The first and only other time Charlotte hosted the NBA All-Star Game was in 1991, and the city held the league’s marquee event at the now-demolished Charlotte Coliseum out near the airport. The city’s population was less than half of what it is now. Uptown was basically a ghost town outside business hours.
At his press conference before the game that weekend, league Commissioner David Stern said that a few years prior, when the city was applying for an NBA expansion team, the joke among some in the media was, “Where’s Charlotte?”
“I think this franchise and this city have answered that question in record-breaking fashion.