BTI's Rants and Ramblings: The NBA would NOT work in Louisville

NBA talk for the state of Kentucky, and in particular the city of Louisville, has died down over the last couple weeks after Sacramento agreed to stay home for at least 1 more season.  Plus, David Stern listed 6 cities as potential places teams could move in a recent interview and did not list Louisville.  It certainly has made J. Bruce Miller pipe down a bunch from his stance that it was likely Louisville was a destination spot for the NBA. But, with the success of the Memphis Grizzlies in the playoffs recently, and the raucous crowds they have produced in their 2 home games, so people have argued it PROVES that the NBA could work in small market towns like Louisville would be.  Memphis is the smallest TV market in the NBA, with a viewership population of 658,000 plus.  Louisville has a market of nearly 558,000 people.  Neither city has any other sports team, and has 1 college team that is also big in the area.  The 2 cities are quite parallel.  So, this mean that Louisville could work, right? Uh, no. You see, if you are an NBA owner, you do NOT make money by making the playoffs.  You do NOT make money by selling out 2 playoff games.  You make money by selling tickets all season long.  You make money by selling all of your corporate boxes. You make money by being in a larger TV market, which Memphis can't ever fix.  And when you look at the attendance numbers for NBA teams this season, you have to search pretty hard to find the Grizzlies.  You have to go all the way to 27TH OUT OF 30 TEAMS to find the Grizzlies.  They averaged 14,650 fans to each home game this season, which is an average of 80.9% capacity.  Which sounds great, right?  4 out of 5 seats filled every night.  Except that ranks 24th out of the 30 NBA teams. Now, some people would argue comparing Louisville to Memphis is a mistake because Tennessee is not a basketball crazy state, and Kentucky is.  That is what some people claim as the reason Louisville would succeed.  This state loves basketball so much that fans from Lexington and Owensboro and Paducah would flock to Louisville to watch the NBA.  And I think that is a fair argument.  If you have a simpleton brain.  Because the reason we are basketball crazy in this state is not because it is basketball.  It is because it is WINNING BASKETBALL.  Both Louisville and Kentucky, and WKU and EKU and Murray State and Morehead State to extents, all have very successful basketball programs.  If Kentucky won 15-20 games a season, and had 1 national title on its resume, fans would not love the program as much.  Winning breeds fanhood.  And lets be honest, if a team is moving to Louisville, it won't be a winning franchise.  Take Sacramento for instance. But, just to further this point, lets compare Louisville to the two states that also LOVE basketball, Indiana and North Carolina, and their NBA teams, the Pacers and Bobcats.  Out of the 30 NBA teams this season, Charlotte ranked 21st in attendance and the Pacers ranked......drumroll please......DEAD LAST in attendance in the NBA. LAST!!!!   They are a freaking playoff team in a basketball crazy state, and they ranked LAST in attendance.  That stat alone should frighten you about the prospects of a Louisville team. Then, if you didn't catch Game 4 of the series between the Pacers and Bulls, then you missed a pro-Bulls crowd......IN THE PACERS ARENA!!!  There were significantly more Bulls fans in that building than Pacers fans.  Again, a basketball crazy state with a winner in the playoffs trying to keep their season alive, and they bring less than half the fans.  Pacers center Jeff Foster said: "I have seen every professional game in this arena, and I have never seen anything like that," he said. And all of that doesn't even take into account where exactly this NBA team would play.  It wouldn't be the Yum! Center, and Freedom Hall is a freaking dump.  They can act like it would renovated all they want, that place is 30 years past being a top arena, and the city of Louisville residents don't want to pay a dime.  Miller talks about Chinese investors, but with only 2 Chinese players in the NBA, on the Rockets and Nets, you wonder how much Chinese interest there would be for a team without a Chinese player. Lastly, lets talk about money.  As was said earlier, the main key to a profitable NBA team, especially in a small market, is season ticket sales.  If you can't get tickets sold every game, it is very difficult to make a profit.  The city of Louisville ranks 97th nationwide in median household  income, at just over $40,000 per household.  That is lower than 24 other NBA teams.  So compared to the other NBA teams, Louisville residents are poorer.  Poorer than Indianapolis and Cleveland.  Much poorer than Charlotte.  And just barely above Memphis, which ranked 104th nationwide.  Once again, J. Bruce acts as if their are rich people EVERYWHERE in Louisville, but are all of them basketball fans?  Are rich people as rich as they were 10 years ago.  Or 3 years ago.  A lot of rich people have lost much of the riches during the recession. My worry is that the city and the NBA will give it a shot in Louisville someday and it would be a gigantic failure.  Much of the same way it was in Vancouver.  Do you think an NBA is going back to Vancouver anytime in the future?  I don't want to see Louisville embarassed that way.  And with a losing franchise likely the choice to come, I don't see how the city would support it.  Point is, where are the positives, besides being able to tout your city as an NBA town.