Editor’s Notes: It’s time for Charlotte to forget about the Hornets

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Charlotte and basketball are in need of some couples counseling.

Ever since the Hornets left in 2002, things just haven’t been the same. The new girlfriend, the Bobcats, is just not living up to the standards set by the old one. But all that comparing can’t lead to anything good.

So, it’s time to move on. Time to start loving the team we do have and stop dreaming about the one that got away. Time to let go of grudges and anger against ex-Bobcats owner Robert Johnson and all that stuff he said that ticked off the business community.

Having the team helps our economy, although, oddly, there’s no known study on the Bobcats’ economic impact on the Charlotte region. (I know, I thought it was weird, too, but Bobcats spokesman Michael Thompson told The Mecklenburg Times that the team has never commissioned an economic impact study and probably never will. I really wish they would, though.)

Even without any reports on the Bobcats’ impact, it’s a given that the team helps our economy. Think of the money spent in bars and restaurants from fans, the sales of sports memorabilia, the message it sends to the rest of the country that Charlotte has an NBA team.

But the success of the expansion team relies in large part on Queen City basketball fans, who, let’s face it, are still bummed out about the Hornets being stolen from them.

According to Espn.com, with an average attendance of 15,485 the team is 20th among the NBA’s 30 teams, putting it toward the bottom. How can we expect a team with such low attendance to perform well? According to a Canadian study from last year, cheering on a hockey team impacts the performance of the players. Surely the same holds true for basketball and other sports teams.

Yet the acrimonious split between the Hornets and Charlotte and, later, Johnson’s insulting remarks about the city’s business community — he called it “arrogant” and “incestuous” — hang over the team. People like Mark Packer, a former sports radio host for WFNZ-AM, say the Bobcats will never be as popular as the Hornets were in the 1980s and early 1990s.

The team is struggling to recover from Johnson’s remarks, even though basketball legend Michael Jordan is now the Bobcats’ majority owner after buying an 80 percent share of the team this year.

Despite the challenges, Jordan has been winning sponsors for the team, even former ones, such as security company CPI, Footlocker and Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina.

Winning those sponsorships probably wasn’t easy in this tough economy. But it gives hope in Jordan as a businessman.

Of course, it’s hard for fans to get behind a team that, as of Tuesday, have a record of 9-19.

If the team can’t score on the court, they won’t score with fans, either. So it behooves the team to get some balls into the basket.

Charlotte basketball fans need to get behind this team and forget about their bad breakup with the Hornets.  Buy one of those survival guides for the dumped.  Get a puppy.

She’s not coming back.

Deon Roberts can be reached at [email protected].