Pond Won’t Be Home to Hornets

As cities across North America rush to court the temporarily homeless New Orleans Hornets, officials of the company that operates the city-owned Arrowhead Pond of Anaheim said the NBA team would not be invited to play there this season.

“It just doesn’t make any sense for us,” Anaheim Arena Management Chairman Mike Schulman said Monday.

Navigating the Mighty Ducks through an ownership change and the end of an NHL lockout that wiped out last season is enough of a challenge for AAM, Schulman said. The company bought the NHL’s Ducks from the Walt Disney Co. in June, and exhibitions in advance of the new season start this weekend.

“We’re busy for this year trying to get a hockey team up and running,” Schulman said. “We are not in a position to be able to offer basketball for a year.”

Hornet owner George Shinn told the Charlotte Observer on Friday that he had been approached by Anaheim, San Diego, Oklahoma City, Kansas City, Mo., and St. Petersburg, Fla. Officials from Las Vegas, Nashville, Louisville, Ky., and Vancouver, Canada, also have discussed playing host to the Hornets, displaced from New Orleans Arena by Hurricane Katrina.

Although Anaheim council members Lorri Galloway and Harry Sidhu and city spokesman John Nicoletti each said Monday that discussions to lure the Hornets to Anaheim had taken place, Schulman said the company has not spoken with officials from the Hornets or the NBA.

“They haven’t contacted us. We haven’t contacted them,” he said. “We have no plans to contact them.”

The NBA hopes to determine where the Hornets will play this season within a week, league spokesman Tim Frank said. He said proximity to New Orleans would be a factor, but not necessarily a defining one, and said league officials had not ruled out staging home games in more than one location.

“You want to have arenas capable of handling games the way we run them and have facilities that can match up to NBA buildings,” he said.

The Pond was built to attract an NBA team but has operated without one since opening in 1993. The Clippers played a part-time schedule there from 1994 to 1999, with an average attendance of 14,830.

However, the Clippers have repeatedly passed on moving from Los Angeles. The Memphis Grizzlies considered Anaheim before moving from Vancouver, and so did the Hornets before relocating from Charlotte, N.C. AAM continues to pursue an NBA tenant, Schulman said, but only on a permanent basis.

Sidhu said he would like AAM to pursue the Hornets, even for the short term.

“It’s going to be a temporary situation, but Anaheim is willing to provide a temporary home,” Sidhu said. “This is what you would call a great window of opportunity. This is a great opportunity to show the NBA we can support a team. It’s a blessing for us and unfortunate for New Orleans.”

In 2001, when the Grizzlies evaluated Anaheim, the city offered to build a training facility, worth about $8 million in land and construction costs. The facility also could have been used for community events and leagues.

The city would not make such an investment for a temporary tenant at the Pond, but since then the 110,000-square-foot American Sports Center has opened in Anaheim.

Mike Gallups, general manager of the center, said the Hornets would be welcome to train there.

“We’d be real interested in accommodating them,” he said. “We have 16 basketball courts, so every player could have his own court.”