About 15 minutes after Game 1 of the NBA Finals, our man Darnell Mayberry received an email. Some slimeball who said he was from Seattle cussed out Darnell and said untoward things about Clay Bennett. The guy needed a proctologist to remove the 2×4 from his keister.
Yes, it seems the NBA Finals have hit a nerve again in Seattle, which lost its Sonics to Oklahoma City four years ago and now watches the remnants of that franchise approach the NBA summit as the Thunder. The theory, of course, is that this could have been Seattle’s championship team.
Maybe so, provided Seattle is willing to say Bennett would have had to be the man to deliver it to Seattle. The Sonics got Kevin Durant without wisdom from Bennett or Sam Presti. That was a no-brainer pick that would have been made by most anyone in the NBA. But as great as Durant is, he’s only a minority piece of this Thunder story.
Without Bennett, there is no Sam Presti in Seattle/OKC. Without Presti, there is little reason to believe the Sonics would have landed Russell Westbrook or James Harden or Serge Ibaka. In the pre-Presti years, Seattle’s first-round draft picks included Saer Sene (10th overall), Johan Petro (25th), Robert Swift (12th) and Vladimir Radmanovic (12th). Now, in fairness, the Sonics knew a quality person from time to time. They picked Nick Collison 12th in 2003 and Desmond Mason 17th in 2000.
But the truth is, if you want Presti in Seattle, you have to take Bennett, and if you want Bennett, you have to take the truth. Which is this. Howard Schultz sold the Sonics to Bennett because Bennett was interested in bringing a team to his hometown of Oklahoma City. Not because Schultz was fooled.
Schultz â€" and the entire NBA â€" had wearied of trying to get a new arena in a city that had helped build a palatial new home for the NFL Seahawks and baseball Mariners. Schultz knew he couldn’t easily move the Sonics, not with his Seattle ties and Starbucks status, but figured that the threat of moving from another owner could motivate city officials.
Bennett’s deal with Schultz gave the city one year to reach an agreement for an arena deal, or Bennett would be free to move, pending the Sonics’ KeyArena lease. Bennett’s deal included a good-faith effort to bargain with the city for an arena deal.
Good-faith effort is in the eye of the beholder, and certainly Bennett was demonized by Seattle media. The emails and comments of fellow Sonics investor Aubrey McClendon, that indicated the OKC group bought the franchise to move it, were considered the smoking gun of Bennett’s original desires.
To which I say, you need McClendon’s testimony? Let’s see, an Oklahoma City group hungry for an NBA franchise buys an NBA franchise 2,000 miles away, and doesn’t have an eye on moving the Sonics? Of course they were interested in moving to OKC. That’s why Schultz made the deal. Motivate the city of Seattle.
And let’s see. The city failed to reach an agreement with Bennett in that year, same as the city failed to figure out a plan with Schultz or NBA commissioner David Stern in the preceding years, same as the city has failed to generate an arena plan in the four years since the Sonics left.
That could change, of course. Thursday, an investment group led by Christopher Hansen is holding a rally in Seattle to drum up support for a new arena deal. There have been cracks in the Seattle iceberg, including a possible arena plan and a meeting this with Stern and Seattle mayor Mike McGinn in which McGinn expressed the city’s desire to return to the NBA. Stern was probably supportive but I assume lived up to name. Stern was not happy six years ago â€" long before Bennett entered into discussions to buy the team â€" with Seattle, saying the city basically was not interested in keeping its team.
Hanson reportedly is looking into buying the Sacramento Kings and moving that franchise to Seattle, if the Kings don’t get a new arena in Sacramento. Hmm. Isn’t that amazing. A city won’t build a new arena, so a team moves. Who would have thought?
Bennett is the bad guy because the owner who takes away a team always is the bad guy. Walter O’Malley, Art Modell, Bob Irsay. Doesn’t matter the sport, the cities, the circumstances. Owners are the bad guy. History has exonerated O’Malley, who broke Brooklyn hearts by taking the Dodgers to Los Angeles 55 years ago. History might even exonerate Bennett; Schultz sold a treasured NBA franchise to an Oklahoma group that had publicly stated it wanted an NBA franchise for Oklahoma.
But for now, Bennett’s evil incarnate to some in the Pacific Northwest. Maybe others have moved on. I’ve been interviewed twice by Seattle media in recent days â€" one didn’t bring up Bennett, the other asked if it wasn’t time for Sonic fans to move on.
Well, the answer is it takes a long time to get over losing a franchise, if ever. You can’t blame Seattle fans for feeling some anger at watching the Thunder in the NBA Finals. Some of that anger is misplaced, though noted Bennett-basher Bill Simmons of grantland.com wrote a semi-mea culpa that praised Oklahoma City fans. You can read it here.
Seattle fans deserve an NBA franchise. Seattle city officials, I’m not so sure. The Sonics’ competitors got new stadiums. The Sonics did not. The Seattle-based owner of the Sonics tired of that status. The Oklahoma-based owners of the Sonics did not wait to grow tired.
So Seattle, send my man Darnell all the nasty emails you want. Doesn’t change the truth that the onus was on the city of Seattle, and the city of Seattle did not come through. And Oklahoma City, don’t get worked up. You built an arena. Seattle didn’t. It’s not a complicated story.
-------------Berry Tramel can be heard Monday through Friday from 4:40-5:20 p.m. on The Sports Animal radio network, including AM-640 and FM-98.1. You can e-mail him here and follow him on Twitter @BerryTramel. Visit Berry's website here.If you enjoyed this post, please consider to leave a comment or subscribe to the feed and get future articles delivered to your feed reader.
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