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.