“The Charlotte Hornets reportedly have been violating NBA policy by under-reporting home attendance, making it appear paid attendance at the team’s games is the lowest in the league,” the AP reports.

“The Charlotte Observer said in its Tuesday editions that according to records kept at the Charlotte Coliseum, the Hornets under-reported home attendance for more than a month.”

[…] The issue is significant because attendance figures are used in evaluating the financial health of a franchise. The NBA’s annual audit of each team in the league includes a look at attendance numbers.

Starting Feb. 27, and continuing through nine of the next 10 home games, the Hornets reported the turnstile count – fans attending the game – rather than the higher number of tickets sold.

That deviates from the figures reported by every other team to the league, as well as from the team’s policy during its first 13 seasons in the league.

The change in reporting comes as the Hornets lobby the league for a move to New Orleans. Among other things, the team has argued it is not being supported in Charlotte.

Hey. Isn’t this story just like the sub-plot from the movie Major League…? Exactly? Well, except that Major League is a movie about baseball, not a real life saga concerning a professional basketball team? And the Indians weren’t under-reporting ticket sales, but rather purposely fielding a team of scrubs in order to lose games so that ticket sales would plummet? And the Indians’ owner was trying to move the team to a market in the southeast, not out of one?

And Tom Berenger — playing a former all-star catcher hanging on at the end of his career — looked like he’d never seen a baseball bat in his life, much less whipped the head of it through the hitting zone in any convincing way, ever?

Oh, never mind.