Bobcats in Midseason form

How many times do you have to be told that the Bird/Belkin group was not the best group on merit before you get it? Johnson's was the best group by a long shot. If Larry Bird's name wasn't on the Belkin group, he would have been laughed out of the whole process, and even with Bird he wasn't taken nearly as seriously as some of you would believe.

The problem is that the city wasn't ready for a team, and Johnson doesn't understand that. He thinks that if he ignores the history here, eventually Charlotte will come around and support his team. It doesn't help that he doesn't really understand the unique business environment of owning an NBA team either.

 

Even if he wanted to sell(which I hear might not be too far off into the future), he has to buy someone willing to buy. Who would want to buy a mediocre NBA team with an arena lease that says they have to basically pay off the construction debt if they leave, especially in this economy?

 

Yeah, it's got nothing to do with the ownership (although they could do a better job). The fact is nobody cares about the NBA in the area especially since the Panthers are around.

 

What is ridiculous is the arena wasn't built to host the ACC tourney or the Final Four which a huge majority do care about.

 

How many does the arena hold?

 

19,000 they just held the ACC tourney there last year.

 

That's the Number One failure of the arena. The ACC tournament > Bobcats.

 

it would be different if it were held there every year. theres not a thing wrong with that arena.

 

Unfortunately huge basketball tournaments are going to domes. I wish it was big enough for the ACC Tourney as well but the only cities getting Final Fours are ones with huge domes.

Charlotte never had another shot at a Final Four.

Unfortunately, with the 18k+ seat arena, we likely don't have a shot at another ACC Tourney (although the committee was very favorable here last year, I think we have one more guaranteed.)

 

I posted here quite some time ago a link to an article from before the arena was built quoting Swofford as saying that the old arena wasn't adequate due to the lack of luxury seating and that the only way Charlotte would be a candidate for future tournaments was to build a new arena with lots of luxury seats.

And forget about a final four, they only go to domes these days. You'd have to cover Bank of America stadium to get one of those.