Peter May of the Boston Globe has confirmed a story RealGM reported from Peter Vescey?s pre-game show before the Nets-Celtics clash Sunday, Larry Bird has expressed his interest to the league in buying an expansion franchise in Charlotte.  It is expected that this will cost his group in the $175 to $200 million range.

''Larry is the driving force in all this,'' Belkin said. ''He's going to be the director of basketball operations. There were only a few cities which interested him and this was one of them. He's pretty excited about the prospect. He was a star as a player and a star as a coach and I think he'll be a star as the director of basketball operations.''

While Bird was not available for comment yesterday, he did release a statement saying ''my goal has always been to put together a championship basketball team and I feel Charlotte and its surrounding areas are a great community situation for an NBA team.''

Bird is joined by fellow Celtic M.L. Carr who it is expected would move to Charlotte and be in charge of the would-be franchise's community and corporate relations.  Carr, who has NBA coaching experience with the Celtics, has no doubts that the City of Charlotte can support an NBA team.

''Charlotte is a proven market,'' Carr said last night. ''There is no doubt that it will support an NBA team. It's a very deserving city for the NBA and it's going to happen. There are a lot of resources in North Carolina and South Carolina that have not been tapped into. I'm from down there and a lot of the things from a marketing and business standpoint could provide an enormous boost in revenues for the team.''

The man leading the group is none other than Boston businessman Steve Belkin, the same man who almost brought the Celtics in 1983 then came close again only last year.  Belkin states the earliest the team could be assembled by would be for the 2003-04 season, and then the team would need to play out of the Charlotte Coliseum ?for a year or two while a new arena is ready.?  But Charlotte people have already rejected a new arena twice, right, so doesn?t this have implications?  'Iit's a given,'' said Carr, also stressing that the fans of Charlotte need to know that a team is coming to maintain the interest.

''I can assure [the NBA] in no uncertain terms that if they can guarantee an expansion team for Charlotte, there are sufficient votes on City Council to move ahead swiftly on the construction of a new arena. We want to keep the NBA in Charlotte. It's important to our economy and to our basketball fans,?' said Lynn Wheeler, who chairs the Charlotte City Council's economic development community.

The group had tried to buy the Hornets from owner George Shinn but was told the team was not for sale.  Those same Hornets will now be playing out of New Orleans come November.

Belkin stressed that this was still very early in the expansion process, but on a number of occasions Commissioner David Stern has said he is open to giving the people of Charlotte another NBA team.  As recently as Sunday in a television interview Stern said that he thought the league's owners would have a ''high degree of interest'' in returning to Charlotte, provided the city had concrete plans for a new arena and an acceptable ownership group in place. Regarding Bird, he said, ''Larry has done an enormous amount for the NBA and we've talked over the years about a lot of things. I have been encouraging anybody who wants to own an NBA franchise, especially former NBA players, to give it a shot.''

The word of Bird has officials in Charlotte working at warp speed to get an arena package together, writes May, which is something they would not do for the much hated Shinn.