New Orleans Pelicans
The New Orleans Pelicans form an American professional basketball team based in New Orleans. The Pelicans compete in the National Basketball Association (NBA) as a member of the Western Conference's Southwest Conference. The team plays its home games at the Smoothie King Center.
The Pelicans were established as the New Orleans Hornets in the 2002-03 season when then-owner of the Charlotte Hornets, George Shane, moved the franchise to New Orleans. Due to damage caused by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the franchise temporarily moved to Oklahoma City, where they spent two seasons officially known as the New Orleans/Oklahoma City Hornets. The team returned to New Orleans full time for the 2007-08 season. In 2013, the franchise announced that it would rename itself The Pelicans,[10] in effect after the 2012–13 season ended. The Charlotte HornHornets'ets name, history, and records from 1988 to 2002 were returned to its original city for use by the later Charlotte Bobcats, which later became the Charlotte Hornets in 2014. [1]
In the 18 seasons of play since the original franchise relocated from North Carolina, the Louisiana franchise has racked up a regular-season total of 671–771 and qualified for the playoffs seven times. Their achievements include two Series Playoff wins and one Division Title.
Franchise History:
Moving to New Orleans;
While the Charlotte Hornets put a competitive team on the field throughout the 1990s, team attendance began to drop dramatically. Many attributed this decline in popularity to team owner, George Sheen, who was slowly being despised by the townspeople. [11] In 1997, a Charlotte woman claimed that Sheen raped her, and the resulting trial severely tarnished his reputation in the city. The consensus was that while Charlotte was a basketball city, fans were pissed off at Shane on the team. Shinn also became upset with the Charlotte Coliseum, which was considered cutting edge when it opened but has since been considered outdated due to the limited number of fancy chests. On March 26, 2001, the Hornets and the Vancouver Grizzlies applied to move to Memphis, Tennessee, [12] which the Grizzlies eventually won. Then Shane issued an ultimatum that unless the city built a new plaza at no cost, the Hornets would leave the city. The city initially refused, prompting Shane to consider moving the team to either Norfolk, Louisville, or St. Louis. Of the cities in the race, only St. Louis had an NBA-ready arena, Savvis Center, already in place and it was a larger media market than Charlotte at the time; Also, he was the only one of the four to have previously hosted an NBA franchise - the St. Louis Hawks, who moved to Atlanta in 1968.
Finally, a new arena in Uptown, which would eventually become the Spectrum Center, was included in a non-binding referendum for a larger arts-related package, and Shinn withdrew his request to move the team. Opinion polls showed that the referendum is on the way to passing. However, a few days before the referendum, Mayor Pat McCrory vetoed the Living Wage Act. The veto prompted several African-American ministers in the city to oppose the referendum; They felt it was unethical for the city to build a new plaza when city employees were not paid enough to earn a living. [13] After the referendum failed, city leaders devised a plan to build a new plaza in a way that would not require voter support but made it clear that they would not even consider building it unless Sheen sold the team. While even the NBA admitted that Shane had isolated fans, league officials felt such a request would anger other owners. [14] The city council refused to remove the statement, prompting the Hornets to request a move to New Orleans—a move that would eventually bring the NBA back to that city for the first time since the Jazz moved to Salt Lake City in 1979. Before that, the NBA had agreed to This move to eliminate the Hornets from the playoffs. As part of a deal, the NBA promised that Charlotte would acquire a new team, which took over the court two years later as the Charlotte Bobcats.
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