When It Comes to Basketball, Pittsburgh is a Turnover

Written by Featured Journalist: Emmett C. Jones III

The Pittsburgh Steelers.  The Pittsburgh Penguins. The Pittsburgh Pirates.  The City of Champions.

Pittsburgh is a town that loves sports and is in love with its sports teams.  Yet with the fanaticism Pittsburghers show towards their sports, the one thing that has continually eluded the city is a successful pro basketball franchise.

Not to say that they haven’t tried.

The last attempt was a few years ago, the CBA/ABA Pittsburgh Xplosion.  They folded due to the economic climate and low attendance.  Although they weren’t the first team, as numerous teams have tried and failed to be successful in Pittsburgh (Pittsburgh Piranhas, Condors, and Ironmen, for example)

So what gives?  Is it just a streak of bad luck?

Not quite.

Basketball will never work in Pittsburgh, regardless of how many enterprising individuals decide to start the next iteration of a Pittsburgh basketball franchise.

Why?

1. Population Size – The Greater Pittsburgh Metropolitan area only contains about 2.5 million people.  Out of the 13 cities which are able to support 4 professional sports teams, the only one with a population base that small is Denver, but Denver is essentially a hub to a base much larger than the Denver Metropolitan area.  Pittsburgh has relatively large cities (Philadelphia, Cleveland) in the vicinity.  Arguably there isn’t a large enough population base to pull from to support basketball in the steel city.

1. 2. An NBA franchise is necessary, anything less won’t do. If this idea is going to work, Pittsburgh needs an NBA franchise that competes against other NBA franchises.  You can already argue that football and baseball are more popular than basketball.  You can argue that hockey is on a similar playing field to basketball.  That being said, you can’t bring a Pittsburgher a less than premium basketball product if they can go see the premium versions of more popular, already established (which is also key) sports.

1. 3. The NBA Schedule.  Like I mentioned above…the fact that the other sports have an established foothold in Pittsburgh means that the NBA would have to try twice as hard to acquire regular basketball fans.  That becomes a hindrance because basketball runs during football and hockey seasons.  It’s high unlikely you’re pulling people away from those two sports, especially with the recent championship victories.  Of course, you could just rely on people to spend money on all three sports but…

1. 4. The Pittsburgh Median Income is too low.  Pittsburgh is known as the steel city.  And granted, we are far from being the nation’s largest steel producer, we are still not a populous that is wealthy.  The fact that the median Pittsburgh income is less than $30,000 a year makes me wonder how its citizens attend Steelers and Penguins games, let alone the addition of another sport.

In short, it is just not going to happen.  Other sports have an established foothold amongst a relatively low income, small metropolitan area.  In order to compete with those other sports, a premium product would need to be brought into the area.  But when there’s no more money left to spend, how do you buy tickets?

Basketball.  It’s a slam dunk in other cities, but Pittsburgh?  It’s nothing more than an air ball.