NBA Possibly Relocating Memphis & New Orleans
- Thread starter Stick Up Kid
- Start date
There are levels.
Not sure why this is even a talking point. Nothing is replacing college football down south -- primarily across the bible belt. Ever.
Draymond Green says small crowd for Warriors game a sign NBA should 'take a look' at Pelicans
Golden State Warriors forward Draymond Green became the latest NBA player – active or retired – to speculate, however subtly, that the New Orleans Pelicans should be relocated.
"Quieting the home crowd is always fun," Green said after the Warriors' 124-106 win over the Pelicans on Sunday evening. "This crowd wasn't too loud to begin with, so yeah."
Green was then asked when he last remembered the Warriors playing in a half-empty arena with superstar teammate Stephen Curry on the court.
"Yeah [laughs] you know, the Steph Curry show," Green said. "It usually travels on the road, but hey, this place is. Whew, it's tough in here. [Starts smiling] tough. Very tough in here. Might want to take a look!"
Green reiterated his point when asked if playing in an empty arena impacts the team's play.
"It definitely impacts it," Green said. "You know, you want to go in full arenas. [Smiles again] it also helps the entire league out, so [the league] might want to take a look! It's interesting. Might need to take a look."
Green's comments came days after Demarcus Cousins said he thinks the Pelicans should relocate.
"I think it was time five or six years ago, especially for New Orleans," Cousins said on the "Road Trippin" podcast. "I mean, you go to the games, it's about 36 people there. Courtside's $25. It's not really much going. There's not much success happening for just that part of it. There hasn't been any success. There just hasn't. It's time."
Cousins, who played with the Pelicans from 2016-18, played with Green in Golden State in the 2018-19 season.
Perkins, who also played for the Pelicans, was also asked about the potential of the New Orleans franchise being located.
"I played in New Orleans," Perkins said. "Here's the problem with New Orleans. I understand where Demarcus is coming from, where Big Cuz is coming from, because he played there. They are always going to be second to the New Orleans Saints. That city is all about the New Orleans Saints. They don't give a d--- about the Pelicans. You have to f----- win in order to fill seats up."
Perkins then brought up the initial hype that Zion Williamson brought to the city after he got drafted in 2019.
"Think about how big of a disappointment he has been," Perkins said. "They're probably frustrated and tired with this organization and the direction it's going in as well. I'm in-between. I wouldn't say Demarcus Cousins is tripping because I kind of feel where he's coming from, but he better be prepared for those comments because those New Orleans people, they coming at his a--."
Pelicans owner Gayle Benson recently told The Times-Picayune that she does not plan on selling the Pelicans, and the team will stay in New Orleans.
Soldier
not redeemed with gold but with His Blood
The Northeast corridor from Boston to Washington DC might be the exception to this rule. Few people in that area care about college football or baseball. The people who are living in the cities prefer their local pro baseball/football teams over college sports.
maybe in Connecticut/New England/boston where college hockey is popular ( frozen four, Boston college, quinnipiac men’s ice hockey team) and in Connecticut/philly/dmv/nova, where college basketball is popular too ( Maryland terps, St. John’s, temple, Drexel, UConn, Georgetown Hoyas, Villanova etc)
But as a while, professional sports leagues rule the roost over there. In Boston, Philly, NYC, Washington DC, Baltimore…… NBA, NFL, MLB, NHL are much more popular than their college sports/athletics counterparts.
Otherwise what you said holds true. In the southern states, they love college football more than anything- it’s a social glue down there. People from all walks of life rally around their local College football teams, trams like Alabama/rollride, Texas longhorns, Oklahoma football, SMU football, Georgia/dawgs, LSU tigers, razorbacks, auburn, Florida Gators, Tennessee vols/volunteers etc are So ingrained in the daily lives of people here and are intrinsically rooted in the social fabric and culture of
the south. North Carolina and Kentucky are the only two other exceptions to the southern state football centric culture-college basketball reigns supreme in both states.
In the Midwest, they put the pro sports teams and college teams on an equal footing. In the northeast they only show and give love to the pro sports teams and ignore college sports for the most part. Out west, on the surface they seem to behave like Midwesterners but passion and enthusiasm for sports whether college or pro level, seems to weaker there and seems more muted than other regions of the USA.
And up north in Canada, junior hockey teams of the CHL-Canadian hockey league( OHL, QMJHL, WHL) are popular in their own markets , Canadian football league ( CFL) is a staple in Hamilton, Ontario and in the prairie provinces(Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta) otherwise few people care. In the big cities, the NHL teams are the biggest draws and have no competition from other sports leagues other than the CFL or CHL teams . But in the Toronto market , the Maple Leafs share media coverage, fans, spotlight, and entertainment dollars with the Blue Jays and the Raptors.
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triplehate
Superstar
Contract 8 teams 
the next guy
Superstar
It is one thing for us be talking about this on the forum. For players to say this? That's a problem. I remember when NHL players were doing this about the Phoenix Coyotes @Soldier...
nightwing2016
All Star
Draymond is an idiot, by that logic the warriors should have been moved before Steph got there. They used to call oracle arena staples north
murksiderock
Superstar
I agree with much of this. There are layers to it, though.
Like, I think in most cities that have a major league team, that team is the city's favorite over the local college squads. I live in Raleigh, which is a basketball crazy city. Basketball is popular at every level, rec leagues, streetball, ome of the reasons I always tell people that the Hornets would have better ROI and fan interest (Charlotte is a football city). But even with Raleigh being a basketball city;
The Hurricanes are our team. Its similar to how the Knights are Vegas's team. Both UNLV sports in Vegas, and NC State athletics in Raleigh, are immensely popular still, and have long history in both cities. I would say both are #2 in both cities. Hockey as a whole isn't huge in the Southeast or Southwest/Pacific, but the Knights and Canes are the first majors in those cities, those two will always be "the team" in those places (even if Raleigh gets that MLB expansion team in a few years, I doubt they ever surpass the popularity of the Canes).
College basketball in general is still big locally, but its more of either, an older person thing, or young people affiliated with the universities thing, in Raleigh city. People in Raleigh city have their allegiances (there are Duke and UNC fans all over Raleigh too), but in the city that rabid college basketball passion isn't really there outside of those demographics---->besides just rooting for everything NCSU.
That rabid college basketball passion that NC is known for, still exists, just not to that extent in Raleigh (or Charlotte)...I guess what I'm attempting to do is highlight the contrasts between cities and states. I think most cities have high engagement with the pro teams, even if they also support the local college.
The state outside the cities is where most of the college fandom is at.
The original comment about the South being college football heavy, is true. But most the states in the South don't have an NFL team, of course the college squads are more relevant in places like Arkansas and Alabama and Oklahoma. Nothing is bigger than the Cowboys in Texas. I would say LSU is the biggest brand in Louisiana, but in New Orleans city, are they on par with the Saints?
The Titans, Vols, and Vanderbilt all seem about equal in Nashville, even though the Vols are the bigger brand statewide.
I just feel like there's a natural contrast between college teams and the pros in most cities with pro teams.
Marc Spector
the 4'11 Cuban
A few things...
1. Anyone who doesnt think Seattle basketball wont succeed is crazy. Seattle will be a top 10 (and not 10) NBA fanbase overnight. Too much money here, too much diversity and too many young professionals for it not to pop.
2. The problem with New Orleans is the ownership. The Bensons dont give a fukk about the NBA and never have. They did Stern a solid by buying the team. The Zion acquisition was supposed to reinvigorate the Bensons investment (who btw were steaming mad from how the NFL fukked over the Saints for the Rams and saw AD to the Lakers as NO getting fukked over for LA, AGAIN) but Zion has been a complete disappointment (theres also something to be said about "franchise saviors" in the NBA in that. they largely dont exist and teams are better off not betting the farm on them).
IMO the Pels turning it around hinges on getting the current leadership out of there. They need to get whomever they can from OKC/San Antonios front office to run things. They should also ask the NBA for subsidy money too so that they can pay top dollar for new leadership.
The NBA shouldnt leave New Orleans (i dont think they want to leave NO either) as I think its a decent market, but they need to be courting new ownership. But thats easier said than done, given that the economy is shyt AND the Gulf Coast doesnt have a lot of big money players.
3. Memphis doesnt deserve to lose their team, but its only a matter of time. The name of the game is all about selling PSLs and outside of FedEx and CMG (lol) who is really buying them? When its time to beg the city for tax money, where is the NBA going to find the money in a city that notoriously has vast amounts of poverty and low wages?
I have been saying for literal years that Nashville is the move and nikkas dont want to hear it. Well guess what, as i also predicted the fall out of Ja in Memphis is the excuse their checked out owner is looking for to sell that team. Bridgestone is where they host the SEC bball tourney, its NBA ready as is. They will be gone in a decade.
1. Anyone who doesnt think Seattle basketball wont succeed is crazy. Seattle will be a top 10 (and not 10) NBA fanbase overnight. Too much money here, too much diversity and too many young professionals for it not to pop.
2. The problem with New Orleans is the ownership. The Bensons dont give a fukk about the NBA and never have. They did Stern a solid by buying the team. The Zion acquisition was supposed to reinvigorate the Bensons investment (who btw were steaming mad from how the NFL fukked over the Saints for the Rams and saw AD to the Lakers as NO getting fukked over for LA, AGAIN) but Zion has been a complete disappointment (theres also something to be said about "franchise saviors" in the NBA in that. they largely dont exist and teams are better off not betting the farm on them).
IMO the Pels turning it around hinges on getting the current leadership out of there. They need to get whomever they can from OKC/San Antonios front office to run things. They should also ask the NBA for subsidy money too so that they can pay top dollar for new leadership.
The NBA shouldnt leave New Orleans (i dont think they want to leave NO either) as I think its a decent market, but they need to be courting new ownership. But thats easier said than done, given that the economy is shyt AND the Gulf Coast doesnt have a lot of big money players.
3. Memphis doesnt deserve to lose their team, but its only a matter of time. The name of the game is all about selling PSLs and outside of FedEx and CMG (lol) who is really buying them? When its time to beg the city for tax money, where is the NBA going to find the money in a city that notoriously has vast amounts of poverty and low wages?
I have been saying for literal years that Nashville is the move and nikkas dont want to hear it. Well guess what, as i also predicted the fall out of Ja in Memphis is the excuse their checked out owner is looking for to sell that team. Bridgestone is where they host the SEC bball tourney, its NBA ready as is. They will be gone in a decade.
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the next guy
Superstar
Which is why they should just do expansion! Where is Silver going to find 1.2 billion to buy out Gayle?
But the Rams are winners in LA so...
Similarly, moving heaven and earth to select Queen (after the Pelicans had already taken an attacking guard, Jeremiah Fears, with the seventh pick) fit this blueprint to a tee. That this was allowed to happen is less an indictment of Weaver than of Benson’s arm’s-length management of the Pelicans, who basically operate as a subsidiary of the New Orleans Saints, and in turn, Dumars’ arm’s-length operation of basketball operations that empowered an underling to make such a massive move. It’s telling that the Pelicans couldn’t even get around to green-lighting the firing of Green until the Saints were on a bye week. The Pels train at the Saints’ facility, which you’ll be shocked to learn is optimized for an NFL team and not the NBA, and for years have lagged behind their rivals when it comes to investments in training facilities, staffing and player performance support.-
As for the coaching change, that deserves its own special chapter in the story of New Orleans’ ongoing dysfunction. For starters, Green being dismissed so early — with rumors about his job security cropping up a week into the campaign — is a perfect case of the adage that if you fire a coach in the first half of the season, it means you should have done it over the summer.
Alas, the Pelicans couldn’t fire Green largely because the owner was besties with Green’s wife and wouldn’t allow it. Yes, really. Former GM David Griffin reportedly tried to pull the trigger twice last season and wasn’t allowed to.
At a franchise level, the Pelicans have never spent into the luxury tax, although they’ve not had a team that would justify such an expenditure since Chris Paul left, and play in what is arguably the league’s worst arena. The team is a distant third in the sport fandom hierarchy of a small market, far behind the Saints and LSU. While Benson insisted in a recent interview that the team was not for sale, it’s not hard to find people in the league who wonder how long the franchise can realistically continue in New Orleans.
Nonetheless, the premise of a Fears-Queen combo leading the Pels into the future would be a lot more believable minus the organizational dysfunction that has been a near-constant feature of Benson’s ownership and that has only accelerated in the last six months. As the Pelicans meander toward whatever it is they’re doing next and Hawks fans take inappropriate delight in their demise, it’s clear the coaching change alone isn’t going to fix what ails this franchise.-John Hollinger
Horrible ownership
As for the coaching change, that deserves its own special chapter in the story of New Orleans’ ongoing dysfunction. For starters, Green being dismissed so early — with rumors about his job security cropping up a week into the campaign — is a perfect case of the adage that if you fire a coach in the first half of the season, it means you should have done it over the summer.
Alas, the Pelicans couldn’t fire Green largely because the owner was besties with Green’s wife and wouldn’t allow it. Yes, really. Former GM David Griffin reportedly tried to pull the trigger twice last season and wasn’t allowed to.
At a franchise level, the Pelicans have never spent into the luxury tax, although they’ve not had a team that would justify such an expenditure since Chris Paul left, and play in what is arguably the league’s worst arena. The team is a distant third in the sport fandom hierarchy of a small market, far behind the Saints and LSU. While Benson insisted in a recent interview that the team was not for sale, it’s not hard to find people in the league who wonder how long the franchise can realistically continue in New Orleans.
Nonetheless, the premise of a Fears-Queen combo leading the Pels into the future would be a lot more believable minus the organizational dysfunction that has been a near-constant feature of Benson’s ownership and that has only accelerated in the last six months. As the Pelicans meander toward whatever it is they’re doing next and Hawks fans take inappropriate delight in their demise, it’s clear the coaching change alone isn’t going to fix what ails this franchise.-John Hollinger
Horrible ownership
The Suns are an long standing institution in Phoenix, especially when they're good. Arizona State just downsized their football stadium from 74K to 53K. And its really just UA basketball that has a big following in the state as far as college athletics are concerned. And the Jazz have a great fanbase.
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Unemployed GM
All Star
The mavericks are moving to Vegas