Check out what The New York Times is reporting about Seattle and city’s looming loss of its NBA franchise:

On Election Day, residents rebuffed their once-beloved Seattle SuperSonics, voting overwhelmingly for a ballot measure ending public subsidies for professional sports teams.

The owners, who bought the Sonics in October for $350 million from Howard Schultz, the founder of Starbucks, had warned that the team would leave unless the city provided a new arena.

The vote delighted Citizens for More Important Things, a group that, with the help of a statewide health care union, spent $60,000 to sponsor the initiative. Other cities “may be so desperate to lure tourists there that they have to overpay for an N.B.A. team,” said Chris Van Dyk, a founder of the group. “Seattle doesn’t have to lure anybody.”

Mr. Van Dyk’s priorities are schools, transportation projects and health care, and he openly disdains wealthy people who buy professional teams, pay huge salaries to players and then demand handouts. Owners who threaten to take their teams elsewhere, Mr. Van Dyk said, are no better than “the neighborhood crack cocaine dealer.”

Told of Mr. Van Dyk’s comments, Clayton I. Bennett of Oklahoma City, chairman of the group that owns the Sonics, sighed.

Seattle “turned its back on the N.B.A.,” Mr. Bennett said in a telephone interview, and gave up its chance to build a “multipurpose” arena suitable for basketball, hockey and conventions.

“I’m not saying it’s the most important thing or the only thing, but I think professional sports are an important component to the overall economy and quality of life in any marketplace,” Mr. Bennett said. “It’s about flying the flag of the city nationally and globally.”

Yes, and I’m certain Seattle will fall off the face the Earth without a NBA franchise. But you have to say that Charlotte surely fits the description of a city “so desperate to lure tourists there that they have to overpay for an N.B.A. team.”

Charlotte, we know, aches to be a destination location. Why, exactly, is unlear. Maybe it is just as simple as the fact that visitors leave after a couple days; voters hang around and demand more important things than entertainment.