Why would you guys "not" want a basketball team??? (Pittsburgh: cost, stadium)

[wanderlust76]

Yesterday I was watching your news (KDKA if I remember right) and they did a poll in regards to the pro basketball team idea. A lot of people voted that they were against Pittsburgh having a pro basketball team. Why the heck would you be against it as sports crazy of a town as Pittsburgh is. It could only help the city, not hurt. I'm down here in WV scratching my head on this one I would love to see Pittsburgh get a pro basketball team since I'm not real big on hockey or baseball.

[Burghgirl17]

For the basketball fans in the city, Pitt seems to be sufficient to whet their appetites. Also, the entertainment dollar only goes so far - there are already three major league teams in the city. There may not be the financial support for a fourth.

[Geeo]

It would be very difficult for this market to support four professional sports teams. I don't see it happening.

[greg42]

Was it truly "against" or just "don't care"? Because I don't care if there's a team or not. The wording may have been bad. If they just said "Do you think Pittsburgh should have a pro basketball team?" with answers of yes/no, then you can't really draw that sort of conclusion from the no answers because there wasn't a "doesn't matter" answer.

I can't find the poll with a reasonable look at KDKA and quick glances at the other TV news sites. So I don't know how they posed the questions and answers.

Against sounds really strong to me. I think more likely that people do not care strongly about having pro basketball here (and hey, we have a long history of not supporting other pro basketball teams). We had another discussion on this recently. I think as mentioned above it could be tough for the people here to support a fourth major pro team. We would be one of the few smallest if not the smallest market with the big 4 if that happened.

[Tinare]

I think it might be because, while revenue does get generated by pro sports teams, there is generally a cost associated with their arrival, especially when they are leaving one city to come to another. In this case there's no stadium or venue to be built, but I'm sure that the Pistons will go (if they go) to what ever city sweetens the pot the most for the owners.

Or maybe those that responded to the poll (these on-lines polls are far from scientific, of course) have an issue with taking a team from another city. We've been threatened in recent years with the departure of the Pens and the Pirates maybe those that responded had bad feelings due to that.

Who knows. But as others have said, we are a small market and probably would be the smallest to have 4 professional teams.

[trotter_rej]

For me personally, I would not want to have a team that was taken from fans in another city and would not support owners that would do that.

[truemuck]

To me, it'd be like bringing the Braves back to Buffalo, what's the point? In Pittsburgh, like Buffalo, Football and Hockey rule and I don't see that changing.
Being that you're in WV, hockey may seem like a "cult sport" to you, but in the Northeast and along the Canadian border, (with the exception of 90% of Ohio), hockey rules over basketball. Basketball is kind of a wimpy sport in comparison to hockey.

[greg42]

Ohio doesn't count as Canadian border anyway.

[truemuck]

Originally Posted by greg42

Ohio doesn't count as Canadian border anyway.

Ohio does share a water boundary w/ Canada and the Lake Erie Islands get close to Pelee and Middle Island which is Canadian territory. Check out this out:
Middle Island (Lake Erie) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

But, outside of Toledo, unfortunately not too many people like hockey.

[greg42]

Oh, I know, I was making a joke.