Nick Weldon's guest appearances

Nick Weldon

The Reading Life

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The Materializing Mindset Podcast

Tom Cooper

Robin Roberts

Clint Smith

Erik Larson

Walter Isaacson

Mike Carey

Laura Lippman

Lee Ledbetter

Maurice Carlos Ruffin

Bob Ross

Michael Lewis

Clint Bruce

Ryan Murphy

Sunni Patterson

Randy Hahn

OwlTail

Brian Mitchell

Elizabeth Miki Brina

Susan Larson talks with Brian Mitchell and Nick Weldon about “Monumental: Oscar Dunn and His Radical Fight in Reconstruction Louisiana”; and Elizabeth Miki Brina about her first book, “Speak Okinawa: A Memoir.”

The Reading Life: Brian Mitchell & Nick Weldon, Elizabeth Miki Brina

We point our GPS coordinates this week to the endearingly enigmatic city of New Orleans, for an overdue look into the Big Easy’s chaotic pro sports franchise history – with Historic New Orleans Collection writer (and recovering sports scribe) Nick Weldon (“A Streetcar Named Basketball”). Although a mainstay of baseball’s minor and Negro leagues since the dawn of the sport’s professional era in the late 1800s (including Louis Armstrong’s well-outfitted, attention-grabbing, but largely lamentable 1931 barnstorming “Secret Nine” club), Louisiana’s largest city has been considered more of a football town over the last half-century – especially after the arrival of the NFL Saints in 1967. But it’s the pursuit (and occasional success) of pro basketball that has captured the fancy of local sports entrepreneurs most in the intervening decades – providing the Crescent City with some of its most fascinating, yet oft-forgotten sporting exploits:  The American Basketball Association’s Buccaneers (1967-70) – a charter member, who came within one game of winning the league’s first-ever title, before moving to Memphis two seasons later; The National Basketball Association’s Jazz (1974-79) – an expansion franchise known mostly for the dazzling on-court wizardry of local LSU hero “Pistol” Pete Maravich, and not much else; The Women’s Professional Basketball League’s Pride (1979-81) – ready-made to take advantage of the region’s strong female collegiate roots and presumptive US women’s success at the (eventually boycotted) 1980 Olympics; AND The arrival of the NBA’s Hornets (now Pelicans) in 2002 – finally cementing the long-term viability of pro basketball in New Orleans.  Weldon helps us dig in to all of these points on NOLA’s pro hoops history curve – but also some tantalizing tangents like the one-year incarnation of the USFL’s New Orleans Breakers, and even the “Sun Belt” Nets of the original mid-1970s World Team Tennis.

We point our GPS coordinates this week to the endearingly enigmatic city of New Orleans, for an overdue look into the Big Easy’s chaotic pro sports franchise history – with Historic New Orleans Collection writer (and recovering sports scribe) Nick Weldon (“<a href="https://www.sbnation.com/longform/2014/11/5/7154565/new-orleans-basketball-history-jazz-pelicans-hornets-profile" rel="noopener nofollow" target="_blank">A Streetcar Named Basketball</a>”). Although a mainstay of baseball’s minor and Negro leagues since the dawn of the sport’s professional era in the late 1800s (including Louis Armstrong’s well-outfitted, attention-grabbing, but largely lamentable 1931 barnstorming “Secret Nine” club), Louisiana’s largest city has been considered more of a football town over the last half-century – especially after the arrival of the NFL Saints in 1967. But it’s the pursuit (and occasional success) of pro basketball that has captured the fancy of local sports entrepreneurs most in the intervening decades – providing the Crescent City with some of its most fascinating, yet oft-forgotten sporting exploits: <ul> <li>The American Basketball Association’s Buccaneers (1967-70) – a charter member, who came within one game of winning the league’s first-ever title, before moving to Memphis two seasons later;</li> <li>The National Basketball Association’s Jazz (1974-79) – an expansion franchise known mostly for the dazzling on-court wizardry of local LSU hero “Pistol” Pete Maravich, and not much else;</li> <li>The Women’s Professional Basketball League’s Pride (1979-81) – ready-made to take advantage of the region’s strong female collegiate roots and presumptive US women’s success at the (eventually boycotted) 1980 Olympics; AND</li> <li>The arrival of the NBA’s Hornets (now Pelicans) in 2002 – finally cementing the long-term viability of pro basketball in New Orleans.</li> </ul> Weldon helps us dig in to all of these points on NOLA’s pro hoops history curve – but also some tantalizing tangents like the one-year incarnation of the USFL’s New Orleans Breakers, and even the “Sun Belt” Nets of the original mid-1970s World Team Tennis.

172: The Forgotten Pro Teams of New Orleans – With Nick Weldon