They Are Stealing my Childhood!

Professional sports has always been a rather shady and difficult business. A pro sports team to residents of a city is looked at as something that is theirs, an institution that belongs to the city in which I plays in. The owners of these teams often don’t think that way, they are in the city that they are in because it is most beneficial to their bottom line (most of the time). So there is always that sense of community, history and civic pride that comes from these teams yet always, somewhere there is that uneasiness that an owner will decide he can make more money by moving the team elsewhere. Sometimes its well deserved. Vancouver was never an NBA city, Montreal never really supported the Expos, Los Angeles long ago gave up caring about the Rams or Raiders when they skipped town. However, sometimes it’s just wrong when a team moves. I felt bad for Cleveland when their owner decided to take the team to Baltimore, a city which had also suffered an unjust move.

In Seattle we always have had to deal with the threat of owners hijacking the city for new arenas and stadiums forever. Ken Behring had the moving vans packed and ready to take the Seahawks to Los Angeles until Paul Allen came in and saved the day. The Mariners as well were on the cusp of being moved to Tampa Bay until they made a miracle playoff run and the city decided to build what is now Safeco Field and the Nintendo corporation bought the team. Now it looks like the oldest pro team in town and the holders of our lone championship the Seattle Supersonics are on their way out of town, a quickly growing inevitability that makes me very sad.

I realize nobody who reads this blog really cares about the NBA or even basketball in general, but for me growing up the Sonics were a team that I followed and cheered for mightily. I remember chanting “Beat LA” every time they played the hated Lakers, or the fierce rivalry games with Portland and Phoenix. Guys like Dale Ellie, the X-Man, Tom Chambers, Detlef Schrempf, Gary Payton, and Shawn Kemp were like heroes to a kid growing up in the Pacific Northwest. Now it looks like that can no longer be the case as the team has been hijacked by a bunch of oilmen from Oklahoma.

There are many people to blame for this. You can blame Howard Schultz, the CEO of Starbucks, who owned the team before and decided to knowingly sell the team to the current group of investors who always had the intention of moving the team to Okalahoma City. Even though he had local investors willing to buy the team that would ensure their future in Seattle, he took the extra 7 million bucks (on top of an already 56 million dollar profit) and betrayed the city which made his coffee empire so powerful. You can blame Clay Bennett and the group from Okalahoma City who lied and cheated their way through this by making promise after promise that they would do everything they can to try to keep the team in Seattle and that they never discussed moving the team. Lies which have since been proven by emails leaked. You can blame David Stern, the commissioner of the NBA, for allowing this to happen to a team with a 41 year history and always solid fan support and excitement, just because he is best buddies with Bennett. You can blame the government of the City of Seattle for apparently not caring enough to make an effort to keep the Sonics in town. The only people you cant blame are the fans, like me, who have cheered and supported the Sonics for as long as they have. We are the losers here, we are the ones who suffer the most from this outright theft of one of the more recognizable NBA teams.

There is currently a court battle going on for this which will be resolved in June. My hopes are not high that the Sonics will stay around. You can be sure that the moment the Sonics move to Oklahoma City that I will never watch another NBA game again.