Actually what happened to the team probably will turn out to be the best for Charlotte. Right now we have four groups vying for the new team, with the one lead by Bird being the frontrunner. They are hoping to begin play in 2003. They are backed by a billionaire plus several of the business's in the city. Last night we got approval for a new arena. Its hard for a small market team to retain talent since many of them want to go to NY and LA, but having a high profile person like Bird may help us overcome this problem. George Shinn simply did not have the resources to be an NBA owner. As a result we never signed any of our free agents. This irritated the fans to lose players like Kobe, Mourning, Eddie Johnson, the list goes on and on. Also, Shinn got himself in a sex scandal mess that did not look good. Charlotte is growing very fast and has the 25th largest TV market. We hold all the attendance lifetime records. We can support an NBA team. Actually we were still doing real well with attendance until Ray Wooldridge came on the scene and threatening to move the team every five minutes. Only then did attendance completely go into the toilet.. Even as late as the 2000-2001 season, I think we sold 14000 season tickets which ain't bad.