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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