Bob Cook

The NBA put its All-Star Weekend in New Orleans as a welcome-back celebration, but it feels more like a going-away party.

In the Hornets’ first season back after two years of almost complete exile to Oklahoma City after Hurricane Katrina, the number that matters isn’t how many games they’ve won (36, only three away from matching all of last season’s total) but the numbers of fannies (14,735) they require in New Orleans Arena each night to guarantee owner George Shinn can’t move the team after the 2008-09 season.

Unfortunately, even with a recent attendance spurt that included a sellout crowd against Memphis, the Hornets are averaging only 12,645 fans per game, 13,099 since Dec. 1, the start date for that 14,735 requirement. With 57 home games remaining until D-day, the Hornets need 15,252 (out of 17,231 seats) fans per game to secure a longer future in New Orleans. And the attendance numbers include 2,300 free seats per night the team gives away to charities, groups and others.

As New Orleans continues to rebuild after the devastation of Katrina, it has to ask itself whether desperately shelling out to keep the Hornets is an integral part of regaining its stature and well-being. The answer most certainly is, no.

It was one thing to pony up to repair the Superdome and get the Saints back from their exile in San Antonio. The Saints and the NFL have a long history in New Orleans. Also, the Superdome needed to be reclaimed after its use as an emergency shelter made it one of the most visible, gruesome symbols of Katrina’s wreckage and its human toll.

Even with New Orleans’ population only about 70% of what it was pre-Katrina, that doesn’t matter so much for an NFL team, which with only a few, mostly weekend dates can attract fans from a wider geographical range. That fits in with what New Orleans’ long reputation as a great place to visit for a big-time sporting event, whether it be the Super Bowl, the Sugar Bowl, NBA All-Star Weekend or whatever blowout can attract out-of-town tourists excited to tell the friends back home how hard they drank on Bourbon Street.

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With so much of the New Orleans landscape still scarred from Katrina, and its murder rate back up to its notorious pre-Katrina levels, sporting events seem hardly a priority. But bringing back the city’s staples gives it some sense of normalcy and hope for its future. A fun, funky New Orleans needs tourists, and vice versa.

But the Hornets aren’t critical to the city. After all, they arrived only in 2002, after Charlotte ran Shinn out of town for the sins of asking for a new arena (after only 10 years) and a revelation of the outwardly religious Shinn’s affair with a team cheerleader. The Hornets have played one more full season in New Orleans than they have in Oklahoma City. In that sense, there’s an argument that part of the attendance problem is that New Orleans has never had a chance to get used to the Hornets being around. Given how Shinn ended things in Charlotte, maybe New Orleans is better off not getting used to him being around.

Plus, 41 home games a year are not big events. They aren’t going to draw out-of-towners. It’s all on the locals, and if they’re not choosing to spend their limited dollars on the NBA, well, they’re not alone.