So the greatest basketball player of all time is now the majority owner of the Charlotte Bobcats? This is a welcome change for NBA fans in my home town, since Charlotte basketball fans have had the displeasure of two seriously sub-par ownership groups.

George Shinn brought the expansion Charlotte Hornets to town and enjoyed a pretty nice honeymoon of about ten years before his habit of not paying for good players, coupled with his public extramarital exploits, with the cherry on top of demands for a new arena (the latter being the only excusable negative) made him “public enemy #1″ in the Queen City. Shinn and co-owner Ray Woolridge (who became the public face of the ownership as things went downhill) took their team and the Hornets name to New Orleans in 2002, leaving behind an ash heap of burned (and very angry) fans. Continue reading →