country when expansion talks were underway. They are smart basketball fans in N.C and won't buy into a poorly run team even if Micheal Jordan is still riding his NCAA championship goodwill in the state (i know he is also from there...big deal). Guy guts the team every ten days to extract a better profit margin when he is a kajillionaire.
Anyway, the city of Seattle deserves a team because the fans bleed green and gold, N.O not so much. Stern can't take another public relations hit before he retires (lockouts, relocation's, poor decisions blocking the Chris Paul trade etc...) so this is probably going to die on the table if N.O is the target. Like it was previously stated, we should get Sacramento because the Maloofs are poor and won't be bailed out a second time by the NBA. Christoper Hansen (sp?) would spend to put a team out there to compete or this entire process is a moot point. I don't think he would invest in the location for the stadium and pressure the NBA in conjunction with the city officials of Seattle if he just wanted to make money. He could start other business ventures much more easily. This is about him becoming a local hero like Paul Allen by resurrecting the Sonics and making them relevant again in American Sporting Culture. If this guy gets the team, we are going to kick ass and take names. Money will be spent and he will get all the support he needs from the fans in a similar vein.
