Every NBA team’s biggest celebrity fan

Charlotte Hornets: Nelly

There could be an entire book written with fun facts on minority ownership situations in the NBA. I don’t know if Nelly, who owns a small but undisclosed percentage of the Hornets, would make the list purely based on the financial details of his deal, but he’s a great character to have around. Of course Michael Jordan is the majority owner and Chairman for Charlotte, but Nelly brings some character to the team.

Nelly has been involved with the team for over a decade, since before the Bobcats days. He has survived several shuffles of the deck, as Jordan has exercised more influence over the team. Generally, Nelly stays out of the decision-making process on both the basketball and business side of things. He is also not interested in being used as a face to draw free agents in, because he argues that if it fails, the team loses leverage and that face loses power. It’s hard to argue that even from a distance, joining in on the success of Nelly and Jordan wouldn’t be interesting to a player who values that kind of thing.

Charlotte is not traditionally a big celebrity city, but its music scene is consistently interesting. Musicians also are the best candidates to go wild during games, as we see throughout this list. The main thing that makes Nelly important and impressive is that he has stuck around so long. In the video above, he references Jay-Z quite a bit as a musician who was in a similar position. But even Jay used ownership as a jumping-off point in the sports world before becoming involved in the representation side of things.

Nelly is in it for the long haul, has Jordan’s trust and loves his team. In a small market who has struggled to consistently compete, that’s the most you can ask for.