A record crowd watches the NBA All-Star basketball game at Cowboys Stadium in Arlington, Texas, Sunday, Feb. 14, 2010. Photo by Bryan Terry, The Oklahoman ORG XMIT: KOD

As I’m scrolling through Facebook I see an article on the Charlotte Observer, admittedly I didn’t open it because I loathe the bombardment of ads that ensues when you visit their page. The article title was “NBA All-Star Weekend once shut down Las Vegas. Charlotte, you’ve been warned”… I’m like okay this is exactly what we talked about on our podcast. I (Evan) asked Scotty if he had heard anybody outside of the sports or entertainment circles we roam in discussing the All-Star game with it being only 2 weeks away? We both answered “No”. And we discussed why that made us nervous.

I opened the article comments to take a look at what my fellow Charlotteans are saying on the topic and all I see are a bunch of Brads and Karens scoffing at the notion that we may be “shut down”. I see one Brad say “Charlotte isn’t a destination like Vegas, we won’t get 10’s of thousands of people.” with a host of other people echoing this sentiment.

I just have one question to ask you…. ARE Y’ALL STUPID?!?! Just because you are not an NBA fan does not mean there aren’t millions of them across the globe and this is the event where they all come to celebrate their favorite sport. This isn’t a little event where Charlotteans are the ones who attend. This party isn’t being thrown for us. 

Almost every venue in uptown and south end has been booked for months for this one week… and not by people from Charlotte. Y’all hoping to just wander inside uptown and just enjoy the atmosphere are in for a rude awakening.

Ya’ll bitch and moan about CIAA and how it’s soooooooo inconvenient but that’s a $50 million event…The All-Star week is projected to bring in over $100 Million in local impact.

The city infrastructure just isn’t ready. We as a city haven’t even finished the 1-77 South ramp from 277. This is the same city who didn’t have a plan for a parade or on how to handle the crowds if the Panthers won the Super Bowl in 2015. Just to give you an idea, over 100,000 people attended the All-Star game in 2010… And that was only one event.

I’m just saying if you aren’t taking this seriously and aren’t preparing for what is to come then I don’t want to see you complaining about it in 2 weeks. This is the time for Charlotte to step up and show off our lovely city and I don’t think enough of you are talking about what is coming to our small southern town. You think your 30 minute commute to work is rough?