someone who agrees with me. Its clear to me Seattle doesn’t care about basketball… they love their precious seahawks and mariners. If you want to someone blame the government. You guys gave the owners a reason to move.

Seattle already paid for a rennovation in the last decade, was another upgrade really that necessary? Anybody remember our recent facility upgrade? All they did was put in electronic advertising banners that cause a glare on the court. Infact, tonight, take a look at the pothole filled parking lot, the wonderous traffic hell that is it’s only two entrance points, the half hour concession lines, and realize that none of the rennovations addressed this. Anyway, the point is, most of the fans don’t really get anything from these rennovations. If anything we usually get stuck with smaller seats and more distractions to squeeze in extra seats or luxury boxes. The owners get the extra revenue from this, but expect the people in the city to pay for it.

Why this matters to us. This sends the clearcut message that every owner can hold any home city hostage to ask for hundreds of millions of dollars that will do nothing more for the fans than line the owners pockets with more money.

I can just picture the Maloofs and other NBA owners looking at this deal and salivating. I’ll bet Cohan (who has already doubled my season ticket prices in three years AND raised parking prices) is anxious too. Afterall , if you think Seattle can’t keep a team, look at the city that’s already lost the Raiders and now the A’s.

they aren’t getting a team if the Sonics leave, David Stern already said that.

An effort was made weeks before it was made public, but they owners still rejected it.

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/357229_sonicsdeal01.html

Bennett said he would give a year of a good faith effort to keep the team in Seattle. What happened less than a year later again? Oh yeah, they were checking out OKC’s facilities.

Are you serious? I know that you are, which is what sickens me. This an instance where corruption is so obvious to the casual observer, yet you are purposely turning your back away and getting mad at Seattle for not wanting to pay lots of unnecessary taxes for an unnecessary stadium.

Bennett publicly said he wanted to keep the Sonics in Seattle, but didn’t you read the emails? That is hard evidence that he was lying. It’s not even that we think he was lying, it is proof that he was. It flabbergasts me how you can ignore that.

The NBA and its owners are trying to use extremely unfair tactics, trying to bully around loyal cities with 40+ year franchises. The owners obviously will vote for it, because they realize if it works here then they can make unreasonable demands and extort millions of working class people so a few millionaires can get some more millions. I honestly can’t believe you are going along with that.

Treating their teams like nothing? ARE YOU JUST MAKING S**T UP?

http://youtube.com/watch?v=nXtSsT2PFNI

That is the equivalent to me of other ignorant fans asking “Where were all you “fans” when the Warriors were losing? I didn’t hear you then?” Just because the Warriors were completely out of the national spotlight, doesn’t mean that they didn’t have a loyal fanbase. Even though Seattle has been out of the spotlight recently, that doesn’t mean they didn’t have fans. If the fans didn’t care, then why would they do this?

http://youtube.com/watch?v=nXtSsT2PFNI
http://youtube.com/watch?v=hlVgA-_MVc0&;feature=related

The Sonics are legally binded to key arena for two more years. Clay Bennett is planning to get out of that lease and move to Oklahoma City next year. If this happens in Seattle, THIS CAN HAPPEN ANYWHERE!!!

It’s completely obvious that Bennett bought the team knowing full and well that the city of Seattle wouldn’t build their ownership group a new stadium, and that would be his way out. The E-mails have proven this already. It’s not debatable. It’s fact.

And why should they give a group of billionaires 350 million? They already spend money on tickets, merchandise, concessions. Imagine for example, if Target said to the city of San Francisco, “pay for our new state of the art facility with your tax dollars or we’re leaving!” You would say, “that’s fucking retarded. Go ahead and leave.” And nobody would fault the city for that.

So why should the city of Seattle pay more money to support a team they’ve supported for 41 years only to make billionaires richer? If they let Clay Bennett hi-jack this franchise, then it’s completely possible anyone of us could lose one of our favorite teams one day on a whim. And that’s why you should care.

What about the part about GSOM making you sick? I tuned in for that, I don’t care about the Sonics haha…

You live in Oklahoma, so you are getting pissed off by all the hate that Oklahoma City is getting as the perceived stealers of the franchise. So you respond by defending your city, not by agreeing with people that you guys wouldn’t want to get a franchise like this and reminding people that we should all be mad at Bennett and not Oklahoma, but instead shifting the blame on Seattle, calling fans jerks, missing the point when people say they are going to boycott the games, and revealing more and more bias every time you post.

NOTE TO YOU: NOBODY IS BOYCOTTING OKLAHOMA CITY, AND NOBODY HATES OKLAHOMA CITY (at least not for basketball reasons). PEOPLE ARE BOYCOTTING THE BLATANT CORRUPTION OF THE LEAGUE AND THE APPALLING LACK OF ETHICS IN THIS JOKE OF A PROFESSIONAL LEAGUE.

Stop with this Oklahoma City against the world crap. There are some fans who villify OKC, but fans like you who defend what is going on and even agree with it only legitimize those fans’ cases. Nobody can blame OKC if they happen to get a professional franchise, but I will for sure blame them if they have to resort to justifying the effed up lowball tactics of Bennett and Stern.

And to reiterate, no, Seattle will not be getting a new pro team if the Sonics leave. David Stern has already said so.

While I understand the sentiments behind keeping the Sonics in Seattle, I find it a little bit troubling that people are trying to boycott the team after it moves to Oklahoma. Every sports franchise’s primary goal is to at least break even, and not have to lose millions of dollars every year. If they are losing money, they move or fold. All franchises or businesses, whether you like it or not, and you simply cannot expect people to take millions of dollars in losses every year. I doubt most of you would.

In the event of a boycott, we’re simply trying to force the team in Oklahoma to lose money, so the team moves again to another city in some Hornets-like saga. It simply makes another city like Vegas the winner. Oklahoma City shouldn’t have to be the scapegoat.

and recent (6 years ago) Bay Area transplant, my following comments obviously can’t be separated from my love of the Sonics.

Still, I agree with both sides here, to a certain extent. Zorgon, you are right to be upset with people that demonize OKC fans and voters. People there wanted an NBA franchise, they had a couple folks with wealth that could afford to buy a franchise, so that’s a pretty simple solution for the OKC public. I have no bitterness or hate towards the fine people of OK and OKC.

But the issue here isn’t truly the move from the 14th largest TV market to the 40-somethingeth or whatever it is… it is the way it was accomplished. And here is where my hate seeps in: for the ownership. Yes, towards Clayton “Rhymes with Satan” Bennett and his group in OKC. They lied about wanting to keep the Sonics in Seattle. That much is now obvious. But I also hate Schultz (Starbucks CEO and former Sonics owner) for selling the team to investors based in OKC – it is obvious to anybody that chooses to think about it for a few minutes that a group of basketball fan investors in OKC would want to have a franchise in OKC, and since they now own the Sonics…

So my main anger is with the previous and current owners – the former for being so cold-hearted and obtuse when it comes to the value of the Sonics to Seattle, and the latter for being cold-hearted and immoral when it comes to how they got what they wanted. It is wrong (although not illegal – I’m not suggesting that Bennett broke any laws or even the “side letter” to the sale that required a “good faith” effort to keep the Sonics in Seattle… to me a “good faith” effort was met, for instance, when they drafted Kevin Durant) to hold a team ransom for a $500 million dollar largely public-funded arena, in a voter environment that clearly did not want more tax money going towards sports franchises. This is not rocket science, nor does it prove that (these are words used by many OKC folks on news blogs and even here) “the will of the Seattle voters and legislature” was to let the Sonics go. Seattle voters did not “have their chance” to support the Sonics and then fail to… they have been supporting the Sonics for 41 years. To base any argument on the last 12 months of voter ire and anger at sports owners in general in that region is to dismiss the previous 40 years of support the people of Seattle threw at the Sonics.

My primary blame for this whole deal remains with Schultz. He sold the team to a group of investors that obviously wanted to ship the Sonics elsewhere. That was wrong. But Bennett’s duplicitous nature has forever stained him and also David Stern, who could have pushed for a local ownership group and an expansion team in OKC, but chose not to because he and Bennett appear to have some serious man-love going on. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but that should be kept on the DL and not have the effect of ripping the hearts out of millions of sports fans in the Pacific Northwest.