The NBA told the Charlotte Hornets on Tuesday to stop violating the league's attendance-reporting policy, but Commissioner David Stern said five weeks of bogus numbers won't affect the team's bid to move.

The Hornets acknowledged they have reported the turnstile attendance figures for nine of 10 home games since Feb. 27, making the team's ticket sales seem lower than they really are.

Co-owner Ray Wooldridge, attending a league meeting in New York, wouldn't say why the Hornets had switched or who had decided to use the lower numbers. But a team source told The Observer it was Wooldridge.

The league wants the underreporting to stop but said it would take no disciplinary action.

"That count is erroneous," Stern said at a news conference. "But that doesn't change the fact that there have been enormous losses by the team in Charlotte."

League policy is to report the number of tickets sold or given away as attendance. That's what the other 28 NBA teams do.

So did the Hornets for more than 13 seasons. Then five weeks ago, according to Coliseum records obtained by The Observer, the team switched to reporting turnstile attendance -- which is the actual number of fans who attend games, but typically thousands fewer than the tickets sold.

"It's hard to explain that as anything other than an intentional move to make the Charlotte market look worse than it is," said Max Muhleman, a nationally known ticket-sales expert who has advised Charlotte leaders trying to keep the team.

NBA Deputy Commissioner Russ Granik said the league instructed the Hornets to conform with policy after Tuesday's Observer reported the irregularities.

"That's clearly not appropriate with the NBA practices," Granik said, but added: "I think the attendance from this point forward in Charlotte in the existing arena is not a relevant concern."

Charlotte leaders, though, say the Hornets' underreporting proves what they've been saying all along: Wooldridge and partner George Shinn aren't trustworthy.

"It's not very surprising, the way they've conducted business over the last few years," said Mayor Pro Tem Patrick Cannon.

The Hornets have reported misleading information about Charlotte before, Mayor Pat McCrory said, which is one reason why city leaders requested their meeting with the league's relocation committee Monday.

The Hornets began this season counting attendance as they always have -- following an NBA policy that benefited the team when it reported 364 consecutive sellouts starting in 1989, despite empty seats at many games.

Coliseum records show that on average this season, the paid attendance through the first 28 games was 36 percent higher than the turnstile numbers. In all of those games, there were at least 2,000 more tickets sold or distributed than fans in the stands.

Those numbers change dramatically at the Feb. 27 game, when the turnstile numbers and the figure reported to the NBA become identical for nine home games. The only exception: A March 16 matchup with Phoenix.

Only the Hornets know the number of sold tickets they underreported. But The Observer used the team's first 28 games as a standard for determining the expected difference between turnstile and paid attendance.

That analysis shows the Hornets have underreported their attendance during the past five weeks by an average 3,460 or so ticket buyers per game.

In such a scenario, the Hornets' average paid attendance would not be the worst in the league -- as the NBA numbers currently show -- but rather 28th of 29 teams.

Until the Hornets' shift in reporting, the team had outpaced the Houston Rockets this season.

The difference may not seem like a big deal, Muhleman said. But to the owners who will vote on the team's move, it could be.

At the March 29 Sacramento Kings game, for instance, the Hornets said 14,092 attended. "Everyone knows it's the best team in the league, so it doesn't look good to draw less than 15,000," he said.

The Observer's calculations, though, show the Hornets probably sold about 19,165 tickets.

"That's the stakes you're playing for -- perception," Muhleman said. "The numbers they were putting out would tend to help their chances for a relocation vote with the other owners." -- STAFF WRITERS PETER SMOLOWITZ AND TIM WHITMIRE CONTRIBUTED.