City representatives failed us and the Sonics

July 2, 7:21 PMSeattle Sports ExaminerBob Sherwin

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      This is a bad deal.

      Representatives for the city of Seattle today granted duplicitous Sonics owner Clay Bennett to move the team to Oklahoma City - beginning tomorrow - and ending a 41-year relationship with Seattle.

      In return, the city will receive $45 million to satisfy the final two years of the KeyArena lease. Plus, Bennett will pay the city another $30 million in five years if the NBA does not plant another team here AND the state legislature begins yet another arena renovation by NEXT year.

      On the surface, this is the general range of the kind of deal I had been expressing on this blog for the past couple months. I wanted Bennett to pay off the lease along with the balance left on the 1995 arena renovations. Then let him go. Goodbye. Holding him here makes us look vindictive and petty.

      But this renovation element is nuts. It's the city holding a gun to the heads of the state representatives and telling them renovate or else, using $30 million as the carrot attached to a stick.

     There wasn't any motivation on the part of legislators to raise money for renovations or for a new arena when there was a viable here, why should they be so moved now when there is no team to use it? It doesn't make sense.

     This is the city acting with selfish interests and it has the potential to backfire. There's a good chance Bennett could be out of here by paying just the $45 million. He had said he'd lose $60 million if required to stay here for two years. Thus, he might be saving $15 million.

     There are no guarantees from the NBA for team nor from the state legislature for financial support. 

     I can see where the city could be criticized for taking a straight cash deal. Some city council members said they would vote against that - and still might. But if you get all the money up front, you pay everything off - acting quite fiscally responsible as our representatives should - and you take a chance on another team moving here. 

      How long can the league afford not to have a team in the nation's 12th largest TV market with the corporate headquarters for Microsoft, Paccar, Costco and Amazon?

      But beyond this deal, how ever good or bad it may be, there are two pervasive emotions as the result. We're feeling sadness, almost like a loved one moving away. With it goes all those memories, never to be relived or replicated. The other emotion is ugly spirit of spite, knowing Bennett won. Can't help but wish him financial and box office disaster. That's not an emotion you feel good about but that's what he brought out in many of us.

     Good riddance, Clay. Yes. But one day, if it works out like a handful a local attorneys believe, maybe we'll have a Kevin Durant - in his prime - playing for the new and improved Seattle Sonics. Good luck signing him in three years.