Sacramento Kings moving franchise to the OC, CA.

They drew pretty well when New Orleans was playing their games there after Katrina. That's not the best way to gauge things either, because when something is new, people are going to go see it.

The biggest test isn't if they draw well for a bad team, it's do they draw well for a bad team after being good for awhile... That's a completely different story...

 

If they go bad fast, attendance will drop way off.

 

OKC will be like Utah is now.

 

That's a good comparison.

 

There was a thing in Forbes a few years ago where it examined the markets best suited for expansion franchises in any of the Big Four leagues. There were some smaller metros with one or no teams on the list, but the places they considered most ripe were LA/Orange County and New York/New Jersey/Connecticut.

If I was a multi-gijillionaire I'd seriously consider putting a team of some kind in Central Jersey. You've got a couple of million people in the Monmouth, Ocean and Middlesex County areas alone, and a lot of them are rich, rich rich. You could buy the Monmouth Park racetrack property on the cheap and build a stadium there. You could also buy up abandoned Fort Monmouth property and develop a shopping, dining, drinking district near the stadium. You'd also be more than 50 miles from baseball and basketball venues in New York and Philadelphia, thus out of their territorial rights if I understand the rules correctly.

There's a ton of money in Central Jersey and I get the feeling people there are always looking for something that is "theirs" not just latching on to New York. If you could get the likes of Springsteen and Bon Jovi on board as investors and familiar faces. Call the team the New Jersey Ponies, a nod to Monmouth Park and the area's rock heritage. You'd have to get corporate support from Prudential, Johnson & Johnson et. al, and maybe from some New York based companies as well, but I think putting a team in Central Jersey would be better than trying to put something else in North Jersey where it's just trying to be another New York team, but never really will be.

 

I think a sleeping giant would be Omaha.

 

Omaha could be a lot like OKC. The big loser if a team went there would be Creighton hoops.

 

Based on how well Nebraskans have supported minor sports like minor-league hockey and Arena football, I think they'd go nuts if a NBA team went there... It's hard to compare it to OKC now because any team that has Kevin Durant is going to draw well, but it could be like the way Sacramento was back in the late 1980s and early 1990s when every game would be sold out and packed.

 

The problem is, so many people already identify as either New York or Philly fans -- most of the fanbases go back generations -- that a New Jersey team would be an afterthought. For all their success, the Devils still aren't as popular in New Jersey as the Rangers and Flyers are.
The Trenton Thunder (Double-A baseball) draws pretty well, but it's been a Yankees farm team for a while now. That probably helps a lot. There's also a difference in selling out a 6,500-seat minor league baseball stadium at $10 a ticket and selling out a major league size arena at $75-$100 a ticket.

 

There are a lot of cities where there's a ton of money that would be terrible places to put a pro franchise... Jersey would be the last place I would put a team, because as was pointed out, they're all fans of NYC or Philly franchises... It would be the same thing putting a NBA team in Orange County or Anaheim.

I think the NBA would do very well in Las Vegas, but it will never happen.

I remember there was some drawback as to why St. Louis wasn't considered more as a possible landing spot for a franchise. I don't remember what it was...

Other than Seattle, I think the best places for the NBA to expand would be Pittsburgh, Omaha or maybe Louisville. I could even see a place like Albuquerque being a decent spot for a team.

 

I think it may have had something to do with the ABA-NBA merger that guaranteed money to the St Louis ownership group in perpituity.

 

I believe there is some provision in the "Spirits settlement" which gives the ABA group the rights to bid at some sweetheart price for a fairly substantial percentage of any NBA team placed in the market., and any time anybody has considered doing it, the ABA group has made exorbitant demands to sign away these rights -- which has scared people off.

Although there have been so many different stories about that whole deal, who knows which of them are true.