“They’ve assured us we get our building back on the 26th (of September) just as they found it,” said Bobcats president Fred Whitfield. “That was our biggest concern.”
Technically, August and September are the off-season, but in reality this is the Bobcats’ ramp-up time, both on and off the court. Players assemble in Charlotte by Labor Day for weeks of daily pickup games preparing for training camp. The business side is in a final push to sell tickets before the team opens the regular season in November.
Whitfield and his staff started planning this move-out six months ago. The single biggest concern: Not disrupting the players’ preparation. The Bobcats have a new coach in Mike Dunlap and a slew of new players via the draft, free-agency and trades.
They’re hoping for significant improvement after last season’s 7-59 record, worst in NBA history.
“Especially with Mike Dunlap’s player-development agenda and our players getting into the mindset of coming in every day (of the off-season), we wanted to have a system in place where it would be very easy for them to go through their normal regimen,” Whitfield said.
So the Bobcats arranged to use Johnson & Wales’ gymnasium on the edge of uptown as their temporary training facility. The college will turn over the gym, two locker rooms, their training room and a player lounge to the Bobcats’ exclusive use from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m., until fall classes begin the second week of September.
For the rest of September, the Bobcats will get Johnson & Wales’ gym two hours each morning. As a perk, J&W students will be invited to watch pickup games from the gym’s bleachers.
Read more here: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2012/0 ... rylink=cpy
do we have any posters from johnson and wales? if so, you guys need to get to those pick up games and report some info.
