And so, it turns out, saving the Seattle SuperSonics wasn’t the goal. Creating the Oklahoma City Carpetbaggers was.
Whether tonight’s game in Oakland marks the end of the Sonics’ 41-year history remains to be seen, but things don’t look good for the green and gold. NBA owners, prodded along by their disingenuous commissioner, David Stern, are expected to approve the team’s move to Oklahoma on Friday, giving up the nation’s No. 14 media market so they can seize No. 45.
Such a poor business move only makes sense in the greedy, extortive world of pro sports. It’s not as if the Sonics lacked fan support, which remained decent this season despite all the turmoil and the worst record in team history. Cities that can’t or won’t meet team owners’ demands to subsidize their players’ mind-numbing salaries with luxury arenas are deserted in favor of ones that will. Oklahoma City, whose voters recently approved a sales-tax extension to make their arena even more appealing to the NBA, may well get its prize.
But the fight isn’t over quite yet.
The city of Seattle, with former U.S. Sen. Slade Gorton leading its legal team, is suing in federal court to hold the team to the last two years of its lease on KeyArena. Trial is scheduled for June. And on Monday, an attorney for former Sonics owner Howard Schultz announced that the Starbucks CEO will sue the Oklahoma group to whom he sold the team, claiming they lied when they promised to make a good-faith effort to keep the team in Seattle. In what may be little more than an effort to repair his own image among Sonics fans, Schultz is said to want the sale of the team rescinded.
Good. Team owner Clay Bennett and his duplicitous Oklahoma partners, as well as Stern, deserve to be squeezed. Hard.
E-mails uncovered last week show Bennett scheming to get out of Seattle during the period he had vowed to be working on a way to stay. Stern further soiled his own credibility on Monday when he praised Bennett for staying on a “straight and narrow path” regarding that promise. And yes, Stern was aware of the incriminating e-mails.
In the court of public opinion, 41 years of fan loyalty is kissed off just that smugly. Let’s see if they can get away with it in a court of law.
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
