SMOOTHIE KING CENTER PARKING

The team that became the New Orleans Pelicans has underwent an odyssey, voyaging across the country, with its home base changing until it finally returned to where it began. Unlike the team, the Smoothie King Center has stayed in the same place. With the Pelicans about to begin their new epoch, finding New Orleans basketball parking is to get much more difficult, so it is best to book a Smoothie King Center parking spot ahead of time.

One can think of the Smoothie King Center as the Superdome’s little brother. Located right next to the Superdome, the Arena is a smaller venue, designed for sports with smaller crowds. It has been viewed with favor by the NBA, such that it has hosted NBA All-Star games.

The history of the New Orleans Pelicans is one of the more peculiar stories to come out of the NBA. The New Orleans Pelicans began life as the Charlotte Hornets, and were housed in the then-extant Charlotte Coliseum. The team drafted Larry Johnson in 1991 and Alonzo Mourning in 1992 to help team reach their first successes. Glen Rice also chipped in, but the Hornets never made a deep playoff run and ranked 29th in attendance by the turn of the century. In response, the NBA initiated a deal to move the team to New Orleans, while almost counterintuitively promising a new team for Charlotte (the Bobcats).

The New Orleans Hornets defeated the Utah Jazz (previously the New Orleans Jazz) at their first game in the Smoothie King Center, but didn’t have long to celebrate, as Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005. In the aftermath of the storm, the team played at the Chesapeake Energy Arena in Oklahoma City before returning to Louisiana in 2007. The team played as the Hornets until 2013, when they became the locally-oriented Pelicans, and the Hornets name returned to Charlotte as the Bobcats are slated to be renamed the Hornets, everything coming full circle. Finding New Orleans Pelicans parking can be difficult, so it is best to book New Orleans basketball parking spots in advance with ParkWhiz.

ParkWhiz is easy; all you need to do is find the game that you want to see, book your Pelicans parking spot and print out your ParkWhiz parking pass. Once that’s done, you can relax and enjoy the game, rather than trying to find Smoothie King Center parking spaces.

Photo by Antioch Smith (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], via Wikimedia Commons