The Heat-Bobcats preseason game in Raleigh next Tuesday is “nearing a sellout," and Bobcats management "says it could eventually play a regular-season NBA game in the Triangle,” according to Rick Bonnell of the CHARLOTTE OBSERVER. This would be “part of an expanded effort at marketing the Bobcats throughout the Carolinas.” Bobcats Exec VP and Chief Marketing & Sales Officer Pete Guelli on Thursday said, “Down the line we wouldn’t rule out a regular-season contest in an alternate market.” Bobcats President & COO Fred Whitfield said moving a regular-season home game outside Time Warner Cable Arena has been discussed “at a very high level internally.” He added that the Bobcats are “allowed to play up to two regular-season games a season outside Charlotte.” Whitfield said that any other arena “would have to be ‘NBA quality,’ which likely limits options to at most three sites in the Carolinas" -- Raleigh's PNC Arena, the Greensboro Coliseum or the Dean E. Smith Center in Chapel Hill. Bonnell writes PNC Arena “is intriguing” (CHARLOTTE OBSERVER, 10/19).
