New Orleans ? In the end, the vote that cleared the way for the Hornets to leave Charlotte was a Big Easy.

NBA owners voted 28-1 Friday to approve the team’s move at the conclusion of this season. Team owners George Shinn and Ray Wooldridge, reviled in Charlotte, paraded behind a brass band as they entered a news conference in their new city among a cadre of politicians.

The celebration came a little more than two hours after the NBA announced that representatives of the league’s 29 ownership groups had voted to approve the Hornets’ move from Charlotte.

The exact vote count was not released, but team co-owner Ray Wooldridge said “it was overwhelmingly in our favor.”

Numerous executives from around the league, speaking on condition of anonymity, told The Associated Press that the vote was 28-1, with the Memphis Grizzlies attaching conditions to their “yes” vote that kept the tally from being unanimous.

The Hornets’ 14-year run in Charlotte will end soon. The team is still playing, trailing the New Jersey Nets 2-1 in the best-of-seven Eastern Conference semifinals. They won 115-97 Thursday night at the half-empty Charlotte Coliseum.

After a referendum to finance a new arena was defeated last year, the Hornets’ owners said they needed to relocate to avoid millions of dollars in annual losses, in part from drastically declining attendance.

The offer from New Orleans has been described in league circles as extremely generous, and a seven-owner relocation committee recommended approval 10 days earlier.

“The unanimous recommendation by the relocation committee was thoroughly persuasive,” Seattle SuperSonics owner Howard Schultz said.

A giant New Orleans Hornets jersey was unveiled at the news conference Champagne was uncorked, and hundreds of purple and teal balloons were released.

Shinn expressed some regrets about leaving North Carolina.

“It’s very difficult. I grew up there. I was educated there. My children were raised there,” Shinn said. “I still have family and friends there a lot of people that I cherish the relationship. It’s hard to uproot, but we had no choice.”

The move to Louisiana came after an unprecedented effort by city and state officials, members of Congress and civic leaders to convince NBA officials that the poverty-riddled state’s economic future is bright and that the financially struggling city could support a second pro-sports franchise in addition to the NFL’s Saints.

Business leaders spearheaded an effort to sell season tickets and suites, eventually exceeding the league’s goals.

When the Hornets gave their last update, they had sold more than 10,500 season tickets and had three-to-five-year agreements on 55 luxury suites.

Gov. Mike Foster promised and delivered legislative approval of millions of dollars in incentive expenditures for the team: $10 million to upgrade the state-owned New Orleans Arena, plus several million more to be generated each year from the New Orleans area hotel tax.

“I’m happy for this to be called my home,” Wooldridge said Friday. “When I’m here that’s how I feel at home.”

Friday’s NBA vote officially made the Hornets lame ducks in Charlotte. Players said they would continue to focus on their series against the Nets not the impending move.

“There’s a lot going on right now that’s pretty important not to say (the move) is not important but we have a focus of trying to win a championship and trying to win the next game to get to that point,” team captain David Wesley said just before the vote.

Fans at Thursday night’s game directed a loud, derogatory chant at Shinn, whose relationship with Charlotte politicians and Hornets fans contributed to the team’s departure.

This is the second time in two years that an NBA franchise has been allowed to change cities. Last summer, the Grizzlies moved from Vancouver to Memphis. Before that, the NBA had gone 16 years without a team changing cities.

The Hornets led the league in attendance for several seasons after entering the league during the expansion era of the late 1980s. But the relationship among the fans, owners and local politicians deteriorated, and the team was last in the NBA in attendance this season.

The team lost $15 million in Charlotte last season and could lose $20 million this season, Wooldridge said.