The bitterness in Seattle won't end

Why everyone should hate the Thunder:

http://www.thenation.com/blog/168311/do-you-know-your-enemy-why-we-should-all-root-miami-heat-beat-oklahoma-city-thunder#

 

What an original take. We should all hate the Thunder because their owners are bad guys who lied before moving the team.

Also, the Houston Dynamo also are on the list of teams that won a championship the season after moving (and did it again the next year), though I suspect San Jose got over it.

 

a) The Sonics owners fucked taxpayers both in Seattle and then in OKC.

b) Nobody gives a jack fuck about the Houston Dynamo-Humm.

 

San Jose had a team for 10 years, and even changed their nickname during that time. Seattle had their team for 41 years.

Not exactly an equal comparison.

 

Seattle had plenty of opportunities to keep the team. If they had, vultures like Clay Bennett would have found another place to strike their prey.

Bennett was an opportunist. He saw an opportunity and went for it. Now, I don't believe he was sincere about ever keeping the team in Seattle. However, if the public had kissed his ass and built a new arena, he could have sold the team for a profit and moved on to someplace else.

 

Also, because with Chesapeake Energy circling the drain thanks to collapsing natural gas prices and executive sweetheart deals, chances are good Aubrey McClendon would put the Larry O'Brien trophy up on ebay to meet corporate obligations.

 

Plus, it's soccer, so no one really cares.

 

So did the Philadelphia A's and Boston Braves.

 

Let's get even sillier with the Orioles winning the World Series, which left 100 St. Louis Brown fans piping mad.

 

They didn't need a new arena. The KeyArena had been renovated in 1995 to the tune of $74.5 million paid by the city. Not even 10 years later, the Sonics wanted a new $220 million arena, which, I'm sure, they weren't going to pay too much for:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Key_Arena#Rebirth_as_KeyArena

In other words, Seattle already did pony up to keep the team. The Sonics and the NBA showed their gratitude by moving elsewhere.

 

Seattle and the state of Washington also spent more than $300 million on a new stadium for the Mariners and $300 million for a stadium for the Seahawks. Looks like they were willing to spend a lot more to keep a couple of teams around. With the $220 million that was asked for initially, it would've been about the same over a decade for the three teams. Clearly, the "great basketball city" of Seattle had other priorities.

 

Yes, such a shame that Seattle didn't suck up taxpayer dollars for a third lavish stadium that most people could never hope to afford to get into it, and whose benefits would come mostly at the expense of others in the community.

On the other hand, with the new arena deal, Seattle is going to pay about as much as it would have had it spent the money to keep the Sonics (though there are guarantees built in to keep a team from moving). The strongest argument, I guess, for spending big taxpayer bucks to keep a team is that a few years later you'll have to spend a lot more to get one back (see Baltimore and Cleveland).