How the Hornets plan to maximize NBA exposure and minimize exhaustion from Paris trip

The NBA is about competition: Figuring how to maintain optimal performance over an 82-game regular-season schedule.

The NBA is about entertainment: Wherever and whenever two teams are told to play, the show must go on.

Charlotte Hornets president Fred Whitfield oversaw a special logistics challenge this season: How to get maximum global exposure from playing in the first regular-season game in Paris, while minimizing wear-and-tear on the players?

The Hornets and Milwaukee Bucks play Jan. 24 at Paris’ Accorhotels Arena. The Hornets business operation lobbied for this for more than two years, feeling a preseason trip to China in 2015 was valuable marketing for both the team and owner Michael Jordan’s “Jordan Brand” shoe-and-apparel business.

The Hornets made sense, since when the game was announced last winter, the Hornets had two prominent French players — Tony Parker and Nicolas Batum. Parker, a future Hall of Famer, has since retired, but Batum still is on the roster.

But making sense of this to an incoming basketball operation — general manager Mitch Kupchak and coach James Borrego — was a bit of a sell. Whitfield worked hard in discussions with the NBA to mitigate the competitive downside of an 8,000-mile January round trip and two days of appearances concluding with the game against the Bucks.

“It’s completely different” from preseason in 2015 against the Los Angeles Clippers in China, Whitfield said. “We have to take into account the toll it will take on the team — the travel.

“As we started getting a feel for what our schedule would look like, we tied in Mitch and our basketball folks to say, ‘What do we really need on the front side of the France game and what do we need happen on the back side?’ — from a rest perspective.”

The result: The Hornets play just two games in a 12-day span between the end of the West Coast trip in Denver on Jan. 15 and a home game against the New York Knicks on Jan. 28. That’s by far the least-busy stretch in a six-month Hornets regular season.

The Hornets play an afternoon home game on Martin Luther King Day on Monday, then fly by charter to Paris on Tuesday. They will practice and do a couple of appearances Wednesday and Thursday, then play the Bucks (and MVP Giannis Antetokounmpo, who is Greek) Friday (3 pm. EST).

The NBA has never held a regular-season game in France before, but the Washington Wizards and New York Knicks played a year ago in London. Whitfield spoke with his counterpart in Washington, Jim Van Stone, to see what could be learned from the Wizards’ experience overseas.

Some Wizards players commented after the London trip that the travel to Britain didn’t particularly wear them out, but the drain on their energy was more apparent when they returned to the United States.

The Hornets requested and received a buffer after the Paris game: They don’t play again until Tuesday, and that is a home game against the Knicks. Also, they play only one game (at Washington) in the three days following the Knicks game.

“When we saw our (initial draft of a schedule) we saw we were likely to be home on Martin Luther King Day. So we really wanted an afternoon game,” Whitfield said. “The league was great to work with: Getting us back home with a couple of days to rest and then a home game. And building in days to travel.

“That was really important to Mitch — get rest, go, and then have rest again when we got back.”

Not a bowl game

The other thing the basketball operation requested was to keep travel as much like a normal NBA road trip as possible. In other words, don’t make this resemble a college football team on a bowl trip with a plane full of boosters.

The Hornets have a charter with about 85 seats for Paris. Only a few of those passengers will be guests, such as major sponsors. Everyone else is players and other basketball staff.

But that isn’t everyone the Hornets need; they are the designated “home” team in Paris, so they supply game-operations staff (scorekeepers, timekeepers, etc.) along with entertainment such as mascot Hugo.

Whitfield said the team bought about 50 commercial tickets from American Airlines for the staff needed in Paris, along with some airfares for the business-development summit the Hornets have organized.

Doing business

The Paris trip is a good marketing opportunity for Jordan Brand, the Nike division named for the Hornets’ owner and iconic former player. Michael Jordan will be in Paris, as will NBA commissioner Adam Silver.

When Nike became the NBA’s uniform provider in 2017, the deal included Jordan Brand’s “Jumpman” logo going on Hornets jerseys. About half of the Hornets’ players wear Jordan Brand shoes, which has a major presence in Europe.

Looking to maximize the business opportunities in this trip, Whitfield worked with the Charlotte Regional Business Alliance to organize a summit Thursday afternoon in Paris.

Silver will attend and make opening remarks. Bank of America and Honeywell are both sponsoring and sending speakers for the panel discussion, looking to create new business with French and other European companies in Charlotte.

“We viewed this as an opportunity not just for our team — also, a great opportunity as an economic stimulator for our region,” Whitfield said.

“There’s a lot of opportunity — Giannis there and Michael coming over. This an unbelievable opportunity to recruit companies to do business here.”

This story was originally published January 19, 2020 at 6:00 AM.

Rick Bonnell

The Charlotte Observer

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Rick Bonnell has covered the Charlotte Hornets and the NBA for the Observer since the expansion franchise moved to the Queen City in 1988. A Syracuse grad and former president of the Pro Basketball Writers Association, Bonnell also writes occasionally on the NFL, college sports and the business of sports. Support my work with a digital subscription