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--> --> NBA owners approve Hornets' move from Charlotte to New Orleans By Mary Foster AP Sports Writer NEW ORLEANS - The NBA is back in the Big Easy. "We did it, we did it, New Orleans," former mayor Marc Morial shouted while pumping his fists after the announcement that the NBA's owners had approved the Charlotte Hornets' move. Spurned first by the Jazz, who moved to Utah 23 years ago, and more recently by the Timberwolves and Grizzlies, the city and state mounted an all-out effort to land the Hornets. Detractors scoffed at the idea because of the size of the city and the poverty level of the state. "There were a lot of doubters out there and I was one of them," majority owner George Shinn said as he sipped champagne Friday. "We checked a lot of cities and, quite honestly, my favorite was Norfolk, Va. I quickly changed my mind when I got here, though." New Orleans got a boost from having an arena that would be ready for the team with only minor modifications. It also exceeded the league's requirements, selling more than 10,500 season tickets and had three-to-five-year agreements on 55 luxury suites. Gov. Mike Foster promised and delivered legislative approval of millions of dollars in incentive expenditures for the team: $10 million to upgrade the state-owned New Orleans Arena, plus several million more to be generated each year from the New Orleans area hotel tax. "I never was worried, ever," co-owner Ray Wooldridge said. "I said the day I walked into this city it was a 100 percent certainty." Gaining the team is a public relations coup for the tourism-dependent city, although the team itself will add relatively little to the economy. A study by University of New Orleans economist Tim Ryan indicated that the Hornets probably will add $54 million to the New Orleans metropolitan area during its first season. "It's certainly not going to make or break our economy from the pure economics of it," Ryan said. Friday's NBA vote officially made the Hornets lame ducks in Charlotte, where they will keep playing as long as they stay alive in the NBA playoffs. Players said they would continue to focus on Eastern Conference semifinals against the Nets - not the impending move. Last year, Charlotte voters defeated a proposal to finance a new arena. Hornets owners then said they had to move to avoid millions of dollars in annual losses, in part from drastically declining attendance. It is the second time in two years that an NBA franchise has been allowed to change cities. Last summer, the Grizzlies moved from Vancouver to Memphis. Before that, the NBA had gone 16 years without a team changing cities. The Hornets led the league in attendance for several seasons after entering the league during the expansion era of the late 1980s. But the relationship among the fans, owners and local politicians deteriorated, and the team was last in the NBA in attendance this season. The team lost $15 million in Charlotte last season and could lose $20 million this season, Wooldridge said. "It's hard to uproot and move," Shinn said. "But we were in a situation economically where we had to do something." Hornets coach Paul Silas described how frustrating the issue has been. "It's like a kid when his parents go through a divorce," Silas said. "It affects him, but really he has nothing to do with it. That's kind of the way this was. All the questions were directed at us. Our owners weren't saying anything and, really, the other side wasn't saying a lot, so we got kind of stuck with it. We've done what we're supposed to do. We won games." Email your... Technical questions & comments to: WebMaster Daily Tidings editorial comments & questions to: Editor Visit our other Oregon Newspapers... | Albany Democrat-Herald | Ashland Daily Tidings | Corvallis Gazette-Times | | Lebanon Express | Newport News-Times | Springfield News | Cottage Grove Sentinel | Ashland Daily Tidings 1661 Siskiyou Blvd. Ashland, OR 97520 Telephone 541-482-3456 © Copyright 2001 Lee Northwest Publishing