Two extremely different takes on things Arena and Bobcat.

First up, the Uptown paper of record’s NBA guy, Rick Bonnell. Rick ID’s “Hornet hangover” as something Bobcat Johnson mistakely dismissed as a non-factor in selling a new NBA team to Charlotte. But Bonnell also keeps barking up the tree that Johnson needs to relocate to Charlotte for the team to feel grounded in the local business community.

Bzzt. Wrong. Johnson could live in Nova Scotia and the local business community would love him if he’d show up in Charlotte to hand out checks rather than make capital calls of his local investors. Where Johnson lives will not determine the success or failure of the Bobcats. It is embarassing that this argument keeps coming up. Drop it.

But Rick also fails to mention the defeat of arena referendum as a key source of Charlotte’s unease with the NBA. This is where former Charlotte city councilman Don Reid comes in. Reid identifies the subsequent decision to ignore the public vote and build a new arena and persue a new NBA team as ushering in an age of cynicism in Charlotte. “It has done more to dampen the trust for government than any other one single event that’s happened in Charlotte,” Reid says.

Reid is also predicting that Johnson and the Bobcats will soon be asking the city for an operating subsidy. Given that Don correctly predicted that the Uptown Convention Center would be an endless money drain one light rail line, a Westin hotel, and a NASCAR Hall of Fame ago, Charlotte might want to heed that prediction.

This all gets us back to Rick’s take on Johnson’s business practices. “There’s nothing wrong with Johnson not wanting to lose money. But if losing money is that big a problem, maybe the NBA is the wrong business for him,” Bonnell writes.

Me, I continue to hold that the only way the Bobcats will make it in Charlotte is if the team ditches its premium-pricing assumptions and frankly arrogant marketing stance and substantially cuts ticket prices. Right now, the entire organization oozes contempt for Charlotte’s middle-class which, at last check, is precisely the market it must capture to succeed.