Would any sports fan in the world have seen this coming? At one point, people thought the team would leave asap. The team and the state came to an agreement that called for a minimum number of tickets to be sold. Anyone remember 14,735? Anyone remember winning 18 out of 82 games three years ago?
The Hornets are tops in the NBA Western Conference with 4 games left to play. They have clinched a playoff berth and at the current time, are seeded number one heading into the playoffs. The toughest conference in the league and the HORNETS are on top. No one, including the team saw this coming. They expected to be good, but even they did not see them being on top with 4 games to go. The Hornets just wanted to make the playoffs, seeding was not really important, just get in.
That is no longer the case. The city has gotten Hornets fever. Citizens expect Chis Paul (CP3 to the clueless) to win the league’s MVP trophy. New Orleanians expect the team to go all the way…or at the very least the Western Conference Finals. We’ve seen this team dismantle pretty much every team in the league at some point….except one. Of course, that one team is the team that has some history in NOLA too.
The one team that has handled the Hornets is the team with the nickname that should be across the New Orleans jersey. The freakin Jazz. The team that once was ours is the club that the current NBA franchise in town can’t seem to handle.
I write this because of what happened Monday night in the NCAA championship game. I lived in Memphis for awhile, ran the sports talk radio station in town for a good number of years. I made friends in Memphis and have fond memories of some of my times there. No city other than New Orleans really deserves to be labeled a championship city than Memphis. They’ve had tough times, racial and economic woes. A NCAA championship would have given the folks there a good boost, something positive to latch onto, to get them thru times when things are troublesome. But they didn’t get it. They were the better team, played well and such but in the end they blew it.
I go there because I see the same thing coming our way in regards to Le Hornets. This team is good enough to make the NBA finals. No doubt about that in my eyes. But if things play out in their normal way, we’ll have to play the Jazz at some point, a nickname that BELONGS in New Orleans. And in the un-fair world of sports, the city of New Orleans will end up being the bridesmaid to a franchise that broke the city’s heart 30 years ago.
