Uni Watch Contest

I suppose I should take the high road here, but, what the hell, David Stern and Clay Bennett had no trouble acting like spoiled children, so why can't I?

Paul Lucas, author of the wonderful Uni Watch blog and associated espn.com site, has issued a call to his readers to help design a logo/uniform for the new Oklahoma City team. With that in mind, perhaps a few designs from inspired Seattle Sonics fans are in order? After all, while our ideas might not fly with the NBA's marketing department, I'm sure our informed and talented readers are certainly capable of coming up with some, well, interesting designs for what Clay Bennett's team should be wearing this year. You can email Lucas via the site, or, if you like, submit them to us via the email at the top of the page (robotmonster AT gmail.com). If SuperSonicSoul Editor Paul checks his email, you might even see your design on our site!

As always, keep it classy, please. No cursing, no references to bestiality, no tornadoes, etc.

Basically, try not to act as if you were from Oklahoma City.

Good Old Days

Let the nostalgia begin.

Check's In The Mail

Under the product description, I’m surprised the words “Hardly used” were missing.

KC Still the Voice of the Sonics

There are times when you wonder if your faith in someone is justified, if the adulation you express is rational, or purely emotional.

There are times when you grow frustrated with the double-speak coming from the mouths of politicians and celebrities, when the "stay-on-message" mantra of our age becomes anethma to your ears.

Then there are other times.

Thank you, Kevin Calabro, for giving voice, once again, to Sonic fans. Thank you, Jim Moore, for giving him a platform. Calabro, for so long more than a broadcaster to those of us in the Northwest, has not gone with a whimper, but with a bang. Generals may fade away, but great play-by-play broadcasters, apparently, do not adhere to that notion.

To wit:

The NBA? "A league run by a commissioner that disrespected [Seattle] and the region."

The Sonics' new arena proposal to Olympia? "A nebulous, vague plan for some building in Renton, which didn't excite anybody."

City officials? "I was enraged that our council members would sit up there and titter and laugh nervously and congratulate themselves over being part of a 41-year history being sold."

There is much than just those snippets, so I urge you to read the whole article. Thanks again to both Calabro and Moore for showing that frustration, embarassment and anger are not emotions just limited to fans and bloggers.

Believe in The Wheedle!

I'm almost desperate enough to bid on this. Sigh.

The Fiddler

Well, I suppose I could cover the summer league game that took place in Orlando yesterday, but, honestly, does anyone here have any interest in how Oklahoma City did last night?

I thought not.

So, instead, let's focus on Vincent "The Fiddler" Askew's new role as the General Manager of the LA Push of the ABA. Askew has been coaching now for nearly a decade, including a three-year stint in Italy, one year with the Albany Patroons, and a couple of seasons as a high school coach (seasons which were marred first by the use of ineligible players then by recruiting violations; it appears he learned more than a few tricks from his time working with John Calipari at Memphis).

Wait, what's that? You say Askew isn't the new GM of the LA Push? That he accepted a role as the coach of the Kentucky Mavericks only two days after taking the LA Push job?

Well, good for Vinnie. You had to know he wanted to put the foul taste of last year's job with Albany out of his mouth, and what better way to do it than to be the head coach of ...

Now, wait a minute. You're telling me that Askew dumped the Wildcats after four days and decided to take the LA job after all? That he claims he resigned, but the Kentucky front office claim he was fired? After four days? But why, Vincent, why?

“It’s not that I’m greedy or anything,” Askew said to the Bowling Green Daily News. “But it was just one of those things where it needed to be a bit more, I have a family, a house and kids to think about also.”

Ah, the children, it's always about the children, isn't it?

Quick Hits

A quick review of what city various websites are associating with the Sonics as of July 7, 2008:

ESPN: Seattle
SI: Seattle
HoopsHype: Seattle
NBA.com: Seattle
Yahoo: Seattle

And, finally, please be sure to finish chewing your food before reading this story, because it’ll be tough to swallow. I’ve never been divorced, but I’m guessing that this is the equivalent of seeing your wife riding around in a Jaguar XJS while you’re at home washing the Dodge Stratus.

Scribes

I'll attempt to avoid being too maudlin with this post (Lord knows there has been more than enough anguish to go around this past week), but allow me to offer a few words of praise from a website that has been forced to hand out kind words as often as the Bush Administration hands out art endowments.

Sonic fans are quite lucky to live in a city with three major dailies. Luckier still, we've been blessed for the past couple of years with writers who have never stopped investigating the neverending Sonics-to-Oklahoma story. Unlike The Oklahoman, which forces its writers to check objectivity at the door, in Seattle we have writers who rarely miss a chance to explore a story from all angles, even angles that are detrimental to the city in which they reside.

While some Sonic supporters have castigated these writers (Percy Allen at the Times, Gary Washburn at the PI, Eric Williams at the TNT) for not being all-out supporters of the team while it was in Seattle, those, like me, who appreciate a free press have not. The three main beat writers have also been supported by people like Jayda Evans, Jim Brunner, and Greg Johns, who dug into this story and illustrated it for their readers. I, for one, am appreciative of their efforts.

In many cities, those paragraphs of praise would be the end of it. But a complimentary story on the media in Seattle would not be complete without offering thanks to the man who has provided more memories than anyone in Sonic history — longtime play-by-play man Kevin Calabro.

Calabro gives his devoted listeners a rare combination: a love of the game teamed with a fantastic voice and a unique style. For more than an entire generation, it was KC who taught us to "get on that magic carpet and ride" and to "get on up for the downstroke." Bob Blackburn may have been the Abraham of Sonic broadcasters, but Calabro was the Moses.

While still attending college, I travelled up to Seattle for Christmas break one year, and with friends in tow, attempted to get to a Sonics game. Like all early-20s endeavors we were long on intentions and short on execution. Having missed the opening tip, we were driving in a frenzy through Seattle looking for a bar to watch the game. Calabro kept us up to date on the car radio, as he has for so many others over the past decades. At one point, Shawn Kemp rose up and threw down what must have been an especially memorable dunk.

"Oh, Reignman!" Calabro intoned, "Nobody do the voodoo like you do!" It was a singular moment that drew a massive cheer from our overcrowded car, and it was a moment that stays with me to this day. A great broadcaster is more than just a voice on the radio or television, he is a friend sitting alongside you, a representative for you at the game.

Thanks, KC, Percy, Gary, Eric, and all the rest. You've made being a Sonic fan more enjoyable. I hope there's more to come.

Hypocrisis

Part and parcel with yesterday’s settlement is an assumption that no expansion teams are in the NBA’s foreseeable future.

Meaning, of course, any team bearing a Seattle Sonics’ jersey in the future will be doing so because another city’s NBA dreams have gone up in flames.

Leading yours truly to wonder: Is it worth it? After spending the past few days (well, months, really) bemoaning our fate and dispensing venom in every direction at the evil which is relocation, are we ready to be the league leaders in hypocrisy?

Color it however you like, but taking a team from another city makes us no better than the good people of Oklahoma City, and makes Steve Ballmer no better than Clay Bennett.

(Well, actually, Ballmer has yet to buy a team in another city, start the relocation process before the ink had dried on the contract, call himself a man possessed to not relocate, and then indulge in lascivious emails with the league commissioner. Perhaps he wouldn’t be as low as Bennett.).

As I was saying, do we want to prey upon the bones of another city’s misfortune? Personally, I’m leaning to the “No” side of that question, and it’s not that difficult to see why.

I’ve utilized the divorce analogy before for this situation; with Seattle as the mother, PBC as the father, and Sonic fans as the child. Well, to carry that metaphor to its logical conclusion, luring a team here from another city is the equivalent of your recently divorced mom wearing a halter top to your t-ball game, hoping her cleavage is enough to convince your friend’s dad to abandon his wife.

It’s all well and good for you to have a new dad, but what about your friend, who now has to hope that his mom is as good at flirting as your mom?

Okay, it’s a messy analogy and we’re beginning to paddle into some unseemly, oedipal waters at this point, but I think my point is clear: after enduring the past year and a half of turmoil and heartache, do we really want to be the ones causing that same pain to another group of people?

I’m sorry, but I wouldn’t want to be a party to that. And that is why, to my way of thinking, the only solutions to this whole sorry situation are either a victorious Howard Schultz lawsuit or an expansion team.

Any other answer is just too hypocritical for me to swallow.

Moving Along

drawin': Raf / writin': Pete

Amount of money spent by Clay Bennett to move the Sonics to Oklahoma City:

City of Seattle, June 2008: $45 million
Additional money, 2013: $30 million
Relocation fee: $30 million
Losses, 2007-08 season (est.): $20 million
Losses, 2006-07 season (est.): $20 million
Moving fees (est.): $15 million
Legal fees (est.): $2 million

Add it all up and you come to a total of $162 million.

Why is this important? Because the cost of renovating KeyArena is now pegged at around $300 million, but, back when the team was sold, Howard Schultz was looking to spend about $225 million to renovate the building. After purchasing the team, Bennett indicated – repeatedly – that he had no interest in contributing any of his own money to the project (which eventually morphed into a completely new arena in Renton, at a price tag of $500 million).

And yet, Bennett has now committed more than half of that total just for relocating his new toy to Oklahoma City. If Bennett had just offered two-thirds of that figure - $100 million – while in Olympia fourteen months ago, yesterday would never have happened, and the state would have easily passed the bill to either build a new facility or renovate KeyArena. Further, by indicating that he was interested in helping the team, the miserable attendance figures of the past two years would have been considerably better.

Instead, Bennett kept his money in his pocket, because all along he had no interest in doing anything to keep this team here and a major interest, obviously, in getting a team for Oklahoma City.

$162 million goes a long, long way in this world. Apparently, though, just not in Seattle.

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Loss of Innocence

A lot of words and tears will be spilled in the next days and weeks as all of us seek to describe what has happened to the Seattle Supersonics. After 41 years of heartache and happiness, 41 years of Kemp and the Glove and Gus and DJ and all the rest, trying to distill the emotions of what transpired will be difficult, if not impossible. But allow me to offer up a small window into how I'm feeling this afternoon, though.

When I was a boy growing up in Seattle, one of my most prized possessions was a special edition of the Seattle Times from 1979, the year the Sonics won their (can we say only now?) NBA title in Seattle. It was chock full of anecdotes, statistics, game recaps, and other bizarre tidbits of information. In those pre-computer years, it was a delightful mishmash of stories, obviously put together by editors and writers who were just overjoyed to be doing the work.

As the years passed, the newspaper yellowed. I've moved quite a bit since leaving Seattle; first Oregon, then Southern California, now Vancouver. Somehow, that newspaper always managed to tag along with me. Every so often, maybe once or twice a year, I'd open it up and read through the stories again and it never failed to make me smile, to put an extra hop in my step.

Now, though, I don't know if I could bear to read it; that special section became a little less special today. Not because I was convinced the Sonics would never leave, but because a small part of me hoped they wouldn't. That small part of me that scoots to the edge of my seat when the Sonics are involved a close game; that small part that makes me pick up and phone Raf or Paul when the Sonics do something extraordinary; that small part of me that imitates Xavier McDaniel when I'm shooting hoops by myself.

After what happened today, that small part of me isn't doing so well right now.

Team Leaving

Well, it appears that $75 million is the magic number.

The City of Seattle accepted a cash payout of $75 million from the PBC to allow the Sonics to leave their home of 41 years and move to Oklahoma City. That amount may or may not be repaid by Clay Bennett, et al if the city were to receive another team in the Sonics' stead.

As you would imagine, more to come.