A crowd of 11,758 or larger on Monday night againt the Oklahoma City Thunder, will void a clause in the New Orleans Hornets team arena lease that would allow the club to move out after next season. 8 game win streak now-longest current streak in the NBA held by the Hornets. Surprised I haven't seen this mentioned anywhere (unless I missed it). Found it in Game Notes at the bottom of this link. http://scores.espn.go.com/nba/recap?gameId=310122003
Well, they seem to be averaging 14,367. http://espn.go.com/nba/attendance So does that mean they won't be going anywhere? Were they leaving? I'm behind the times.
sirbaihu, The NBA is part owner of the Hornets and are trying to sell it. The Hornets have the option of terminating the lease, if the attendance did not meet the quota. Now, the new buyer would be locked into the lease until 2014. It would be very costly for them to move the team.
Thanks. But is that because of attendance? The Hornets rank 24th in attendance, not last. Do they want to move the team to a different place, or just find someone to buy it?
The NBA only took ownership, because the previous owner could not find a buyer and was not interested in funding operations. NBA took ownership and funded operations to keep the franchise from losing value. The NBA is not interested in maintaining ownership. It's a conflict of interest and would look distasteful if the Hornets won it all.
