They’re not coming back. The inevitable has happened. The Sonics are gone. Much of Seattle shrugs.
Plenty of blame can be spread around. Howard Schultz sold out when he sold the team to Clay Bennett and company. Seattleites didn’t care enough, soon enough to keep the team, and the politicians caved.
But in the end, pro basketball is a business run by business people and the average fan’s passions only carry so much weight.
Forty-one years of pro basketball in Seattle, including a world championship in 1979, players from Downtown Freddie Brown to Jack Sikma to Gary Payton to Shawn Kemp, and coaching personalities like Lenny Wilkens and George Karl is over.
Fans can be mad at Schultz for selling to Clay Bennett and company but it the end it was his money and his team. He didn’t get what he wanted from the Legislature and the city. Schultz, who bucked the odds and made it big after growing up in a Brooklyn housing project, decided to hand over the team he claimed to love so much to Bennett and his Oklahoma City opportunists. For the NBA and David Stern, the sentimentality of the fans meant little. Leaving was always business decision. They didn’t get the arena they wanted in Seattle and they left for a red state city without a major sports franchise. When Boeing moved its headquarters from Seattle to Chicago in 2001, a largely symbolic move, some Seattlites were unhappy, but again it was a business decision.
Schultz’s attempt to salvage his reputation with a lawsuit against Bennett seems too little too late to pan out.
Like most Seattle sports fans I am sad to see the Sonics go. I grew up in Forest Grove, Ore., 26 miles west of Portland and have always been a loyal Portland Trail Blazers fan and enjoyed the rivalry over the years. The last NBA game I went to was a Portland-Seattle contest. Still, I don’t anticipate that many Seattlites will adopt the Blazers, like Portlanders adopt the Mariners.
A team could move here in the next five years or the league could expand but public financing for an arena is still a non-starter.
We live tough times where people are lining up at food banks, foreclosures are up, Iraq veterans are returning with physical and psychological wounds and gas prices appear to be permanently stuck at $4-plus a gallon. Pro basketball is on the back burner. In times like these, pro sports at its best is a diversion, something to do with family and friends and forget about life’s stresses for a few hours. But instead of the Sonics maybe it’s time to check the high school sports scene or join a recreational basketball league. Root for yourself or some local high school kids you know and save a few bucks.
Here’s a final thought. I recall a conversation I had a few months ago with Craig Skewes, a Real Change vendor who stands in front of Central Market in Shoreline. A San Francisco native and big Giants fan he’s usually wearing a Giants cap The Giants are my favorite National League team and I went to several games in Candlestick Park when I lived in northern California early in my journalism career. I’ve had mixed feelings about the Giants and Barry Bonds and it led me to read Jeff Pearlman’s excellent book “Love Me, Hate Me, Barry Bonds and the Making of an Antihero.” I asked Skewes what he thought about being a Giants fan with the steroid controversy swirling around Bonds and the team as he went for Hank Aaron’s career home run record.
His response was that the Giants are bigger than Barry Bonds and the current ownership. The Giants are part of the city and will be around when Barry Bonds and Peter Magowan are gone. The Giants will always be the Giants.
He’s right about that. Now that Bonds is gone, the Giants are a new team. One of the best stories in baseball is their starting pitcher Tim Lincecum, a Sports Illustrated cover boy and all-star in his second season. The University of Washington and Liberty High product who the Mariners passed up in the draft, put up a 10-1 record and 2.49 ERA while leading the league in strikeouts in the first half of the season.
Unlike the Giants, the Sonics are now gone. But the Sonics will always be the Sonics. People won’t forget the championship in 1979 or the finals run in 1996. You can’t erase 41 years of history.
Clay Bennett may have taken the team but he can’t take away that history. Maybe the circumstances will change and the NBA will return, and we’ll get the Sonics back. As the saying goes, it’s better to have loved and lost than never loved at all.
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