The Hornets Family Fun Day took place on Saturday, and hundreds of local fans both young and old showed up to partake. From a ticket sales perspective was a big success as well, with the team selling 26 full season tickets. That brings their total firmly within shouting distance of 9,000 full season tickets sold.

There were lots of families, many of which consisted of multiple children barely larger than a basketball. All the lucky youngsters who attended actually got instruction from the Hornets assistant coaches (Randy Ayers, James Borrego, Bryan Gates, Fred Vinson and Dave Hanners). Additionally fans both young and old got the opportunity  to spend a pretty extended amount of time taking shots on the real NBA baskets with the coaches.

One coach stood out as my clear favorite on the day (no offense, other guys). Bryan Gates was helping kids dribble through a cone drill en route to the basket. Just to be clear, when I say kids I mean humans with an average height of around three feet. Anyway, just about 90 percent of the time a kid came through the cones, Gates would tell them to dunk it. Occasionally he seemed a little disappointed when the child didn’t, as if at some point he had actually seen a toddler jump three times his height and deliver a backboard shattering dunk, and now anything less than that is disappointing.

Also, there was one fan wearing a Bulls hat and a Bulls jersey who I briefly thought was going to get pied or something by Hugo. The fan was pretty young, but I’ve seen Hugo do worse, so I was getting prepared to see something outrageous as Hugo walked up. Then Hugo just patted him on the head, shrugged, and walked away.

Is Hugo losing his edge this offseason?

Anyway, the cheerleaders were there signing autographs and taking pictures. Super Hornet (a Bee-Zanie) showed up with his sweet cape.

Everyone got to shoot to their heart’s content. At one point someone even hit six in a row at one point from outside the key. Too bad Dell Demps wasn’t around.

Best of all, we got a ton of video of little kids dribbling and making baskets, which will be displayed throughout the lockout as a morale booster/reminder that both watching and playing basketball is really about having fun.

All in all the event was a big success from a ticket selling standpoint, and everyone in attendance seemed to have a really good time. I will say it was a bit odd walking around the entire Arena and seeing it at about 1/50th of capacity empty. At one point I unleashed my inner child (it was Family Fun Day, after all) and slid down a long banister from the top level of the Arena to the middle, and nobody was even around to tell me to stop.

Fortunately most kids are more responsible than I am. Otherwise things could have really gotten out of hand.