NBA Basketball comes to the Coliseum

The Charlotte Bobcats and Miami Heat took to the court Saturday night for NBA preseason action at the Greensboro Coliseum with the Cats coming out on top 92-76. An announced crowd of over 14,000 was on hand and all things considered, fans were treated to a pretty entertaining contest.

Heat star Shaq O’Neal made the trip and played during the game’s first quarter. Charlotte’s name players saw quite a bit more action, most playing deep into the second half. Former Charlotte Hornets star Alonzo Mourning, now with the Heat, also saw considerable minutes backing up O’Neal.

The Bobcats staff did a good job with in-game presentation. There were a couple of entertaining skits and videos on the jumbotron. The crowd went wild during the second half, when, during a video featuring people in the crowd dancing, a Coliseum employee got into the act. Showing off moves that would rival anything seen on “Dancing with the Stars”, it was definately one of the night’s funniest moments.

The Coliseum was very busy on Saturday night as there was another event going on which made the parking situation somewhat chaotic. You have to question the wisdom of scheduling two big events on the same night (I’m sure our own Don Moore has an opinion on this) but the Coliseum staff seemed to handle the situation pretty well.

*****GreensboroSports.com’s Bruce Bullington was told in the restroom by a source “in the know” that Shaq and company were headed to downtown Greensboro after the game. GreensboroSports.com can neither confirm nor deny this report at this time.******

13 thoughts on “NBA Basketball comes to the Coliseum

  1. The News and Record is famous for a typo every now and then. No way there was 19,000. 14,077 was announced at the game and that was a little generous.

  2. it’s a big building. 14,000 is only 2/3 full.

    It would have been nice if the city honored Bob McAdoo in some way. McAdoo is the best basketball player ever in the city of Greensboro. Can’t remember the ast time he was in the Greensboro Coliseum.

  3. The News & Record listed the crowd as 14,526, not 19,077. The 19,077 in parentheses in the box score is the capacity as the arena was configured for the game. That’s the way all NBA box scores are done!

    As to the actual attendance, it looked like 11,500-12,500. The 14,526 was probably tickets sold. Still, 11,500-12,500 isn’t bad. Some Bobcats home games in Charlotte don’t draw that many.

  4. A point of contention has been, why don’t the Bobcats go ahead and play a couple of regular season games at the Greensboro Coliseum and why don’t the Hurricanes play a game down in Charlotte? It would make marketing sense and give the state a chance to become more aware of these teams in their own backyards.

  5. Sammy, I was talking about this the other day. Here is the problem….Bobcats Arena and the RBC Center have luxury boxes that bring in a lot of money every game. These pro teams would like more home dates, not less. As more and more team’s start to operate their home arenas, it makes little sense to let another arena get a piece of the pie. The Hurricanes still have hard feelings from ’97-’98 when Greensboro failed to support them when they played 41 games here in back to back season. We will be lucky to ever get a Hurricanes preseason game, much less a regular season one. The Bobcats are trying to reach out and recapture some of the old Charlotte Hornets magic from the late 80s and early 90s. I was impressed with what the Cats did in the offseason as it shows they are committed to putting a winning product on the court. In a weak Eastern Conference, don’t be surprised by a playoff berth this year.

  6. As for the idea of the Hurricanes playing in Charlotte, I’m sure the Bobcats don’t want that and neither do the Canes.

  7. Doug, please let me correct you on one thing – it was the Hurricanes who did not support Greensboro, not the other way around. The Hurricanes destroyed hockey in Greensboro by running our old team out of town and replacing it with an overpriced form of hockey that wasn’t nearly as fun. Hockey in Greensboro was family friendly fun, fair priced so that you could take the whole family out for a night of fun. If the Canes had wanted our support, they should have offered fair priced tickets. They chose to try to rip people off instead and Greensboro said “HELL NO!” I do not and will not support this team. They ruined hockey, both in Greensboro and Raleigh. No more Ice Caps thanks to the Hurricanes. Greensboro had real hockey fans, the best around. Forget the Hurricanes. Go Monarchs!

  8. With all due respect Kirk, that may be the single dumbest thing ever posted at this website. You have got to be kidding me. The Hurricanes bent over backwards to try and get the people of this town to support their team. The problem were all of the so called “hockey fans” in Greensboro still pining for the days of the old Greensboro Monarchs. We had NHL hockey for Gods sake. Minor league hockey, in a word is garbage. It is an excuse to drink cheap beer and waste an evening. Don’t get me wrong, I like cheap beer and have wasted many an evening but if you are a minor league fan who did not support the Canes, you are not a hockey fan, plain and simple. The NHL is the best hockey in the world and if you did not go to see it when it was in Greensboro, how can you claim to be a fan of the sport? The Hurricanes did the best they could and the fans of Greensboro made our city a national laughing stock. The Canes moved on, are successful in Raleigh, have two Cup appearances and a championship to their credit. What does Greensboro have? Nothing. If we had played our cards right, we could have a great working relationship with the Canes and would probably have a team. Sorry to vent, but these stupid arguments as to why Greensboro is better off with this “small town mentality” is what continues to bring us down and is why we have a giant building with nothing to put in it.

  9. Im llivin in Wilmington now, but came up for the game. Had a great time, place seemed pretty full to me (for a preseason game). Charlotte should play at the Coliseum more often, it is a grat venue for all sports. But I really miss those old Monarchs, they could get the Coliseum rockin’.

  10. What’s wrong with good old fashioned Red-neck hockey like we used to have at the Barn on West Lee Street. We are playing in a barn, what are you looking for? The Monarchs or Barnarchs if you will played a good brand of Hockey that the people could afford. The Greensboro fans used to pack the House. I hear more fans talking and dreaming about those good old days than I do people talking about back when the Hurricanes came through here. The people knew that the Monarchs were their team and thus they supported them, whereas the fans also knew that the Hurricanes were headed to Raleigh.
    I think the Hurricanes should play some games in Charlotte because that’s a proven major league city, just like the Bobcats need to play more games in Greensboro because this town has very deep basketball roots. Let’s all root for the return of ECHL or SHL or some type of hockey coming back to Greensboro and this is a topic that needs to be addressed in more detail at a later time, with time-lines and names and that sort of thing.
    Youth hockey used to be big here back when the Generals were a big deal, does youth hockey still draw large numbers and do you think can this town sustain two arenas? We could use an alternative building to the Greensboro Coliseum, like a smaller 10,000 seat building in another part of the city. The water’s almost gone, how’s the money holding up here?

  11. Points:

    Whatever the attendance was Saturday, it was much more than the Bobcats had in their own arena Monday.

    Doug is right about the Hurricanes. The ECHL Monarchs left a couple of years before the Hurricanes came. Thje AHL Monarchs were having major attendance/revenue issues, and would not have lasted 2 more seasons. Peter Karmanos brought hockey at the worlds highest level, to Greensboro North Carolina. Yeah, the tickets cost a little more (but still cheaper than NASCAR and the NFL), but – you get what you paid for. Anyone that did not take the opportunity to see Ron Francis, Wayne Gretzky, Mario Lemioux because they were sitting at home pouting because they couldn’t watch John Blessman anymore, missed out on something special.

    And anyone who didn’t enjoy Ron Brind’Amour raise the Stanley Cup over his head, because they were yearning for the old days when Phil Berger held the Kelly Cup, I feel very sorry for ya.

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