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It's one thing to get screwed. It's a whole different thing to get lied to and insulted to boot.



Columnist Steve Kelley explains how he thinks things will turn out, and I bet he's right:

More likely, 2006-07 will be a lame-duck season. Bennett and his partners will go through the motions of negotiations before throwing up their hands and announcing they have reached an impasse with all of the local governing bodies.



More likely they will call a balloon-free news conference sometime around next February's All-Star Game to announce that nothing is getting done. The city, not wanting to be stuck with hosting a team that wants to leave town, will negotiate a buyout of the final three years of the lease.



After 40 years, the Sonics will be gone.



And Bennett, with the NBA's blessing, will return home to a hero's welcome.



I hope I'm wrong.

But they're not going to get an apology or anything, because no one is willing to take any responsibility for a team apparently getting ripped away from its fans.

Howard Schultz Expects You to Love Him

Because he allegedly turned down bigger offers from owners who wanted to move the team out of town. Percy Allen and Jim Brunner have sources indicating Larry Ellison was prepared to offer $75 million more to move the team to San Jose. But Schultz declined. The idea is that he wanted to find an owner who would keep the team in Seattle, and so he took less. But does anyone think he did find an owner who would keep the team in Seattle? This way, I believe, Seattle fans get only the appearance that their team might stay, which might save Howard Schultz and Starbucks some bad PR, and that's pretty lame.



Seattle Post-Intelligencer columnist Art Thiel explains that the team tried to make it seem like good news:

Schultz and Walker, who proxied for other landed gentry such as wireless king John Stanton, former Microsoft chieftain Greg Maffei, University of Washington regent Stan Barer, retailer Pete Nordstrom and more than 50 others in the ownership group, concocted a spin that implied they were doing a great and noble thing for Seattle -- selling to out-of-staters who in less than a year from now will have a 20,000-seat arena empty of big-time pro sports in a region desperate for them. The Sonics even festooned their practice facility with green-and-gold balloons to make it seem like a party.



Thank goodness they aren't in charge of fortifying Baghdad's Green Zone. They would have passed out kazoos.

Clay Bennett Expects You to Love Him

This is what he said:

“The Sonics and the Storm are synonymous with Seattle, and it is our desire to have the teams build upon the legacies in the Seattle region. We believe with the right dynamics on the court, the right business model and a financially committed ownership group that recognizes and respect Seattle, we can succeed here for decades to come.”

Blah, blah, blah. He also said that if they don't have a deal for a new building within a year, they'll examine their options. Which seems to contradict the claim that they'll honor the lease which runs through 2010. Which seems to contradict his stated goal at the outset of the process, which was to procure a team for Oklahoma City. Which makes it tough to trust the things Clay Bennett says.



Seems to me like both sides of this transacation agree it's better, publicly, if they make it look like they intend to stay in Seattle. So far, it's not convincing.



Once again I quote from Percy Allen and Jim Brunner in the Seattle Times:

"I think they're gone," said Rep. Hans Dunshee, D-Snohomish, a vocal critic of the Sonics' requests for a taxpayer-funded arena expansion... Dunshee predicted the new owners will want to make it look like there's a chance they might stay in Seattle.



"If they do anything, they're just going to use us to leverage a better deal out of Oklahoma City. They'll just dance with us to mess with them," he said.

Sports marketing experts aren't buying it either.

Craig Harris, Angela Galloway, and Chris McGann report for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer:

David M. Carter, executive director of the USC Sports Business Institute, agreed.



"If it looks like a relocation and it's positioned like a relocation, then, guess what, you will wake up one day and they will be the Oklahoma City Sonics," Carter said.

I Shoot From the Hip With a Theory: David Stern Wants to Prove a Point

Here's the deal: the NBA only works with fat handouts from taxpayers. It's just that simple. In Seattle, where some major-league public projects are woefully underfunded, they have just built gleaming new stadiums for baseball and football (coincidentally, they are side-by-side, smack in the face of the Starbucks headquarters, which has to grind on Schultz), and the city leaders have decided it's just not in the budget to build a big basketball stadium too. I don't doubt they are right. If only every NBA city would decide the same thing--then all the teams could stay where they are with arenas largely funded by owners, salaries would come down across the board, and the league would be a much more sensible place.



But that's not how it works. David Stern doesn't want Seattle to serve as the the example of how a city can tone down the handouts and keep its team. What if it works? Remember, even with the alleged crappiest lease in sports, Schultz and his co-owners made money when you factor in the appreciation of the team. Hard to know why taxpayers should be forced to rush in and save owners like that.



Jerry Colangelo and others say David Stern is close to Clay Bennett. I suspect this deal is, at least in part, David Stern sending a message to city governments everywhere (hello Portland!) that they can pay mightily to support their teams or else.



Marc Stein writes:

In Seattle, by contrast, Stern has complained about the Sonics' working conditions even louder than the Sonics have. On a media conference call before the playoffs began in April, Stern bluntly voiced his frustrations about the Sonics' inability to make progress on a new arena lease or funding for a new building, saying: "They are not interested in having the NBA there."

Jenni Carlson, You Are Playing With Fire

The columnist from the The Oklahoman is not only more or less guaranteeing her city will be stealing Seattle's team. She's taking it several steps further. She is getting all weepy at the loss of the Hornets, essentially sending the message that "yeah, your Sonics are nice, and we'll take them, but we'd rather have this other team." (Actual quote about Chris Paul: "He's a hoops star, a sex symbol and a teddy bear all rolled into one.") But that's not tall. She also has the nerves to go to great lengths to talk about how important it is that NBA teams have long-term meaningful connections to the cities where they operate, without appreciating one iota of the irony involved. (Does she know about the internet, and that not all of her readers are in Oklahoma anymore?) The only thing that can break a bond like that, Jenni, is a takeover by the likes of Clay Bennett and the exact kind of people you're praising.

With the Sonics and the Bennett-led ownership group, stability would be one of the biggest positives for Oklahoma City. Bennett's previous involvement with the NBA came with the San Antonio Spurs, for which he once sat on the board of directors. He learned from the best franchise on the planet. Why tinker too much with what works?



The Spurs aren't owned by the City of San Antonio, not in the way the Green Bay Packers are civically owned, but they come mighty close. The Spurs have a group of more than a dozen investors, most of whom have business ties to San Antonio. They have a board of directors that runs the team and a chairman who is the franchise's face.



It follows a business model seen in many corporations, but the whole set-up is also a safe guard. It protects against a single individual owner from being persuaded by outsiders to sell the team.



All that the Spurs have done is become the NBA's flagship franchise and arguably the best in all of professional sports.



Why did it work in San Antonio?



The franchise was committed to the community, and the community was committed to the franchise.



No reason to think the formula couldn't be duplicated in Oklahoma City.



For starters, Bennett is a die-hard Oklahoman. He spoke passionately that day last fall when the Hornets announced they were relocating to the city. He loved the idea that his state, his city, his home was getting a major-league franchise that he long thought it deserved.

By the way, the paper she writes for? The Oklahoman? It says here that it's owned by Clay Bennett's in-laws.



The Only Good News for Sonic Fans: George Shinn Might be On Your Side

If I were a Sonics fan, I would pin any hopes of the Sonics staying on George Shinn. He has been saying all along that his team is headed back to New Orleans. But all of a sudden, now that Oklahoma has a new dance partner, he sounds a little less sure where he wants his team to be. If Shinn gets desperate to stay in what looks to be by far the most profitable of the many places he has taken his Hornets (Charlotte and New Orleans being the others) maybe he'll start burrowing into Oklahoma's nice, new, paid-off, nearly sold-out Ford Center like a deer tick. That would mean the Sonics would have to play somewhere else, like, potentially, Seattle. Berry Tramel of The Oklahoman caught up with Shinn, the owner of the Hornets.

“Are we going back to New Orleans? I can’t answer that question. This team is New Orleans’ team to lose. Our plans are to go back.



“But if we can’t, then I become a free agent, and this is a great market. I would be foolish to turn my back on it.”



The Hornets, temporarily relocated from New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, were a smashing success in Oklahoma City last season and are scheduled to play 35 games at the Ford Center next season. The NBA repeatedly has said it plans to return the Hornets to New Orleans in 2007, but Shinn said certain conditions must be met.



“I would do everything I can to do what’s best for my franchise,” Shinn said. “I bleed teal.



“I have a responsibility to my heirs and to my employees to make sure this franchise is successful and strong. I don’t know what city that will be in. I hope it will be in New Orleans, because that’s our home, but I can’t read the future.”



Shinn has listed four requirements for his return to New Orleans: unspecified commitments from corporate sponsors, unspecified commitments from season-ticket holders, local investors and a state-funded practice facility, which was part of his original agreement in Louisiana.

SonicsCentral says they have sources saying Shinn has applied to the league to stay in Oklahoma permanently.



Hail Mary

A movement to save the Sonics.

Will Seattle Steal the Blazers?

Owner Paul Allen is from Seattle, and he has had his problems in Portland. But the team is locked up to the Rose Garden through 2025, and Seattle lacks an arena, remember? At least it looks like there's little chance my Portland team will fill the void in Seattle.



Won't Seattle End Up Building an Arena Anyway?

That's the billion dollar point I keep wondering about. I don't know the answer, and I'm no expert on that kind of stuff. But if Key Arena is really not useful, can a city as large as Seattle really expect to simply go without a place for Britney Spears to perform to 20,000 comfortable people? Aren't they going to foot the bill for something new and expensive no matter what? Everyone agrees on this point: if Seattle voters approve a ballot measure to pay for a new arena this fall, the team will stay. It's unlikely, but there must be some chance it will happen.



UPDATE: In my roundup of Seattle news, I neglected Post-Intelligencer columnist Ted Miller, which was a mistake. His whole column is well worth the read (it has the word "pooh" more than once) and this is an especially important set of points:

...everyone insisted 236 1/2 times that the primary goal, upon completing this transaction, is to find a way to ensure the Sonics remain in Seattle.



Honest.



"The No. 1 objective, our primary and sincere efforts, will be driven towards being successful here," Bennett said.



Oh, there's just this one little issue:



That taxpayer-funded $220 million KeyArena renovation that's spawned a citywide apoplectic fit? Not good enough. Bennett will demand a brand spanking new arena, one that figures to cost at least $400 million.



And Bennett needs a decision by October 2007.



Sure, that will happen.



Seattle politicos would require more than a year of gut-wrenching debate to declare puppies cute ... though not any cuter than kittens ... or any other small furry critter ... though this doesn't exclude small things with feathers ... or big things, for that matter.



It makes no logical or financial sense for Bennett to fight for the Sonics survival in Seattle. The chairman of Dorchester Capital, a private investment company, is not an illogical man prone to pointlessly throwing money around.



"Clearly, the leverage and the notion of some real out of towners who may well move the team -- that's part of this complexity and part of the mix of the deal," he said.



That's fairly cryptic. What Bennett is saying is this: "Unlike Schultz, I've got all the leverage."

It's a theory, at least.