Larry Brown Will Coach the Bobcats?

According to SI & the Associate Press, Larry Brown is coming to Charlotte.

Source: Bobcats to hire Brown

I ate, slept & breathed Sixers basketball during the Larry Brown era in Philly. His style of coaching is great for a young team if it has the right attitude. Charlotte's core players should like his style. There will be a lot of x-tar heels on the team & staff too. MJ & Brown both played for Dean Smith. May & Felton are both alumni of the 2005 team that won it all.

Unfortunately, Charlotte is having a rough time embracing the team. Native & long-time citizens of the Queen City still feel burned by the Hornets. (I now have a glimmer of understanding for old Baltimore Colts fans.) The new arena is nice, but parking is a chore. Unlike other major cities with downtown arenas, Charlotte's mass-transit system is a joke. No, really...it's a joke! I've seen college busing systems that are better. Ticket prices may be reasonable relative to other cities, but add it all up and it's just not economical.

Still, the Bobcats greatest sin is television. They have made the worst television rights decisions ever. The way to get fans is to get them hooked on TV first. What did they do? They started out on an HD channel that was only available if a person had Time Warner's Digital Package. Then when that went bust, they swapped to the local cable "News 14" which is also only available to some viewers and had the cheapest looking production quality.

Had the Bobcats management gotten their games out across markets on multiple channels, maybe they would have built a fan-base. Hell, if they had done that from the start, they could probably have swapped to a cable-only channel by now and brought fans with them.