What stands in the way?<\/p>\n
Population: Cities with all four major sports (football, baseball, hockey and basketball) all have a larger population than Pittsburgh, including Denver, the smallest of such cities, with a population of about 715,500. Could Pittsburgh, whose population is less than half that, support four pro teams?<\/p>\n
Economics. I used to believe that a basketball team would bring an uptick to the region\u2019s economic activity. But the effect of a pro team on a town\u2019s economy is negligible. The City Observatory<\/a>, based in Portland, Oregon, considered the potential economic impacts if Portland\u2019s Trail Blazers vacated its home city by looking at what happened in Vancouver and Seattle, cities that once had NBA teams. Vancouver and Seattle post-NBA teams had about the same economic impact compared to when they had teams. The City Observatory also cited this study<\/a> that concludes that NBA teams are not the best economic investment. Go figure. If we had to find a home for a black and gold dunking squad, it would invariably be at the PPG Paints Arena. Could a local study to estimate the impact be worthwhile?<\/p>\n Growing up in Pittsburgh during the heyday of Michael Jordan, I, and many other Pittsburgh kids, wanted to be like Mike. We donned Bulls jerseys to class and pantomined jumpshots in school hallways, tongues slagging out the sides of our mouths for good measure.<\/p>\n We rooted for M.J. (and Kobe, A.I., Shaq and other greats) with unabashed excitement. The athletic slur, \u201cbandwagon fan,\u201d didn\u2019t apply to us because there wasn\u2019t a local basketball team here.<\/p>\n Proximity gives bias to the Cleveland Cavaliers and the Philadelphia 76ers to the east, but for me, neither felt close enough to be a home team. This wasn\u2019t always the case.<\/p>\n There once was the Pittsburgh Ironmen<\/a>, who played in the NBA\u2019s precursor league, the Basketball Association of America, in the 1946-47 season. They finished that first and only season with the worst record in the league.\u00a0<\/p>\n Then came the Pittsburgh Pipers, who won the American Basketball Association\u2019s championship in 1968. They later became the Pittsburgh Condors in 1970. None of these teams survived because of either poor performance, low fan turnout or both. The Condors had their wings clipped in 1972, and after its folding there hasn\u2019t been a professional Pittsburgh hoop squad.<\/p>\n DeJuan Blair, was a Hill District<\/a> athletic dynamo<\/a>, a neighborhood amateur who played ball in Pittsburgh\u2019s Kennard Park in the early 2000s, then went on to Pitt and to the NBA in 2009, playing with the San Antonio Spurs, Dallas Mavericks, Washington Wizards and Phoenix Suns. He\u2019s just one name on a list of Pittsburgh basketball greats<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n The idea to have a professional basketball team in Pittsburgh seems to reenter the cultural conversation every few years.<\/p>\n Detractors of bringing a professional basketball team to Pittsburgh often present the following points in an argument: Pittsburgh is too small a city; the interest for basketball isn\u2019t here (even when Pitt\/Duquesne are doing well in NCAA, they don\u2019t sell out venues), and there\u2019s not a generational fanbase for basketball as we have with the Pirates and Steelers. <\/p>\n Hogwash, I say! Sports is a quintessential aspect of Pittsburgh. We are the City of Champions. We turn out like no other when sports are on the line \u2013 we even broke attendance records for this year\u2019s NFL Draft. The second largest event in the city\u2019s history was the 2017 Stanley Cup parade.\u00a0<\/p>\n With a new mayoral administration and our moment in the national spotlight just concluding, now could be the time to \u201ccourt\u201d the NBA and WNBA.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Pittsburgh should have a professional basketball team. Actually, we should have two. The NBA\u2019s growing roster of teams…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":179410,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[73,75,74,35024],"class_list":["post-179409","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pittsburgh","tag-pittsburgh","tag-pittsburgh-headlines","tag-pittsburgh-news","tag-pittsburgh-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179409","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=179409"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179409\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/179410"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=179409"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=179409"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=179409"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/GT_vs._Pitt_mens_basketball_Jan_14_2023_06-scaled.jpg\")
A Pitt vs. Georgia Tech men\u2019s college basketball game in 2023. When Pitt does well, the city turns out to support the team. Could it happen for an NBA or WNBA team? Photo courtesy of Wikipedia Commons.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/connie-teaching.png\")
Professional basketball legend Connie Hawkins shows off some of his defensive skills and tips to young boys at a basketball clinic during the Pittsburgh Youth Olympiad, summer 1968. Photo courtesy of University of Pittsburgh Archives. <\/p>\n