An open letter to fix the New Orleans Hornets

I’m sure you’ve already heard the news: the Hornets are soon to be the property of the NBA.

If that doesn’t make you sick to your stomach, then let me paint a one-sentence picture that most certainly will: David Stern is about to own our local NBA franchise.

Ready or not, here the NBA comes n a move that will leave the Hornets’ future in the city and entire existence as a franchise altogether in doubt.

So today we are here to take a stand to try and make a plea to get the Hornets on the right track. I’ve written a letter to Stern and hope to see some change. We did this same thing with Roger Goodell a year ago and still haven’t gotten a response. Snail mail just isn’t what it used to be.

Dear Commissioner Stern,

You are terrible at your job. In fact, if I had to rank the professional sports commissioners, I’d probably put you in the bottom of the pack.

Don’t get me wrong, you’re not last because the other guys are very, very good. You’re last because you’re very, very bad.

As my former civics teacher once told me, if you have David Stern and you add his intellect to a wet bag of rocks, what do you get? A dumb, wet bag of rocks.

In the past 10 years, there has been an NBA lockout, team relocations, referee scandals and the talks of contraction in the sport under your watch.

All of this has also come at a time when there are arguably some of the most talented players in the history of the game playing, like Kobe Bryant, Dwight Howard and even that chump LeBron James.

Just off the top of my head, the only work of yours that I consider to be a success has been the age-limit on players n and even that’s not as strict as it should be.

Despite your inept ability to make a good thing better, you are the boss of our team and we have to support you.

Instead of writing a column about all of your mishaps, we’ll shift the focus instead to the future and what you’ll do with the Hornets.

I’ve attached a plan you could follow. There’s no obligation, nor strings attached. But myself and several other Louisianans believe this is the key to making the Hornets just as big in Louisiana as the Saints n because yes, that is possible.

The first step in my plan would be to make the “Hornet” die. Louisiana doesn’t love the Hornets, because they do not feel like the Hornets belong to them. We still see them as Charlotte’s team, who just moved here for business.

So take that Hornet, crumple up some newspaper and smash it against the wall until there are only guts left. There are no Hornets in Louisiana anyway, so PETA will never see it coming.

From there, give the team a Louisiana name. I don’t fully know what that would be, but I can think of approximately 25,042 things that are more abundant in Louisiana than hornets.

How about we trade the name to Utah and get Jazz back in a three-team trade that would send “Hornet” to Memphis, “Grizzly” to Utah and “Jazz” back home to NOLA where it belongs.

If that doesn’t work, then we really need to do something else, like Spice, Krewe, Gators, Nutria or even Hurricanes.

At this point, I think there are plenty people who would rather be called the Fighting Beignets than the Hornets.

Through that rebranding, people will feel like the Hornets belong to Louisiana and they’ll actually start to love the team, instead of just viewing them as something to do for fun on a Friday night.

The second thing that needs to be done is to sell the naming rights to the New Orleans Arena.

I’m not sure how familiar you are with Louisiana, Mr. Stern, because we’re just a small market and we know you don’t care about any team not named the Knicks, Lakers, Heat or Nets. But we do have plenty of businesses here that were born and bred in the area. Would Tabasco be interested in owning the naming rights to the arena? How about Abita? Or maybe even Capital One (who is already the official bank of the Hornets and LSU athletics)? All of these businesses may say no, but it’s worth a shot, because there’s significant money to be had here, which would help the team and also Louisiana business build a world-known name.

Then once that is done, you should read the beginning of this letter and fire yourself. No one in Louisiana wants you here, so get out. Sell the team at a fair price to Mr. Gary Chouest, who would carry the torch and take the team to new heights.

If you can do all that, maybe then you’ll win me as a fan.

That would bring the numbers in your fan club to … one.

Signed,

Casey Gisclair,

A Rockets fan who wants NBA to remain in New Orleans