Stepping up to aid New Orleans

NEW ORLEANS -- Whatever this is, the NBA’s symbolic return or the start of an elaborate last tango, there was never an All-Star game like this.

Never has such an event meant as much to its venue, 2 1/2 years after the city and the surrounding area were devastated by Hurricane Katrina.

All-Star games are by definition celebrations of excess, from the finery of young idols with more money than they know what to do with, to the perks lavished upon corporate sponsors providing multi-million-dollar subsidies.

Indeed, limousines disgorge blinged-out peacocks and titans of industry at the luxury hotels on Canal Street, but this event has a built-in sense of mission that takes cognizance of the fact you have to go only a mile up Canal to come to a tent city.

Each guest’s gift package includes a set of work gloves (with the NBA logo) with buses waiting to take 2,500 volunteers doing a “day of service” to playgrounds, schools and building sites around the city.

In a front-page headline, the New Orleans’ Times-Picayune called it “the largest single volunteer effort since Katrina.”

To say the NBA has held up its end here, where it was barely noticed before the flood and is no hot ticket today, is an understatement, starting with Commissioner David Stern’s deft move to bring his circus to Carnivals R Us.

For New Orleans, it’s a high-profile event putting the city at center stage while attracting every last tourist its infrastructure can handle (and -- shudder -- if enough of them show up to reenact the Invasion of Las Vegas.)

Not that coming here was a sacrifice for the NBA, with the French Quarter and its four-star restaurants.

It’s also the perfect venue for Stern’s prized “NBA Cares” program, his answer to the image hit after the 2004 riot in Auburn Hills, Mich., which could look like a scripted tug at the heartstrings, but in this context looks nothing less than inspiring.

Mayor Ray Nagin, who excoriated the federal government for its response to Katrina, is effusive, saying the Hornets and the league “have gone above and beyond in meaningful support of the people and city of New Orleans.

“[They] have contributed to rebuilding housing, education revitalization projects and have supported numerous charitable and non-profit agencies,” said Nagin in an e-mail.

“A strong part of the recovery progress in the city of New Orleans can be linked to the community efforts of the New Orleans Hornets and the NBA.”

Making it all the more remarkable, all this has proceeded despite long-standing league-wide skepticism that this area will support an NBA team.

This has been born out by the tepid response to the exciting young Hornets and their 23-year-old franchise player, Chris Paul, who are, amazingly enough, No. 1 in the West and, dismayingly enough, No. 29 in attendance.

Received like a conquering hero in Oklahoma City while the water went down here, Hornets owner George Shinn looked ready to settle there until recognizing his obligation to return.

Shinn is the NBA’s boll weevil -- always looking for a home -- after burning out Charlotte and seeing his honeymoon here end, so it’s likely that Stern told him what was expected, how much help he’d get and what he could expect otherwise in the way of league displeasure.

In any case, Shinn has been a model owner and a model corporate citizen.

The players haven’t uttered a word of complaint although, predictably, their blunt-spoken coach, Byron Scott, couldn’t keep up the charade forever.

“I hear people say we’re not advertising enough,” Scott told the New York Times’ Jere Longman last week. “That’s a crock.

“There are billboards all over the city. We’re in the paper every day. People make excuses -- it’s football season. If bringing the All-Star game here and having two players representing your city, if that doesn’t bring enough attention to this team, nothing else will.”

Indeed, with the likelihood that nothing else will, the Hornets and the state of Louisiana have already worked out a separation scenario.

In the window dressing of their new deal, Shinn, whose lease ran through 2012, signed a two-year extension.

In the real news, he got an option to leave after next season if attendance doesn’t improve, for giving up the $25-million practice facility the state was supposed to build.

The magic number is 14,735 a game through the end of next season. However, since they included all the games since Dec. 1, which drew considerably less, it will take about 15,000 a game to pull that average up.

Since the deal was announced, the Hornets have played 10 games, averaging 13,804, so you can see where this could be heading.

With the SuperSonics trying to abandon Seattle, which might build an arena for an owner not from Oklahoma City who doesn’t gut his team, it’s likely that at the end of the day there’ll be a team in Seattle and one in Oklahoma City.

New Orleans would just be a memory, if one where the NBA left a piece of its heart.

mark.heisler@latimes.com