possible, but without the normal itself, would there be anything? and also you have to try to factor in all of those people who got their normals from some bigtime pet shot, and knew NOTHING about ball pythons at first, then began to learn a lot and then got big into the hobby itself.
I honestly would have to say more people began getting into BP's just from the normal itself, but you may be right. It just seams impossible for normals NOT to be the reason, ya know?
It's kinda like tarantulas. Most likely a majority of people who collect all different types of tarantulas started out with the rose-hair that you can find at any mainstream pet store, then eventually after doing researching nd learning more and more, they realized "hey theres a lot of others I would love to have, ect ect".