Ever since the NBA All-Star break, Michael Heisley could hardly be blamed for sitting up late at night, longing to hear the popping sound of bubble wrap, to smell the pungent scent of packing tape and to set eyes on a fleet full of U-Hauls.

	New Orleans businessman Sam LeBlanc, center, jokes with Grizzlies owner Michael Heisley, right, as New Orleans Mayor Marc Morial looks on.

By Monday, the Vancouver Grizzlies' owner is expected to finally file his change-of-address form with the NBA -- 349 days after the league approved his purchase of the team from Seattle businessman John McCaw. Heisley has been criticized for missing his initial March 1 deadline, but he can't be blamed for making a hasty decision. He is simply trying to avoid making similar mistakes Peter Karmanos made when he moved his NHL franchise from one bad location to another.

Karmanos, who owns the Carolina Hurricanes, moved the Hartford Whalers to Raleigh, N.C., after the 1996-97 season not so much to make money, but to lose less money. Even when forced to fork over a whopping $20.5 million default payment to skirt the lease on the 21-year-old Hartford Civic Center and contributing another $40 million to the team's new arena in Raleigh, Karmanos was still happy that his team no longer would have to compete with New York and Boston sports teams for the corporate revenue. "The upside to a building in Carolina is that we have a chance to break even or even make some money," Karmanos said this week. "There was no upside at all in Hartford."

	FANS: WHERE SHOULD GRIZZ GO? In order by % avid fans Source: Harris Interactive, Dec. 1999
	City	% residents NBA fans	% avid fans
	New Orleans	64	27
	Anaheim	79	24
	Louisville	71	18
	St. Louis	28	10
	Las Vegas	40	8
	Memphis	38	5

But Karmanos spent so much time salivating over potential revenues streams in his new arena deal that "any team in the NHL would love," including nearby Research Triangle Park, that he forgot one of the most important keys to franchise longevity -- establishing a solid fan base.

It's easy to see how the fans might be given little consideration when a franchise considers moving. In Anaheim, Heisley is being lured by the local television revenue; and in New Orleans it's about becoming the marquee tenant in a newly built arena. Memphis and Louisville both promise to build a new arena that will include naming rights, and the parent company of Kentucky Fried Chicken reportedly has spiced up the Louisville deal by offering a $100 million incentive. But as Howard Baldwin, the first Whalers owner who controlled the organization until the late-'80s, said, "Some owners don't realize that it's nice to have a new arena, but the most important thing to have is asses in the seats."

	“	The message here is that moving from one city to another for a free arena is not necessarily the solution. People are laughing at Heisley for his thorough efforts, but he's doing the exact due diligence that you have to do. ”
		— Dean Bonham, chairman of The Bonham Group, which represents basketball interests in the Louisville market

That's one thing Karmanos has been lacking for four years now. The Hurricanes once again are hoping to sell 12,000 season tickets by the start of next season. Right now the team is only halfway there and has the league's second-worst average home attendance average at fewer than 13,000 per game. Although only a handful of NHL teams actually make a profit, the Hurricanes' losses of between $10 million to $15 million annually are still among the worst in the league.

"The message here is that moving from one city to another for a free arena is not necessarily the solution," said Dean Bonham, chairman of The Bonham Group, a sports consultancy firm that is representing basketball interests in the Louisville market. "People are laughing at Heisley for his thorough efforts, but he's doing the exact due diligence that you have to do."

Unlike Karmanos, Heisley has little chance of losing money at the rate he is in Vancouver thanks to the inflated Canadian economy and the advantage of shopping an NBA team on the open market. But if there's any lesson to be learned from the Hurricanes' move to Carolina, it is that a great arena deal is only as good as the number of people that acutally show up in the arena.

Even today, market research shows little evidence that Raleigh is capable of supporting an NHL team.

A Harris Interactive Poll, conducted in Dec. 2000, reveals the Raleigh-Durham area has the lowest percentage of avid NHL fans out of all league cities. While 59 percent of the area's general population considered themselves NHL fans, only 5 percent said they were avid fans -- the group that is most likely to buy season tickets. That makes the Raleigh-Durham market considerably less desirable than New Orleans, with a 10 percent fan avidity, or Sacramento and Jacksonville, both at 8 percent.

Ironically, in the same survey, 53 percent of Hartford residents considered themselves NHL fans, while fan avidity was at 18 percent -- 13 percentage points higher than Raleigh-Durham.

"They probably couldn't have moved to a worse place," said Shawn Rife, manager of sports and entertainment research for Harris Interactive. "Our data indicates that there would have been other places that would have much more successful."

So Heisley seems prepared to endure a few more sleepless nights, a small price for the piece of mind that comes with a thorough consideration of all his options now.