Seattle: The Graveyard of NBA Arenas

This plan not only served as a basketball arena, but also an Imperial Shuttle for Darth Vader.

As Seattle and Sacramento both ramp up plans to build new NBA arenas, it's easy to forget how many times we've been down this road before. After all, Seattle is a town lousy with failed dreams and broken promises. From an extended monorail to a refurbished waterfront, we have rarely seen a good plan that wasn't worth killing with fire.

The Sonics have an especially bleak history of unfulfilled plans. During their 41 year residency, the Supes were often basketball vagabonds, couch surfing around the Puget Sound with stops at the old Coliseum, the Kingdome, the Tacoma Dome and even Hec Edmundson Pavilion, an old gym even too small for the University of Washington Huskies.

Fed up with the leaky roof and meager seating of their Seattle Center digs in the late 80s, former owner Barry Ackerley came close to sealing a deal for a new stadium. SeaFirst Arena of Seattle was to be built near the Kingdome and, like the current stadium plan, got the approval of the City Council before getting derailed by a parking dispute with (you guessed it) the Mariners. Ackerley was so frustrated by the lack of progress that he officially filed for relocation in 1990.

Luckily, cooler heads prevailed and Ackerley finally settled for a refurbished Coliseum, sparing us the indignity of watching the Kemp/Payton era unfold with the San Diego Sonics (shudder).

Another forgotten arena aberration took place more recently. In 2008, we were all going a little crazy about our team getting hijacked. And none went crazier than Seattle Supersonics legend Downtown Freddie Brown, who proposed one of the most ambitious/insane/awesome arena plans in the history of anything. This thing had everything. An interchangeable basketball/hockey court, retractable roof, waterfront view and, of yeah, it only cost ONE BILLION DOLLARS!

Sure, this place was total vaporware and had zero chance of ever being built, but can you imagine how awesome it would have been to see Squatch waterskiing in Puget Sound during halftime or Danny Fortson paragliding off a ferry onto the court before every game?

But alas, this was yet another Seattle sports pipe dream. And like Ackerley's arena before it, it serves as a warning to desperate fans in Seattle and Sacramento: don't count your weird, bundt cake-shaped arena before it's built.

It's Official: Seattle Sonics 2.0 Group Files for Kings Relocation

According to ESPN, AP and that David Stern guy, the Chris Hansen/Steve Ballmer group (or HAN-BALL, as I like to call them) has officially filed to relocate the Sacramento Kings to Seattle.

As a Sonics fan, I should be ecstatic right now. But I can't help but remember the sickening gut punch we all received back in 2008 when the same thing happened to us. My sincere best wishes to our friends in Sacramento and here's hoping all this drama will lead to new, less crazy owners for the Kings and a shiny new expansion team for Seattle.

Gary Payton: Hall of Fame

If you are a Sonic fan (and, no, I’m not sure what that means anymore, either), you’re undoubtedly aware that Gary Payton has been nominated for – and will almost undoubtedly win election to -  the Basketball Hall of Fame.

Loyal readers might recall a couple of articles we ran that attempted to decide whether specific players (Spencer Haywood and Jack Sikma) were logical candidates for the Hall. The articles were based on Bill James’ Keltner List (Basketball-Reference should also get credit for this idea; they’ve done it with dozens if not hundreds of players).

The whole endeavor left me a little cold, if only because the Basketball Hall of Fame is not like the Baseball Hall of Fame. It’s a bizarre, illogical stew of mismatched ingredients; a few potatoes here, a couple shrimp there, and, hey, let’s throw some brussel sprouts in because, why, well not?

Put it another way: The Baseball HOF makes (some) sense, and a coherent line of questioning can lead you to an answer to the ultimate question: Is Player X a Hall of Famer? The Basketball HOF, though, is a mess, and needs a completely different line of questioning.

But enough of my rambling. On to the questions!

Is Gary Payton a Hall of Famer?

Was he ever regarded as the best player in basketball? No, although he was probably considered the second- or third-best player in the league in the mid-90s and there is no shame in being second to the best player in history.

Was he the best player on his team? Absolutely, for many years.

Did he play for the Celtics? Yes, Payton played briefly … um, what does this have to do with anything?

Did he win a Championship with the Celtics? No, and I’m not sure why this matters, can we get back to the …

Did he play for the Knicks? Did he win a championship with the Knicks? No, he never played for the Knicks.

Did he ever win a Cup? Perhaps a Spangler Cup? Or a Macedonian Elite League Cup? What? He played in the NBA Finals three times and won it once. Is that what you mean?

Is he Brazilian? Did he ever score 40 points in a meaningless exhibition game while taking more than 30 shots? No, and this whole process is really starting to bug me.

Did he dominate at the collegiate level in a small sample size and then fail to replicate that success at the professional level in a larger sample size, but we really liked rooting for him in college, and geez, wasn’t it great when the Big East really mattered? Yeah, that’s a no. He was really good at Oregon State, though.

Did he play for perhaps Fort Wayne or Tri-Cities? Are you kidding with this?

Are you sure he didn’t play with the Knicks? I think I’ve had enough.

Hey, remember when we tried to nominate Yao Ming less than a year after he retired and even he thought it was a dumb idea? Wasn’t that kind of silly? Yeah, I guess that’s one way of describing it. Wait, what does this have to do with Gary Payton?

Was he a skinflint owner whose only real contribution to the game was selling his team to somebody else 30 years later and making a huge profit? Not really, no.

Did he play for Seattle or Portland? Yes! Yes, he did. Finally, a positive sign for us! Does this help …

Actually, we’re not really interested in Seattle and Portland, unless they played in the 70s, and even then, not so much. Seriously, go screw yourself.