Chris Paul is the face of the New Orleans Hornets, the franchise embodied in one person. If he were here, walking down the streets of New Orleans, the locals might yell to him “Hey, Chris, where y’at dawlin’?
For those of you in Rio Linda (thank you very much Rush Limbaugh) “where y’at” is a familiar greeting to friends and family in the Crescent City which means “how are you” or “how have youbeen?”
CP3 would hear it …if he were here.
Paul made an appearance at the NBA Draft fest for Hornets fans at the New Orleans Arena back on June 28. To his credit, he has not been idle, either. I checked Chris’ website, Chris Paul .com and I found some of the things he has been doing:
--Chris sponsored a Habitat for Humanity event in Winston-Salem, NC in June and will host another Habitat Fundraiser there over a weekend in September. No doubt his growing up in the area and attending Wake Forest forged very strong ties there.
--Chris has held a basketball camp in Oklahoma City and just completed one in Winston-Salem. Oklahoma City has hosted the Hornets for most of the last two NBA seasons since Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans in August of 2005. Paul was drafted just two months before the storm, so Oklahoma City has been the only home he has known in his professional basketball career.
Said one mother at the Oklahoma City event as quoted in The Oklahoman:
“I was really curious whether they were going to have the camp because I knew the (Hornets) were going back to New Orleans. I think it means a lot that (Paul) stayed here and did this for the kids. And he's present at the camp. That was one of my concerns, would he actually be involved? And he is.”
My question is: why was no CP3 camp scheduled for New Orleans? Why has Chris not shown the commitment to kids and fans in New Orleans that he has in OKC?
In New Orleans, youths are starved for summer goings-on every year. A CP3 basketball camp may have helped keep some “at-risk” youths off the street and, possibly away from trouble. The Hornets have indeed held a basketball camp in New Orleans, and it was attended by Hornets F-C Hilton Armstrong.
But, Chris Paul was not there. The face of the franchise. According to the team website, there will be one more camp in the area from July 30th-August 3rd with a Hornets' player to-be-named-later. Chris, can you volunteer for that one, please?
Please do not misunderstand. CP’s commitment to charity is not in question. His commitment to charities in storm-ravaged New Orleans, almost two years after the fact, is. If the Hornets are here for the long haul--a debatable question for sure--then Paul must be prominent in the community, like, say Reggie Bush of the New Orleans Saints has been.
City Park's Tad Gormley Stadium was underwater after Katrina
Bush made a $50,000 donation to a local high school and is involved in a charity to restore Tad Gormley Stadium, one of the city’s only venues for high school football. Surely there is a gym or basketball court that needs refurbishing somewhere in New Orleans. The CP3 Memorial Gym has a nice ring to it.
The Hornets have tickets to sell. The key to selling those tickets is having the Hornets' highest profile player in the public eye constantly. Being the part of the recovery of the city of New Orleans gives Paul many opporunities daily to make a positive impact. As people move back to the New Orleans area, with a Saints team with a waiting list for season tickets, it sure makes sense to make people aware that the Hornets have more tickets to sell than they have buyers at this point. Why not get a running start on those sales with Paul leading the charge?
Paul helping the recovery and helping sell tickets seems like a win-win proposition for the Hornets and the city.
I don’t know where Paul is these days, now that we’re well into the NBA off-season. But I know there is a city, somewhere--at 30 degrees north latitude and 90 degrees west longitude--desperate for a hero and a champion. In Post-Katrina New Orleans, we cannot have enough of them.
CP3, where are you?
Post Script 7/21/07: I read in the NFL Czar's Blog an entry from May in which he reported that Reggie Bush has actually made another $50,000 donation to the same school again in 2007. Just another hundred-thousand reasons to thank Bush and wonder when Chris Paul will make that kind of impact in New Orleans. See link below for details.
Though I am a life-long Southerner, ice hockey is my game. I was likely the first hockey-specif ic sportswriter in the state of Louisiana when the ECHL arrived in 1995. I was a freelance hockey sportswriter for local fishwraps between 1995-2000.
Being from New Orleans, I follow the Saints, Hornets and LSU in that order. I have been from Los Angeles to New York City to watch Wayne Gretzky play, and I attended my first hockey game at Maple Leaf Gardens in 1985. The greatest hockey ever played was the 1987 Canada Cup Final between Canada and the USSR.
Post Script 7/21/07: I read in the NFL Czar's Blog an entry from May in which he reported that Reggie Bush has actually made another $50,000 donation to the same school again in 2007. Just another hundred-thousand reasons to thank Bush and wonder when Chris Paul will make that kind of impact in New Orleans. See link below for details.
