Basketball is Coming to Erie

Duane Rankin of the Erie Times-News:

A news conference is scheduled for Tuesday afternoon to announce that Cleveland will have a National Basketball Development League team playing in Erie starting next season.

The Erie Downtown Improvement District sent an invitation to area
businesses to attend a private meeting at the Erie Bayfront Convention Center. A news conference is scheduled to follow the meeting.

The invitation states that Cleveland general manager Danny Ferry and executives from the Cavaliers and Erie County Convention Center Authority are scheduled to be present at the announcement.

A second headline from GoErie.com reads, “Sertz involved with Erie basketball team.” More details are sure to come from the new conference on Tuesday, but Ron Sertz’s involvement seems to make sense and shouldn’t come as too big of a surprise.

In February, Sertz stepped down as director of operations of the Erie Otters after 12 years with the minor league hockey franchise. And prior to that, Sertz stepped down as tournament director of the McDonald's Classic, a nationally acclaimed high school basketball tournament that just celebrated its 25th anniversary this year. With his basketball pedigree and minor league sports experience, Sertz is as qualified as anyone in the Erie area to make this NBDL franchise a success.

It’ll be interesting to see how the local community supports its first pro basketball team in more than 15 years. The new basketball team will join the SeaWolves (baseball), Otters (hockey) and RiverRats (indoor football) to make Erie a four-sport minor league city, which is a pretty neat feat. Hopefully the teams receive the support they need to stick around.