Sports Insider by Frank Coppola: Sonics' move to Oklahoma City a black eye for professional sports

July 03, 2008

Sonics' move to Oklahoma City a black eye for professional sports

The Seattle SuperSonics have been playing in the NBA for 41 years. They've been to three NBA finals, won one championship (1979) and have one of the most loyal fan bases in the league.

They boast a star-studded list of former alumni that includes former Celtics star Dennis Johnson, current Celtics star Ray Allen, Gary Payton, Shawn Kemp, Lenny Wilkens, Jack Sikma, Spencer Haywood and Dale Ellis.

Maybe they aren't the Boston Celtics or the L.A. Lakers, but they're not the Charlotte Bobcats either.

This is a proud franchise with a rich history, and now its days in Seattle are done. The league announced Wednesday that owner Clay Bennett will pay as much as $75 million to the city in exchange for the immediate termination of the remaining two years on the lease of the Sonics' arena.

The team will move to Oklahoma City --- Bennett's home town --- beginning next season.

And just like that, professional basketball in Seattle is dead. Hey, at least Bennett agreed to leave the team name, colors and logo behind should the city ever get an expansion team. What a great guy. This ball got rolling when Bennett purchased the Sonics from Starbucks chairman Howard Schultz in 2006 for $350 million. Those in Seattle were immediately suspicious that Bennett wanted to move the team to Oklahoma City and they were quick to criticize his sub-par efforts in trying to get a new arena built that could have kept the team in Seattle.

Turns out their suspicions were correct. The Sonics were the only one of Seattle's three major sports teams to win a championship --- the Seahawks and Mariners have never done it --- and now they're gone. Countless basketball fans in Seattle just had their hearts ripped out, but Bennett couldn't care less about that.

Among other things, this move ruins what was a terrific Pacific Northwest rivalry with the Portland Trail Blazers. The feud took a new twist last year, when the Blazers and Sonics lucked out in the draft lottery and landed Greg Oden and Kevin Durant, respectively.

Now Sonics fans will be forced to watch Durant grow into a star player in Oklahoma City, for some yet-to-be-named franchise 2,000 miles away.

Sure, Seattle still might have a chance to land an expansion team of its own one day. NBA commissioner David Stern changed his tune Wednesday and said that a renovated KeyArena could be a suitable venue for an NBA franchise in Seattle. But the funding would have to be authorized by the end of 2009. It's a long shot.

And even if a new team does come to Seattle, it will feel different. The history, not to mention Durant, is now in Oklahoma City. It's just like when the NFL's Browns left Cleveland for Baltimore to become the Ravens. Cleveland eventually got its Browns back as an expansion team, but things just aren't quite the same.

Really, it should make fans around here appreciate even more the wonderful franchises that we have in New England.

Some of the younger fans might not even realize that the all-but-forgotten Patriots were seemingly on their way to St. Louis in 1992 when St. Louis businessman James Orthwein bought out his partners to become sole owner of the franchise. Rumors of a move to Missouri continued for a couple years until Robert Kraft bought the Patriots --- at the NFL's urging --- in 1994.

And thank God for that.

Seattle, unfortunately, wasn't as lucky.

Posted by Frank Coppola at July 3, 2008 02:19 PM

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