No one in Charlotte will feel the loss of the Hornets more than Trey and Kerstie Phills, whose father was the team's captain when he was killed in a car crash two years ago.
Five-year-old Trey and Kerstie, 3, have stayed close to the National Basketball Association team since Bobby Phills died on Jan. 12, 2000, while racing his car near Charlotte Coliseum.
PHOTO: AFP
Some of the players and coaches have almost become surrogate fathers. But now the team is moving to New Orleans, and many stories about their father are going with them.
"It's going to have a dramatic effect on my kids," Kendall Phills, Bobby's widow, said Thursday night before the Hornets' playoff game against New Jersey in Charlotte. "For Trey, it's like a part of his dad is going. And my daughter, she never got the chance to know her dad. The only thing she associated with him is the Charlotte Hornets."
The Hornets received final approval from the league Friday to move to New Orleans. The team's owners said they're losing too much money in Charlotte, where voters refused to fund a new arena.
Although Kendall Phills didn't allow her son to attend Thursday's game because it was a school night, Trey is no stranger to the Hornets' locker room. He often attends games, and sometimes participates in on-court skits with the team's mascot, Hugo the Hornet.
The Phills family is closest with Hornets coach Paul Silas and guard David Wesley, who was there when police pulled his best friend's body from his crumpled Porsche. According to police, the teammates were racing when Phills lost control of his car.
"It's been good for Trey to be around the guys," Silas said. "This is all he knows. He didn't really understand who Bobby was, but he knew he was a basketball player. It's too bad it has to end for him. It's going to hurt for a while, I'm sure."
The Hornets applied to move in January, though several NBA owners were skeptical whether New Orleans -- which will be the league's smallest market -- could support a franchise. Last month, however, when it became apparent the team was going to move, Kendall Phills said she broke the news to her son.
"I think he's in denial," she said. "Trey told me that his classmates said they don't have enough money and they can't go."
Wesley has tried his best to help the Phills family cope with the tragedy.
He sometimes takes Trey to the park, where he'll answer any questions the boy might have about his father. Wesley also recently accompanied Trey to his grammar school, where the students were supposed to bring their grandparents.
Not being able to pal around with the players won't be easy for Trey, Wesley said.
"It's fun for him," he said. ``It's a tie to his dad." Kendall Phills also said it's important for her son to interact with the players. Even though she can tell stories about her husband, there's a part of him that even she never knew.
"Now they can know the locker-room Bobby," she said.
"Bobby joked all the time, but it's a different type of humor with the guys."
The team's move to New Orleans, where Kendall and Bobby Phills grew up, won't end the family's association with the Hornets. Kendall Phills said she and her children will visit Louisiana and the Hornets players after training camp opens in October.
"The team, like Bobby, is gone but won't be forgotten," she said.
A subsidiary of a Hong Kong-based company that has lost control of two critical ports on the Panama Canal said it is seeking US$2 billion of compensation in damages from Panama over its “illegal” takeover of the ports. Panama Ports Co, a unit of Hong Kong’s CK Hutchison Holdings (長江和記實業), on Friday said in a statement that it is demanding the sum under international arbitration proceedings that it had already started. The Panamanian government last week seized control of the Balboa and Cristobal ports on each end of the Panama Canal, after the country’s Supreme Court declared earlier that a concession allowing
DETERRENCE: With 1,000 indigenous Hsiung Feng II and III missiles and 400 Harpoon missiles, the nation would boast the highest anti-ship missile density in the world With Taiwan wrapping up mass production of Hsiung Feng II and III missiles by December and an influx of Harpoon missiles from the US, Taiwan would have the highest density of anti-ship missiles in the world, a source said yesterday. Taiwan is to wrap up mass production of the indigenous anti-ship missiles by the end of year, as the Chungshan Institute of Science and Technology has been meeting production targets ahead of schedule, a defense official with knowledge of the matter said. Combined with the 400 Harpoon anti-ship missiles Taiwan expects to receive from the US by 2028, the nation would have
POSSIBILITIES EMERGE: With Taiwan’s victory and Japan’s narrow win over Australia, Taiwan now have a chance to advance if South Korea also beat the Aussies Taiwan has high hopes that the national baseball team would advance to the World Baseball Classic (WBC) quarter-finals after clinching a crucial 5-4 victory over South Korea in a nail-biting extra-inning game at the Tokyo Dome yesterday. Boosted by three home runs — two solo shots by Yu Chang (張育成) and Cheng Tsung-che (鄭宗哲) and a two-run homer by Stuart Fairchild — the triumph gave Taiwan a much-needed second victory in the five-team Pool C, where only the top two finishers would advance to the knockout stage in Miami, Florida. Entering extra innings with the game tied at four apiece, Taiwan scored
MISSION OF PEACE: The foreign minister urged Beijing to respect Taiwan’s existence as an independent nation, and work together to ensure peace and stability in the region Minister of Foreign Affairs Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) yesterday rejected Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi’s (王毅) comments about Taiwan, criticizing China as a “troublemaker” in the international community and a disruptor of cross-strait peace. Speaking at a news conference on the sidelines of the Chinese National People’s Congress, Wang said that Taiwan has always been a territory of China and that it would be impossible for it to become its own country. The “return” of Taiwan to China was the natural outcome of the Chinese people’s resistance against Japan in World War II, and that any pursuit of independence was “doomed
RSS