New Orleans is (and isn't) a basketball town

Getting to the bottom of a very tired narrative regarding basketball in New Orleans

Built during the depths of the Great Depression and off the money made from an appearance in the 1932 Rose Bowl, Devlin Fieldhouse is one of the oldest college basketball arenas in the country.

For a bulk of its history, the Tulane teams that the venue hosted were either very bad or so-so. It wasn’t until the 1980’s when Tulane made it first postseason appearance of any kind in basketball, reaching the NIT in 1982.

Three years after that, in 1985, Tulane basketball fell to one of the biggest scandals in college basketball history, a point-shaving scandal that forced the program to be shuttered for four years. And while the president of Tulane at the time, Eammon Kelley, wanted to shutter the program permanently, he relented and brought it back in 1989-90, hiring Perry Clark as the school’s first African-American basketball coach in the process.

Three years later, in 1992, Tulane would reach the NCAA Tournament for the first time ever and in the process turn what was then known as Fogelman Arena into the hottest ticket in town.

But by the year 2000, Tulane replaced Clark with former Kentucky assistant Sean Finney and well, the party Uptown all of a sudden stopped.

During quarantine two years ago, I binged on baseball documentaries, mainly because there weren’t any games on and well, I love baseball.

One of those documentaries I remembered watching was the one on the old Montreal Expos.

At one point, according to one of the fans that was interviewed for the documentary, the Expos drew more fans than the New York Yankees.

“But nobody wanted to talk about that,” she said, “They wanted to talk about the games in which 8,000 fans showed up.”

I thought about that documentary as I wrote this column in regards to basketball in New Orleans and the tired narrative of it not being a basketball town coming from outsiders.

Historically speaking, no, New Orleans isn’t a basketball-mad city. This is still the South and well, we love our football down here.

However, as I stated before, Fogelman Arena used to be packed on a nightly basis during the 1990’s. After Perry Clark left, Fogleman Arena went from raucous house party to a friends and family crowd.

The reason?

Losing.

Tulane basketball hasn’t reached a postseason tournament (I’m sorry CBI invites don’t count in my atmosphere) of any consequence since 2000, when it reached the NIT.

The same could be said about UNO basketball. Although it has played in an NCAA Tournament more recently than Tulane, during the 1990’s under coach Tim Floyd and Tic Price, UNO was a mainstay in the postseason and was playing to raucous crowds in Lakefront Arena.

Since 1997, UNO basketball has been lost in the shuffle among basketball fans in the Crescent City. Not because New Orleans isn’t a basketball city, but because the emergence of pro basketball and other factors such as Hurricane Katrina caused UNO basketball to be close to the bottom of the pecking order for sport fans in the city.

In other words, shit happens.

As you read this, you have to wonder, why is Ryne bringing up the local college teams in a piece about basketball in the city?

Because if one did a YouTube video search with the keywords “Tulane basketball history” or “UNO basketball history” they will see videos of a packed Fogleman Arena or a packed Lakefront Arena. And while yes, it was during a time college basketball was the only basketball in the city, it doesn’t negate the fact that if the product is good on the court, people will show up in droves in New Orleans.

Which brings us to today and the perception of the city’s attitude towards the Pelicans from outsiders.

Let me be clear before I go any further, I’ve been skeptic about the city’s attitude towards the Pelicans. Largely because I grew up in Memphis, which by all accounts is a basketball-mad city and living in a city that seemed to care little about basketball was foreign to me.

“It’s not a basketball town, man,” I often said of New Orleans.

I just thought that the Pelicans was a distraction for people that didn’t like Mardi Gras parades. I never knew anyone that cleared out their schedules to watch the Pelicans outside of a few people. In fact, I myself had only gone to one Pelicans game in seven years of living here.

“Why go watch a team that loses all the time?” I would ask out loud.

That is, until recently.

I’ve found myself defending New Orleans and the tired narrative in regards to the city’s attitude towards basketball from outsiders who never spent a day in the New Orleans metro area.

As I stated before about Tulane and UNO basketball back in the day, New Orleans will support basketball. Especially good basketball.

You saw it last year when the Pelicans made the playoffs, as you can tell by the video above. You saw it when the Pelicans reached the playoffs in 2018, when they swept the Blazers in the first round.

And of course, when Chris Paul took the then-Hornets to the cusp of the Western Conference Finals, you saw how New Orleans came alive.

Before you open your mouth and say New Orleans isn’t a basketball city, clarify that statement by using the words “historically” and “however”.

Because without those two words, you’re continuing a tired narrative that has no substance.