St. Louis hasn’t had an NBA team in over 50 years!! That’s older than I’ve been alive!! I’m Michael Ragland, I’m 34 years old and I have never been to an NBA home game. Then to make things worse, our football team left us as well. Many natives love basketball but have no team to root for our games to attend. I feel like adding an NBA team would bring necessary revenue for the city. Also, this would be a new venue to explore for the NBA with endless possibilities.

Looking at the way the NBA has now shaped itself, I feel as though both the City of St. Louis and the NBA can benefit. This city has had some rough patches in history with a lot of different things. But I do know we produce some very memorable names when it comes to basketball. Such as: Landry Shamet, Tyronn Lue, David Lee, Otto Porter Jr., Bill Bradley, Jo Jo White, Larry Hughes, Michael Porter Jr., Bradley Beal, Marcus Smart and of course Jayson Tatum. I know there’s a few great players here in my hometown that aren’t in the league but should be or that will be.

 So imagine if we brought a team here with all the talent we have to offer? We would definitely need an arena, since ours was torn down in 1999, so that’s going to cost some money. On the bright side of the cost of the arena, salary for players, marketing, etc. the amount of natives that would attend and the excitement other natives would have to have their favorite team come to their hometown! The tickets would practically sell themselves here! Then obviously merch would be bought and etc. so we could definitely talk numbers.

 All I’m asking for, despite how I feel about how great a decision it would be, is just a chance to be in the conversation when it comes to expansion talk inside the NBA. Sign the petition, what’s there to lose?