Summary
Mover and Shaker of the Year owner of Hornets basketball team; includes related article on Spencer Stolpen
See the full content of this document
Extract
George Shinn makes the team.
GEORGE SHINN MAKES THE TEAM
Dan Hamrick remembers George Shinn - all 130 pounds of him. "He was a tiny fellow and had no business being out for football," recalls Hamrick, who coached at A.L. Brown High School during the '50s. Every day, Hamrick would go to backfield coach Ed Edmiston to borrow players he wasn't going to use. Hamrick needed them to hold up the dummies for linemen practicing blocking. And every day, Shinn and his dummy got pounded into the turf by brawny Kannapolis mill boys. "I used to kid about I was one of the best tackling dummies that Brown High School ever had," Shinn says. "He was tickled to death just to be there and be part of it, even though he didn't get to play," Hamrick says. "He was there every day and was there all four years of high school." Why? "He wanted to belong, and he took a lot of physical punishment just to stay there." Nearly 30 years later, Shinn suffered similar punishment as he pounded the pavement looking for wealthy, well-connected Charlotteans willing to invest a few million in a professional basketball team. "George had a lot of doors slam in his face when he was trying to get professional sports in Charlotte," says Felix Sabates, who became one of his partners. "He went around and he knocked on every door he could knock on. Levines and Belks and the Harrises, and they all turned him down." Says Shinn: "I think the general reaction of everybody was that this was more of an ego thing than a realistic thing and it will never happen and I just don't want to get my name involved with it. "I hadn't been part of the blue blood in the city." Hardly. Though George Shinn, now 47, never wore rags, his rise to riches has been the story of a man who spent his early years as an outsider looking in at what oth...See the full content of this document
Sponsored links
