I am neither a psychologist nor a sociologist by a long shot. Nevertheless, I believe we are looking at a case of misplaced anger in Seattle related to the loss of the Sonics to Oklahoma City. Let me explain.
Some people are saying that Howard Schultz is to blame for this outcome. Schultz owned the Sonics and chose to sell them. An “outsider”, Clay Bennett, offered Schultz $350M for the team. No one else offered him $351M; so, he sold the team to Clay Bennett who is from Oklahoma City and who had been involved with the NBA in providing “temporary housing” for the New Orleans Hornets after Hurricane Katrina. People say Schultz should have sold the team to a local owner or demanded a “no move” clause in the agreement.
Excuse me; Howard Schultz made a business decision to sell one of his assets. He took the highest offer for that asset. And that would be something to call blame down upon himself? Instead of being angry with Mr. Schultz, get mad at the local folks who could have bought the team but did not. Ask them where they were when it mattered. Ask them why they waited until the eleventh hour and fifty-ninth minute to step forward and announce that they would love to own the team. Do not get mad at a seller who took the best offer for the thing he was trying to sell.
If you want to look even further back into the processes to find people worthy of anger, look to the local and state politicians in Seattle and Olympia. Howard Schultz was trying to get a new arena for the Sonics; he saw that the political prospects for that new arena were nil and so he decided to sell. [Note: Once again, this is a business decision perfectly appropriate for a business owner to make.] That political situation is probably partly responsible for the lack of “local ownership bids” to buy the Sonics; that political situation opened the door for Mr. Bennett’s bid because he didn’t really care if he got a new arena in Seattle or not; in fact, he is probably a tad happier to be able to take his new toy back to his hometown.
Let me digress for just a moment here. Mr. Bennett’s preference/intention to move the Sonics was transparent from the outset. Anyone with two neurons close enough to play tennis with one another realized that to be the case. When things got down to the very end, some folks including Mr. Schultz said they never saw this coming. They expected Mr. Bennett to bargain in good faith with the city to get a new arena there. Yeah, right! Those kinds of statements reveal a level of human incompetence that is hard to imagine – - a level of incompetence such that if those folks took up skydiving, they would miss the ground.
The politicians out there believed they could get Mr. Bennett and David Stern and the NBA to back down on their demands for a gaudy new playpen. The political leaders played their hand that way and they lost. C’est la guerre. The eerie thing here is that an analogous situation already happened and the pols in Seattle do not seem to have taken note of it.
When the Browns moved from Cleveland, the city had already built a new baseball park for the Indians and a new arena for the Cavaliers. When Art Modell told the politicians there that it was his turn to get a new playpen, they said there was no money. Modell tried to change their minds for a while and then left town – - leaving behind the team name and team colors. The city immediately – and miraculously – found the money to build a new football stadium and the reincarnation of the Cleveland Browns happened.
They have a new baseball stadium in Seattle and a new football stadium in Seattle. Then the money wasn’t there for a new basketball arena. Now, the city has the team colors and the team name. Whoop-de-damn-do! Now, the city has to find the money –immediately and miraculously – to build an arena or the NBA will not be obligated to put a team there. There is another precedent here for the Seattle city fathers to consider. I offer it because they seem not to be able to look outside their area for guidance.
The St. Louis Browns moved to Baltimore in the 1950s. They left behind the team name and the team colors. There is no new stadium in St. Louis for an AL baseball team nor is there a great clamor for an AL baseball team after a 50 year absence. I think that is the choice staring Seattle in the face right now. If they want an NBA team, they need to dig deeply into their pockets to build a new top-shelf arena right away. That is a choice they can make; they do not have to do that. Nevertheless, choices have consequences; and absent a state-of-the art arena in Seattle, there is not going to be an NBA team there.
Seattle now serves as the exemplar for the next city that might harbor the idea that it will try to strong-arm the NBA. Sacramento wants a new arena and the city has been reluctant to build one for them. Memphis is for sale. New Orleans can opt out of its arena lease if attendance goals are not met. The NBA can point to Seattle and suggest to these other cities what could happen to their franchises. On the other hand, the league can go to Seattle and point to these other teams who just might become vagabonds and wind up in the Great Northwest… It is probably easier for politicians to recognize a precedent so recent in time as opposed to one that happened 10 or 50 years ago…
For those people who ask why the city of Seattle settled its lawsuit that would have kept the Sonics in town for the next two years before the judge rendered her verdict, the answer is the same here as for every answer in sports: Follow the money. Had the city prevailed, they would have kept the Sonics in town for two years as a hostage; that would have guaranteed a move at the end of those two seasons; attendance would have been horrible (the Sonics were 28th in the league in attendance last year). And for all of that, the city would have collected $22M in “rent” on the existing arena and some amount of tax revenue from the business generated there. The settlement gave them $45M immediately and another $30M if the city commits to funding and building a new arena for some other team in the next two years. The city settled the lawsuit for the same reason Howard Schultz sold the team to Clay Bennett in the first place; it was the best available business deal.
Therefore, the anger in Seattle needs repositioning:
The folks there can be angry with David Stern for aiding and abetting the hard-line that Bennett and the league took with the city of Seattle.
The folks can be angry with Clay Bennett for a moment but they really need to get over that since he would never have been able to buy the team if the city had built an arena for Howard Schultz in the first place or if one of the local jillionaires in Seattle had offered $351M for the team.
They can be angry with the Sonics’ GM and coaches over the past couple of years for putting a bad product on the floor.
But if sports fans in the State of Washington really want to blame someone for this the way to assess that blame is at the ballot box the next time the local and state politicos stand for re-election. They made their choice; that choice had consequences; if the populace does not like the consequences then the populace needs to make a choice of its own.
So, at the moment, the NBA has franchises in Oklahoma City and Memphis. What’s next? Sioux Falls, SD? Cheyenne, WY? Look at a map and examine the geography between Memphis and Oklahoma City. Between those two cities, you will find St. Louis and Kansas City – neither of which have NBA teams. The only way that makes any sense at all is if you follow the money…
Finally, here is an NBA comment from Dan Daly in the Washington Times:
“[Charlotte] Bobcats boss Michael Jordan used the second of his first-rounders to take Alexis Ajinca, a 20-year-old 7-footer from France. And you’re not going to believe this, but ‘Alexis Ajinca,’ translated into English, is ‘Kwame Brown.’ ”
But don’t get me wrong, I love sports…