This is a special “back-up” post, just in case the power goes out and I’m unable to blog because of Hurricane Irene. Send a boat full of canned food and water if you don’t see another post tomorrow!
I’m a fan, just like anyone else. I just happen to be a fan with a blog on a network. We get promoted, we get asked to do some cool things, podcasts, etc. It has more to do with writing and being willing than any connections or access. Until the Bobcats allow bloggers to be credentialed, I will still have to pay my way into games. Even when, umm the way things look I should revise that to “if” the Bobcats do credential bloggers, I’ll still be a fan. Just a more controlled, subdued and somewhat professional fan. I don’t know if I could write about another team. Certainly, if someone offered and the pay was right, I’d definitely consider it, but I could never just post my thoughts on the Hawks or the Rockets, simply because I have none. I’m a Bobcats fan.
All that said, I have to lump myself in with a group, herefore to be referred to as “You people,” that are so fresh and so green as a fanbase, that we sometimes don’t know how to act. I troll message boards, comments on other blogs, discussions whenever I’m out, texts, emails, IM’s, Facebook statuses, I see it all as the world around me relates to the Bobcats. What is the wave of information, sometimes, it’s actually a trickle, what do my sensors in the field tell me? It’s overall, pretty damn negative. And that’s a shame.
The shame is, not that it’s untrue. It’s not that it’s unwarranted. Every fan complains, every fan feels the ups and downs, and unless you’re the Lakers, Yankees or in the past decade, the Spurs and the Patriots, there are going to be many, many more downs than ups. It’s true. In the NBA, over the past 30 seasons, since the season ending in 1980, there have only been 8 franchises to win the NBA Championship. Miami and Philadelphia are the only ones to just win one over that span, the rest are all repeaters. There are currently 30 teams in the league and only 8 of them have Championship banners from my lifetime?! Of the sample 30, the LA Lakers have a third! A third, 10 of the 30!!! That’s just insane! You have right to complain with that kind of parity, or to be more precise, lack of parity.
The shame isn’t expressing what every fan feels. The shame of it, for the Bobcats is, that people who care enough are only complaining. If the people who care to the point of complaining are doing so in such public places as message boards, Facebook, Twitter and at bars, what do you think that does to expanding the fanbase? What does that do to the next generation of fans?
If a kid only hears bad things about the team his Dad follows he’s got to be less likely to grow up as a fan of that team. It takes time, lots of time or lots of luck to build a fan base in this smaller sports world. Kids have choices growing up. You can walk into a sporting goods store and see Heat, Lakers, Knicks, Nets, Magic and some Bobcats, mixed right in. When I was a kid, you go to Belk, because we didn’t have sporting goods stores like Dick’s unless you drove all the way out Independence Boulevard to Sports Authority, where I got my bike. You’d walk into Belk and they had a Hornets section. That was it. Hornets, maybe a little Lakers or Chicago or somebody who was a big deal that year, but it was Hornets.
People can go anywhere online to watch any team they want (legally or illegally). They can read the “local” paper, get the highlights on SportsCenter, get analysis at NBA.com or any of the 5-8 blogs that every team has, run by nerds like me that will let you know everything you could possibly want to know about a particular team, at any time. It’s wide open more than it has been at any point in history and that’s a good thing. Access is the all important equalizer in any business or activity that you hope to draw people to. We have had hits on this site from 18 different countries. I am going to be a call-in interview for a podcast out of England. It’s worldwide, that’s just what David Stern wants, and just what we all like to see.
To look at an example, the NFL, probably the most rabid fanbase, constant input and constantly engaged, even in a work-stoppage. The NFL, right now or at least up to the point of the lockout, is what all other sports want to grow into. My friends and I are all in a fantasy league. Actually, some of us aren’t friends anymore because of the fantasy league. Going through the group, we’ve got one guy who likes the Dolphins, one for the 49ers, one for the Packers, one for the Vikings, one loves the Chiefs, and one jackass who likes the damn Patriots. There are only 3 of us that are avowed Panthers fans. When the Panthers made the Super Bowl back in ’03, did all the rest stick to their guns and ignore the Panthers? NO! The Packers guy was seen in a “Got Jake” t-shirt. I went uptown and waited on the team plane with several of them and we all talked about it and how cool it was for the city.
The NFL has a couple things going for it that the NBA doesn’t: Exclusivity and longevity. There are only 17 weeks to the regular season, 8 home games, Playoffs are 12 teams out of 32 teams and only 4 weeks, 11 games. It’s a tight bunch, a hot ticket (usually) every week. People play fantasy football more than any other type of fantasy sport and I’m going to say more money is bet on football than any other sport. There’s you’re exclusivity. Longevity: The Panthers have been around since 1995. The Bobcats? Only since 2003. The Panthers made it to the NFC Championship game in their second season in exsitence. The Bobcats just got bounced in their first ever forray into the the Playoffs last year. The Bobcats were the last expansion team added to the NBA, 2003. The NFL added, much the same way the NBA added the Bobcats back to Charlotte, the Texans to Houston after the Oilers bolted for Tennessee to become the Titans, the expansion of the Texans was completed in 2002, while the Oilers moved in 1999.
NBA teams are almost constantly moving, changing hands, changing names, logos, whatever they can do to become or stay relevant. The Kings are going to move to Anehim, the Sonics moved to Oklahoma City back in 2008. The Hornets are owned by the league, they’ve moved 3 times in the past 9 years, first from Charlotte to New Orleans, then New Orleans/Oklahoma City and finally back to New Orleans. Now, they got taken over by the league because they were trying to bolt again.
My point is, the NBA is in constant flux, except for who wins. It’s hard enough to get and keep a fanbase going without battling critics at every turn. No one likes to be held captive by an owner that threatens to move because he made poor investments, or he’s one of those “grass is greener” types. No one wants a bottom dweller. Probably most of all, no one wants to be irrelevant and boring.
The Bobcats, for all their missteps and (very) limited success, are a good franchise. For as young as they are, in the situation they came into exsistance under, and for having the founder sell the team 4 years in, the Bobcats are doing pretty well. You may question their trades, their drafts, letting players go in free agency and elevating ticket prices but you cannot question their long term vision and plan.
It’s not easy, getting people to drive out Billy Graham Parkway or Tyvola Road. To ask them to sit where many of them had just 2 years prior for a playoff game, with an All-Star and a good coach. To get them to swallow the pill of a new uptown arena, that voters didn’t want, that a sales tax and hotel tax would barely cover, and would take years for the city to pay off. It’s tough to get them to forget how they’d been burned and then when they did come around and want to watch games, to get them to expand their cable package to get a new channel, the only one the team would be shown on for most of the season. You’d be watching guys you’d never heard of unless you were a real diehard NBA fan. Steve Smith, yeah but at the end of his career. Brevin Knight, solid for a back-up. Emeka Okafor, yeah a bright spot but just a rookie. But no one had heard of Gerald Wallace, except that he could dunk and he pushed Jason Richardson in a dunk competition. That was just the first year!
Where do they go from there? No where but up! A brief hiccup in 2007-2008, finishing with one less win than the previous year. But that was unreasonable circumstances. The head coach was a rookie named Sam Vincent! No chance of growing under him.
Seriously, this team has never finished last in the division. It’s never been at the bottom of the barell. It’s never embarrassed the loyal fans. No arrests, no issues, barely a dust-up on the court.
So, I ask, to my Bobcats brethren and sisteren (don’t forget the ladies), What’s the problem? Why so negative? Was this year a step back? Umm, duh, but the future is bright and we’re again, not at the bottom. Trading away Gerald Wallace? Yeah, not a great look to the casual folks or the national media that will pick on us until we get to the point of the Mavericks or the Hawks but you and I, and even those outside our inner circle all know, it had to be done and it isn’t the end of the world.
Let’s get positive, let’s invite people to the fold, let’s hold up the players, coaches, front office and ownership. Yeah, they’ve made mistakes, they’ve had issues but we’re not the Clippers, we’re not the Hornets, we sure as hell ain’t the Raptors or Wizards. Sunshine and butterflies, it’s not. But of the rest of the world, those 2/3rds of the league that haven’t won championships in the last 30 years, the Bobcats are in just as good of shape as any of them. That, you can take to the bank.
Andrew Barraclough is Senior Editor for RobertoGato.com, a Charlotte Bobcats Blog on theFansided Network. Follow him on Twitter @therobertogato and Like the site on Facebook.