Endgame blame-game for the Sonics
As the team heads for the exits, it looks like everybody lost. In fact, Howard Schultz, the Oklahoma City gang, and Mayor Nickels may have all got exactly what they wanted (but dared not declare).
By David Brewster
August 07, 2007.
In basketball, there's a vivid term, "garbage time," to describe the end of a lopsided game where players get to make showboating shots. We've reached garbage time for the political game over the fate of the Sonics.
Last week, the team's spokesman-owner Clay Bennett was blasting Seattle's business and political leadership for not coming to his rescue. Those cheap shots help Bennett make the case for pulling the plug on the Seattle franchise on October 31, his deadline. Mayor Greg Nickels returned the fire by refusing to meet with Bennett, saying he didn't even want to discuss an early exit from the Key Arena contract. The Mayor needed these easy baskets to make his case that he tried to keep the team, and was standing up to these Oklahoma slickers.
Nobody was paying much attention to this grandstanding, and local fans have already mostly headed for the exits rather than take seriously this endgame blame-game. Besides, most of the action is taking place backstage, where little public information is available.
From what I can tell from my sources, there still is a slight chance that the Sonics and the Storm will stay. Bellevue business leaders are said to be trying, yet again, to come up with a site that can work, and some are hoping Gov. Chris Gregoire (about the only local politician willing to take the heat and advocate for keeping the team) will try to knock together a deal. Those involved call it a very long shot. Meanwhile, Developer David Sabey has an intriguing property by Boeing Field, and an interest in building an arena there, but apparently he has not made any offers to join the ownership group. An extreme longshot is the Muckleshoot Indian Tribe property next to Emerald Downs racetrack, 25 miles south of Seattle.
The one possibility that seems dead is keeping the team at Key Arena or anywhere inside Seattle. Neither the Howard Schultz group nor the Oklahoma City group had any success dealing with Seattle politicians or the state legislature in this scenario. In November, Seattle voters in a populist spasm passed an initiative pretty much precluding any tax money for pro-sports facilities in Seattle, and more outraged initiatives loom if any local politicians dare play footsie with the team owners. Any deal with "Seattle" stamped on it is a non-starter in Olympia, where the city is anything but popular and thought to be a political cave of winds.
The Key Arena site has lots of constraints on expanding, especially with traffic getting so congested in South Lake Union. Nor is the City is eager to have a new arena built somewhere else in the region, as it would cripple Key Arena in economic competition. Chances of a Sonics' future anywhere at Seattle Center "have a very weak heartbeat," reports Center Director Robert Nellams. So the city government's position, while not stated so baldly, is "don't let the door hit you on the way out."
At the heart of the problem are two factors. One is that the new owners' front man, Clay Bennett, especially after he effectively dismissed the beloved Lenny Wilkens, Sonics vice chairman, from the team, has made very few friends in town. His advocacy team is in shambles. Efforts to combine the sports arena with a new convention center, which the region actually could use, faltered because of the missing local partners and distrust.
Bennett himself is clumsy, but he also may not be free to express his personal druthers. Bennett is far from the largest owner, and he represents some very rich and hardshell-conservative Oklahoma investors, such as Aubrey Ken McClendon, founder of Chesapeake Energy, one of the largest natural gas producers in the country. The Oklahoma City group may just want to get the Sonics to Oklahoma, even if it will lose a good deal of money in such a small market, because they can afford to carry on as local heroes. Bennett, who married into the wealth of media mogul Edward L. Gaylord, may not feel as comfortable with that much red ink. In turn, that may explain why he once seemed seriously interested in making the Sonics work in a new arena in Seattle's suburbs.) At any rate, Bennett's clunkiness has pretty much blown his chance of getting Seattle partners and serious public money for a new arena here.
The other key factor is that Bennett's group paid $350 million, which most consider way too much money for the team. The high price extracted by Schultz and the former Seattle owners means that the Sonics really do need a sweet stadium deal, with lots of ancillary revenue, to justify the premium price. Not very likely in the Seattle political climate, and the high price scares off potential Seattle partners, who might come into the deal or buy the team from Bennett.
It gets worse. The lofty purchase price makes a smaller-city market, like Kansas City or Oklahoma City, look dubious, even if the Sonics are an improving ballclub after drafting superstar Kevin Durant. Still worse, there may be at least two other teams in trouble in their small markets, New Orleans and Memphis. These teams distort the market by providing fire-sale purchase opportunities for other cities looking to nab an NBA franchise. No wonder Clay Bennett seems in a sour mood. He paid too much and is stuck with the Sonics.
Seattle's last hope for retaining the Sonics rests on speculation that the NBA wouldn't allow the team to move, given the strong media market in Seattle and the growing interest in China and Asia by the basketball league. Take away the chance to move the team and Bennett might be forced to unload the Sonics, at a loss, on a Seattle group. Not likely. NBA commissioner David Stern has a lot of reasons to owe Bennett who, as a principal owner of the San Antonio Spurs, built a fine arena and franchise in that (quite small) city, and led the effort to give the New Orleans Hornets a temporary home in Oklahoma City, scoring political charity points for Stern.
Of course, this spectacle of Seattle giving the Oklahomans a bum's rush may be what Bennett was trying to engineer all along, justifying his need to move the team to Oklahoma City. Similarly, the Howard Schultz group, eager to sell with such a high price in prospect, also may have scripted Mayor Nickels into being the grinch, giving the local group the needed political cover for their sale to out-of-towners. (I suspect the Schultz group decided to ask for a very generous public subsidy, knowing that if that failed they had a buyer on the hook.) The Mayor all along has acted as if he knew the political folly of making a generous offer to crybaby sports owners, and that his main goal was to prevent construction of a new arena, which would steal away rock shows from Key Arena, making the financial drain of Seattle Center even worse. All the other Seattle politicians, including Speaker Frank Chopp, ran for cover, fearful of the political consequences if they bailed out one more sports billionaire.
And so, ironically enough, everybody (Schultz, Nickels, Bennett, and Nick Licata, who led the opposition from the City Council) got what he wanted, without ever admitting that's what he wanted. (That's a kind of hypocrisy four-bagger.) The second ironic twist would be if the Sonics do decamp, after which time and recriminations take their local toll, and a local group then assembles to buy one of the fire-sale teams and install them in a gleaming new Microsoft Sportsplex in the suburbs.
Call it the Oklahoma detour. That would be the perfect ending to this cynical saga of political avoidance. We'd end up with a team that costs more, an arena that is even more vulgar, and everybody mad at everybody else. Clay Bennett would get the last laugh, albeit from the poorhouse.
Comments:
Posted Tue, Aug 7, 8:59 a.m. Inappropriate
All the behemoths and behemoth wannabes circling each other looking for openings and advantage are like so many wild carnivores after the same crippled animal staked out as bait with the citizens of King County and Washington State playing the role.
It seems to me that us bait-types have had it, and we don't want to play anymore. If Clay Bennett, Greg Nickels, et al, can come up with a scheme financed with exclusively private dollars, then fine...have at it. But it's tiresome to hear seven, eight, and nine-figure types whine about their poverty and how they're being put upon because nobody is eager to give them a pleasure palace to call their own. It's equally tiresome watching politicians pander to voters by acting "tough" all the while - at least we expect this to be so since we've seen it in the past - they negotiate a sell out behind closed doors.
Sonics leave? Yawn! Better that than another fleecing of the people...
The Piper
Posted Tue, Aug 7, 10:55 a.m. Inappropriate
Let's be a city that makes a stand for institutions that truly enrich our lives, not detract. Stadiums that cost millions (aren't we still paying for the Kingdome?) and are underused are a serious waste of resources.
I should much rather be known for being the city where the Gates Foundation is located, than the high-priced sports teams of hobbiest rich guys.
SeattleCB
Posted Tue, Aug 7, 11:01 a.m. Inappropriate
Nice article, by the way.
Posted Tue, Aug 7, 11:34 a.m. Inappropriate
Seattle should be proud to refuse to spend hundreds of millions on an arena. We'd be the city that stood up to the NBA.
But a middle ground should be possible, particularly if you believe that every option the ownership faces is a questionable one. How about some minor improvements to Key Arena, plus some alterations to the lease? Alter the terms by a couple million per year, or whatever number is a bit less than the net financial benefit to the Center of having the team.
Posted Tue, Aug 7, 12:06 p.m. Inappropriate
The Piper
Posted Tue, Aug 7, 1:07 p.m. Inappropriate
RE: I'm dying to know: Ha ha ha, wise guy. :-)
Posted Tue, Aug 7, 1:49 p.m. Inappropriate
Although the People would prefer the Sonics stay, and despise the notion of subsidizing the wealthy, there's value to the City in having a major league sports team. So the People would concede that some modest empowering investment in the future can be appropriate, but that the workings of a deal should be ultimately financially favorable to the City. Given that the Sonics left the City holding the bag with the relatively recent upgrade of Key Arena, the Sonics' negotiating position is fundamentally weak. Each new owner thinks that somehow the public will forget the past and that it can forget the present ho-hum team. And so, with past and present freshly in mind, the People -- and their politicians -- see mainly a glass half empty and no longer want to refill it with the diluted Koolaid offered up in various one-part naive and two-parts hucksterish proposals to keep the team.
The People do feel very badly for Howard Schultz and the ownership group who destroyed basketball in this town, hoodwinked the OK Kid, took the money, ran, and did ZERO for anyone but themselves. The people hope they drink lots of 900-calorie Koolaid lattes labeled Koolaid Kills!
The People feel very badly for the OK Kid, who didn't recognize that the thick gurgly sound he heard when buying the team was his own financial throat being cut as his Koolaid-laced investment blood seeped out.
The People feel very badly for the City of Seattle which originally negotiated a no-win drink-the-Koolaid deal with the Sonics, but still typically doesn't know how to capitalize on its public investments, be they monorail, Seattle Center, Viaduct, public schools, fields at Magnuson park, garages at zoos, KeyArena or pot holes.
The People feel very badly for themselves as they are offered a dizzying array of various flavored Koolaids of questionable nutritious value. Maybe saying No to the Sonics is the start of a political diet that will bring civic and fiscal fitness down the road.
The People feel very badly for Lenny Wilkins who innocently drank the Koolaid, thinking that Basketball was what everyone was talking about and that civic pride and championships and excellence were important.
The People cry enormous crocodile tears for the purveyors of Koolaid whether at City Hall or in Olympia, at Sonics headquarters or in Oklahoma City. At this point they see the banishment of all Koolaid, everywhere, as a good thing, although they know that it will never really leave them. But they now are starting to recognize the Taste of Koolaid and are vigilant of its political expression in the call for unneeded, overpriced and fiscally dubious convention centers, arenas, trains and tunnels.
I personally look forward to the new Koolaid-free team we receive from the NBA in a few years after the existing tens of millions of aging gallons are shipped away to Oklahoma City. I would suggest that one of the first deals that this new team make is a trade for the beloved Kevin Durant from the Oklahoma Koolaids.
Posted Tue, Aug 7, 3:11 p.m. Inappropriate
The Seattle City Council is a "Sewer of Winds..."
The Piper
Posted Tue, Aug 7, 3:55 p.m. Inappropriate
About 50% of the cost of the arena was paid for by private money plus the team covered cost overruns. Had Bennett made a similar offer he might have gotten a better reception in Olympia.
The NBA board of Governors not David Stern has to approve a move. According to the Daily Oklahoman (owned by the family of Bennett's spouse) the relocation process is.
1. Apply for relocation in writing directly to the commissioner. The application must identify the proposed location.
2. Within 10 days of receiving the application, the commissioner appoints a relocation committee consisting of no less than five governors or alternate governors from the league.
3. Within 120 days of receiving the application, the committee must make a recommendation to the entire board of governors.
4. A vote is taken by the board, no sooner than seven days and no later than 30 days after the report is delivered by the relocation committee. A simple majority vote approves relocation.
The question is would they approve a move with an unresolved lease? The city seems to have the upper hand for the moment
Posted Fri, Aug 10, 3:38 p.m. Inappropriate
But when you boys talk about it amongst youreslves, you don't even notice there's another whole team with its famously supportive fans caught in this bind. Yes, I saw the one trival mention of the Storm in the piece. Pshaw! Doesn't count.