We're in week two of the NBA basketball season and already a few items have caught my eye. And neither items has anything to do with what's happened on the basketball court.

You may remember last week, I wrote about the challenges of bringing the Hornets back to New Orleans for their first full season since Hurricane Katrina. Amongst the challenges is that there are 41 regular season home games (considerably more than the 8 home games for the NFL's Saints) and the fact that NBA tickets are expensive. Yes, the average ticket price for a Hornets game is a shade under $25 (least expensive in the league and for good reason), but for a community just trying to get back on its feet and with little money to spend on entertainment, trying to get fans in the region to attend 41 games could spell financial doom for Hornets owner George Shinn.

Red flag number one of the season for Shinn and his Hornets: The team's second home game of the season drew a crowd of 9,817. And this is after the team has been away in Oklahoma City for a year and you would think that if people are excited about NBA basketball returning to their city, they'd come out and show their support early in the season. Not to mention, the Hornets are healthy this year and have a pretty solid squad led by Chris Paul.

But people in New Orleans are rebuilding their houses and trying to find jobs. They're not attending NBA games.

And the real alarming part is that I could see the team averaging a shade over 10,000 fans per game for the season (New Orleans Arena's seating capacity is 19,000 seats). Playing to a half full arena every night won't sit very well with George Shinn and he won't put up with it for long. He was unhappy about the attendance BEFORE Hurricane Katrina. Imagine how he's going to feel now.

So far, the Hornets have sold 6,500 season tickets which is considerably below the 12,500 season tickets they sold last season in Oklahoma City.

The other item that caught my eye was in Sacramento last night. As Kings ownership and local politicians battle it out over who will fund a new arena for the team, fans have become disenchanted. On top of that, the Kings team is not nearly as competitive as they've been over the past decade when you could bank on the fact that they'd go deep in to the playoffs each year.

Red flag number one of the season for the Maloofs and the Kings took place last night in Sacramento as the Kings hosted the Sonics. The Kings' 354-game sellout streak was snapped. An announced crowd of 14,908 attended the game at the 17,317-seat Arco Arena. Again, the team is only a few games in to the season and with most teams, fans come out early, they check out the product and if they like it they return. If the team isn't winning, then the attendance in the mid to latter part of the season decreases.

Keep your eye on these situations very closely. Especially New Orleans. Despite the league's goodwill efforts to try to help the team get back on its feet in New Orleans, I don't see Hornets owner George Shinn absorbing the financial losses he's going to absorb this season for very long.

Don't be shocked if Shinn applies to relocate his franchise at season's end. Then the NBA's Board of Governors will have two relocation proposals on the agenda to review when they meet in New York in the spring. And the ironic thing is that both Clay Bennet (Sonics) and George Shinn (Hornets) would like to relocate to Oklahoma City.

Bennett because that is where he and his ownership group are from and they want to be the hometown heroes by bringing and NBA franchise to Oklahoma City. And Shinn, because he saw firsthand the support his Hornets received from the Oklahoma City fans when the team played there last season.

So when you read the NBA boxscores this season, watch the attendance numbers too. Those numbers could ultimately be more important than the player stats in the boxscore for some teams.