Starbucks, scumbags and Sonics in Seattle
April 15th, 2008, 4:25 pm · Post a Comment · posted by Edward Carifio
I’m going to start this column (blog, whatever) by saying I could really care less about the Seattle SuperSonics. Or Super Sonics - I was never really sure. They’re probably the pro sports team I am most neutral toward.
Ditto Seattle. Most major cities,I could be like - “Wow, that city rocks,” or “Damn, that city sucks.” But Seattle is in that neutral, never-thought-about pile.
But with that said, what is happening to the Sonics is a joke. And to be honest, I’m a little confused about the whole moving to Oklahoma City thing. To be frank, I wasn’t paying attention, figuring it was just another bluff by an owner to get a new stadium. Who would want to leave the 14th largest TV market for the 45th? Not to mention, it’s the OKC? Has anyone ever said, at any point in their life, let’s go to Oklahoma City? Not unless you live in Enid, Okla.
So I’ve scoured the interwebs in search of information on how this travesty went down. Yeah, it was a slow afternoon. So without further ado, here’s what I could piece together.
Starbucks coffee guy owns the team, but he’s losing money because Key Arena, despite a renovation not to long ago, is a decrepit peace of cow dung. So Starbucks guys sells it to Cowboy Clay, a move approved in late 2006. So Cowboy Clay says get funding for a new arena by Halloween 2007, or we’re leaving.
Now, Cowboy Clay was par of getting the Hornets to the OKC when Katrina washed away the Hornets’ arena. And those games sold well, the OKC wanted to keep the Hornets. But David Stern, NBA commish, decided that would be to ghoulish.
Then in August of 2007, one of Cowboy Clay’s co-horts tells the media that the team wasn’t bought to stay in Seattle. Cowboy Clay admonishes the co-hort, even though e-mails released this week show that all the ownership group had bad things to say about Seattle and how the team was going to OKC one way or antoher.
Well, those e-mails have really angered Starbucks guy, who said part of the deal when he sold the team was that Cowboy Clay make a good-faith effort to stay in Seattle. These e-mails tell a different story. So now he is suing to re-gain control of the team and keep them in Seattle. But I think we know how that will end.
Perhaps the saddest part of the story is the Commish. Even in the face of these e-mails, he backs Cowboy Clay. The NBA is about to have no presence in the 14th largest TV market, but that’s fine. Anything so that OKC can have a team.
