What is different, one NBA owner thought this week, between what the Charlotte Hornets' ownership is doing to Charlotte and what Art Modell did to Cleveland?

Damn good question.

Which is why I believe the league should, if it approves the Hornets' move to New Orleans -- and we are certainly closer to that after the Big Easy put on such a good presentation for the league's relocation committee, the commish and the deputy commish on Wednesday -- immediately announce it is granting Charlotte an expansion franchise for the 2004-'05 season.

	David Stern checked out New Orleans while touring the league this week.

I am not naïve enough to float such a proposal without trial-ballooning it past at least a few influential folks around the league. A lot of folks thought there was no chance the league would OK expansion, given that Charlotte doesn't have the history in basketball that the Browns, by way of comparison, had in the NFL. The league isn't especially interested in domestic expansion now; the next team added will likely need visas for their road trips. And there's no real desire to reward Charlotte, after all the bungling that has gone on there over the last couple of years, with a shiny new building and voracious new revenue streams.

I hear all of that.

I'd still put an expansion team in Charlotte.

And, boys and girls, more than one owner agrees with me.

This solves three problems. One, the new owners in Charlotte would not be George Shinn and Ray Wooldridge, the current owners, who will not have anything done for them by the city. Two, it would guarantee a new arena would get built in Charlotte with more of the luxury suites that every owner demands to have. Three, it would keep the league in a city that led the league in attendance eight years in a row during the '90s. And if former BET chair Bob Johnson, who has put his name to a possible bid for the Hornets, was given an expansion team, it would provide a league already light years ahead of the other pro leagues when it comes to minority involvement with an African-American owner.

Shinn and Wooldridge are hated by the local populace in the Queen City to an extent you can't believe until you're down on the ground. I went down there earlier this month and I couldn't believe the antipathy for them.

The litany of where this hatred came from is laid out by local folk. The first sin mentioned by folks is the Hornets' trades of Alonzo Mourning, Larry Johnson and, perhaps most importantly, Muggsy Bogues, who had been one of the team's original players and its most beloved in the community. And each of those trades, along with the subsequent jettisoning of Glen Rice, led to the notion that the Hornets wouldn't pay top dollar for top players.

Second, Shinn bought out the local businessmen that had helped him finance the original expansion deal, creating bad feelings in the business community.

Third, Shinn was embroiled in his own personal troubles, including accusations of sexual harassment by several different women. He was ultimately acquitted of any wrongdoing, but the incidents stained his reputation.

Fourth, some Hornets players of more recent vintage were involved in embarrassing incidents. And tragically, Bobby Phills -- generally regarded as one of the league's best guys and good citizens -- was killed in January of 2000 after crashing his car just outside of the Coliseum while driving at excessive speed. The tragedy darkened the team's climate locally.

"For whatever reasons there are, there's a tremendous amount of ill will there, and it's focused on the ownership," says Nelson Schwab, the local venture capitalist who has put together the Charlotte business community's last-ditch financial effort to keep the team. "We felt all along that with new ownership, you completely change the dynamics of how the community looks at the team, how it's just viewed all the way around."

Mayor Pat McCrory is more blunt.

	“	The current NBA ownership team said they needed an arena with suites which would help them pay their bills. We are now building an arena with suites ... everything they've asked for we have basically offered them but we have to stay within the financial ramifications of what we can afford, especially during tough economic times. ”
		— Pat McCrory, mayor of Charlotte

"The current ownership team basically said 'eat my grits' to Charlotte," he says, "and that probably don't sell a lot of tickets here in Charlotte."

For his part, Wooldridge says he and Shinn deserve some of the responsibility for what has happened in Charlotte. But not all of it.

"I think any time any situation fails, it meant someone did something wrong," he said recently. "But to say there are ill feelings about the franchise, that it's solely the blame of the owners ... I don't mean to be too strong here, but I find that to be absurd."

But McCrory is adamant: he will not get into a bidding war with New Orleans, which already has an arena in place that meets NBA specifications. Charlotte's arena deal would put a new building downtown, where most of the politicians and business leaders want it. But it wouldn't provide naming rights or pouring rights revenues to the owners; that money would revert back to the three local companies who are, in essence, loaning the city $100 million to help with construction and other costs. And that makes the deal, in Wooldridge's eyes, a non-starter.

"The numbers are the numbers," Wooldridge says. "They add a certain way. This does not work. It falls dramatically short of the revenues necessary for our ownership or any ownership to operate a franchise in Charlotte profitably."

Wooldridge says he and Shinn put "in the range of six or seven million dollars" toward efforts to get an arena built in Charlotte. Inexpicably, just when it seemed the two sides were close to an agreement on a new building, the political leadership in Charlotte decided to put the matter to a public referendum in June of last year instead of hammering out a deal. Local cynics point out that many of Charlotte's city council members were up for re-election and didn't want to have an arena vote on their records.

When the referendum was bundled to other, less pleasant legislation, it was torpedoed by voters 57 percent to 43.

"So our choice was pretty well made for us at that point," Wooldridge says now. "We made a subsequent attempt to re-engage with the community, and were given the same answer. So at that point, we accelerated our plans to move to our alternatives."

McCrory says the new arena proposal is "exactly what they (Shinn and Wooldridge) asked for two years ago. The current NBA ownership team said they needed an arena with suites which would help them pay their bills. We are now building an arena with suites ... everything they've asked for we have basically offered them but we have to stay within the financial ramifications of what we can afford, especially during tough economic times."

Which means Shinn and Wooldridge can't get their hands on that juicy naming and pouring rights loot. And they'd have to keep playing in Charlotte Coliseum, where they claim annual losses of $15 million to $20 million, for at least two years while the new arena is built.

McCrory says he has done all he can, and that he won't sweeten the proposal.

"They get all the revenue from those (new) suites and that is exactly what they said they needed," McCrory says. "You can't give all the money over to the major tenant because there are other costs associated with the building. I can't put that entire burden on the taxpayers of Charlotte."

But the city's plan is a long-shot, and everyone knows it. Even if the league's relocation committee blocks the Hornets' move to New Orleans, there's no guarantee that Shinn and Wooldridge: a) won't sue the league for damages, or b) restart talks in Louisville or Norfolk or anywhere else the next sweetheart deal lies. One thing is certain: They will not go back to Charlotte, even if the city council finally wised up this week and removed a clause from a proposed arena deal that demanded new owners be found as a condition of building it.

	“	I think we all have to share the blame. But it's water under the bridge. The decisions have been made. And we're moving this franchise to New Orleans. ”
		— Ray Wooldridge, Hornets co-owner

"If you were a cynic, you could say 'too little, too late,' " one top team executive said of the clause removal.

The league's major concern isn't the clause, or New Orleans' failure to keep the Jazz from moving to Salt Lake City in 1979. But the commish and the owners want to know if New Orleans has the economic wherewithal to sustain a team when the honeymoon is over. The city and state have pledged public funds to the Hornets to guarantee sales in the short term. But priorities change as political administrations change and events warrant. And, not to be too blunt, what happens if a hurricane hits the Big Easy? It's not like that couldn't happen. All of a sudden, the $1 billion the state has in reserves from its tourism stash might have to be used for other purposes.

Charlotte wants one more shot at presenting its proposal. The chance of that happening before the NBA Board of Governors votes on the relocation committee's recommendation is slight, however.

And Wooldridge is undeterred. He is done with Charlotte. After the Hornets' surprising run in the playoffs last season, he expected easy passage of an arena deal.

"If you're losing, your team is losing, and fans do not come out to support, or the business community doesn't, or the political leadership, then somehow you look at that and you say that's somewhat justified," he says. "But when you put on a competitive team, and we had the WNBA last year, come out of first place last year in the eastern division and go to the finals, and we still didn't get the support. From the day that I arrived there, we've had these same situations ...

"It's very difficult, when you're in negotiations, for people not to choose sides. But again, the contracts that had been negotiated this past year, had been passed on and deemed as being fair. So I think we all have to share the blame. But it's water under the bridge. The decisions have been made. And we're moving this franchise to New Orleans."

There are still a lot of owners who have their doubts. This is by no means a done deal. But if the Hornets do leave, the commish could ease some of Charlotte's pain. He should keep Charlotte in the game by making them whole again.

David Aldridge is an NBA reporter for ESPN.