Moving From An NBA City To An NHL City

Yes, this image was made with AI, cut me some slack

This past December, my wife and I packed up everything and moved out to Middle Tennessee, south of Nashville. It was something she and I had decided on doing long before we were even engaged because, at the time, we both knew where the relationship was heading, and we wanted to live somewhere between our two families. Most of her family lives between Lawton and Norman, Oklahoma (which is a big reason I write so much about the Sooners), and most of my family resides in Charlotte, North Carolina. 

Before moving out to (I'm just going to say Nashville) Nashville, I spent most of my life in Charlotte—home of the Carolina Panthers and Charlotte Hornets. Once I started driving past 9 PM, I would load my F150 up with my buddies, and we'd see a few Hornets games every month since you could get tickets for around $15 after fees. Despite the Hornets' inability to put together consecutive winning seasons, it was still the fun thing to do. 

At the time, Kemba Walker was the face of the franchise and there is a reason he is nicknamed Cardiac Kemba. He was fun to watch. I have seen Lebron, Kobe, Giannis, and a few of the other greats play before, and they would put up great numbers, but unless you caught them on a night where they wanted to put on a show, how they got those numbers wasn't electric. Not like Kemba. Without fail, Kemba was going to put on a performance whether he scored ten points or thirty. 

The Hornets, despite their shortcomings on the court, created a fantastic atmosphere for fans. I would argue that some of the most fun sports events I have been to were when they were the Bobcats. All of this to say, I grew up in a basketball town. If you needed something to do that night, you went to see the Hornets play. Outside of the events, win or lose, the Hornets were the talk of the town. 

This brings me to moving to Nashville and how that ties into all this. In my life, when the NBA playoffs are happening, I'm generally surrounded by a bunch of people grumbling about how the Hornets haven't won a series since NBA basketball came back to the city in 2004, discussions on who we should pick up in free agency, how we're ruining LaMelo Ball's career, etc. But in Nashville, other than the occasional Lakers and Knicks fans (since most of the city is LA and New York transplants), the NBA isn't really a topic of conversation around here. Of all the things that I thought would be a "Culture Shock" to me moving out here, the lack of NBA conversation was not on my BINGO card. 

One thing I'm finding our real quick about the sports world is just how much a team's proximity plays into how relevant they are. I would have thought, at the very least, the Memphis Grizzlies would be a team people around here pull for, but the truth of the matter is that nobody seems to care. After making this observation, I started looking around at how relevant the Tennessee Volunteers were in the Nashville Market, and while there are several Tennessee Volunteer fans out here, I see just as many, if not more, Alabama, Ole Miss, and Kentucky fans out here. 

There are two professional teams in Nashville: the Tennessee Titans and the Nashville Predators. I haven't been around long enough to see what the city is like during football season, but I have been around for the tail end of hockey season and the Stanley Cup Playoffs. For most of my life, I haven't been around a professional team that consistently makes the playoffs and actually competes. As I said before, the Hornets have made the playoffs three times since bringing basketball back to Charlotte in 2004, and the Panthers are generally either not in the playoffs or are losing in the wildcard round. 

I'm not too familiar with how the Stanley Cup Playoffs work, but what I do know is that the Predators have gotten past the first round a handful of times in the last decade and have made a Stanley Cup Final appearance. I'm not sure what to do with a team that actually competes on a consistent basis in the city I live in. I guess the only answer is to somewhat figure out what hockey and the NHL are all about between now and the start of the 2024-2025 season in October.