My reaction to todays vote.

     I must send out a hearty congratulations to Sacramento today. The city managed to save their team again. I must say I have no ill will to the city. No my ire is directed at David Stern. It is not the results of today's vote that have me publicly addressing my contempt for Mr. Stern. It is how he has handled this situation in comparison to our teams situation. The amount of effort and the length of leash he gave to Sacramento to save their team is so much larger than what he gave to us. 
     The fact he didn't put up this fight for Seattle a team with more history, a larger market and various other reasons I have discussed before is what makes me mad. No when the time came for the Commissioner to step up and help our city and our history, he fought against our city. Complained we weren't working to get a stadium deal done, but Sac town has been fighting the stadium struggle for almost a decade now, but Seattle only really got one year to get it affairs in order.
     At one point I truly thought David Stern was the greatest commissioner in North American sports history, but the last few years have put a dark mark on his legacy. Now anyone who has read up on the Sonics relocation will tell you, the reason Stern allowed the Sonics to move wasn't to punish the fans for not building  a stadium, wasn't due to low revenue, no it was a favor for a friend. Too bad his job as a commissioner, is to be a steward of the league, to not hurt it's reputation or it's financial situation, but he let his personal relationships cloud his better judgment.  He stepped and fought for the little guy this time, but that fight he had this time showed us what he truly thinks of us fans.
     He just doesn't care about us the consumer, about us the revenue source, about us the fans. Two unnecessary lockouts, several team relocations and then having the gall, to not only ask us to pay for the place to play these games we already pay to attend, but to let another person hijack our teams and our memories just because he did Mr. Stern a favor.
    I was taught as a child to never say you hate someone. (Yeah I'm from Washington), but I can truly say I hate David Stern.

How I justify this to myself.

    

The process of getting the Sonics back to Seattle has hit the last major hurdle before the green and yellow make a comeback. Pending league approval we will have a team back in Key Arena next fall. As expected Seattle fans are starting to take a lot of flak from the good fans of Sacramento. Since day one of the Sonics apostasy I knew we would have to tear out the hearts of another fan base in order to bring them back, unless...

 There was a league expansion. As always the biggest problem with expansion is the dilution of the NBA talent pool. In order to keep conference symmetry we would need to add 2 teams. Increasing the total size of the league to 32 teams. While each team would have a full 15 man roster that would mean there would be 30 new players’spots to fill. So we would add about 6.6% percent more players to the league but these new players wouldn’t be top level talent. Instead it would more than likely lead to each player moving up one position more on the depth chart. So basically, we would have a league where a bunch of players who would be better playing as the second best player trying to lead a team. It would also create a major talent gap when a team is lucky enough to have a true super star. I would not want a more watered down league. I like to watch the NBA because the best of the best are playing. I have a passing interest in college basketball, but the talent is noticeably worse and the further watered down the league gets the closer to the college game will become. So yeah, little long winded and veered off course but I am against expansion.

 After expansion the next idea I hear is Seattle targeting a different team. Truly the dream option would be to get back our team from OKC. Problem is as long as that team is a perennial title contender they will be able to sell enough seats to keep the team economically viable. If we were patient and waited ten or so years  for them to be western conference bottom dwellers. We could get our history and our original team back. By that time  the Sonics memory will be too distant, too diluted by years of inactivity. After OKC the next best alternative would be either be the Clippers, the Grizzlies or the Hornets Pelicans but for totally different reasons.

The reasons for the Clippers are simple they are the second Banana in Los Angeles that market already has a team. (And as much as it pains me to say it the Lakers are THE marquee franchise in the NBA. Also might have a blog idea tearing apart the notion as the Knicks as a marquee NBA franchise, but that is for a later day.) Problem with this is the team is currently really good and good teams make money so right now this has no real chance of happening but it would make sense when it came to not hurting a fan bases feelings too much. (All though I'm hypothetically sorry for Billy Crystal in this scenario)

 Next team is Memphis. To be honest this and New Orleans are my two favorite options for a team. Neither team has been in the market very long. Neither team is in very large metropolitan areas (41st and 46th (Quick mad double parenthesis OKC is 43rd)). Both teams are in the bottom 9 in revenues, so they would both be very logical and we wouldn’t face the vitriol from the fan base like we are from Sacramento. The only problem is both team aren't for sale, and the NBA (Stern) really wants a team in New Orleans for whatever reason. So both those teams are out simply because they are not on the market.

So, now Sacramento seems to be the best option mainly due to the fact they are available. Teams don't come on the market all that much so whenever there is an available option we need to strike. Also there is already a team within a hundred miles. I have friends in Bellingham WA which just so happen to be very similar in distance from Seattle who cannot wait for a team back in the area. It's not that I have nothing against Sacramento but we are a better market for the NBA. We are a bigger market 15th in terms of metropolitan area and a richer one. $50,733 vs. $46,106. In terms of population and money Seattle is by far the more attractive market. This whole ordeal reminds me of wanting to get a promotion at work. In order to move up in the company and get what I deserve I will have to displace someone, who very well could be qualified and competent at the job, but I'm just a better fit. It's simply just survival of the fittest, we are the better adapted organism you’re competing against. It’s a sad reality and having gone through a similar situation (although ours was a mess of lies and conflicting intentions) we only hope we have left your fan base with a viable plan to bring a team back to the market. As a fan base we have utilized the power of the internet to give a voice to the average NBA consumer. When taken as a whole all the talk we have been doing for all these years has become a roar that the NBA no longer can ignore.

In the end, I guess the only real reason I'm not sorry is selfish. All the other words I wrote were just excuses justifying the means. My excitement for a team greatly outweighs my guilt of stealing your team, and for that I'm truly sorry.

(I intentionally left out any Maloof talk because everyone knows how bad of owners they are. It would have been like shooting frozen fish out of a freezer section, so easy it doesn’t need to ever happen.)

Call me Jarett

       The news has been swirling about the return of my beloved Sonics. I needed an outlet to convey my mixed emotions on the subject (hypocritical anticipation). As this is my first blog, I have no real idea where this will be going.
       So my name is Jarett, if your reading this you either know me or through the magic of google stumbled into this amateurish attempt at blogging. If you are the latter I'll give you a quick rundown of me so maybe you can gain insight into your content provider, I guess. I come from a sports family, not professional or anything like that but just a family who plays sports. My dad was a middle school girls coach, who was a frequent church basketball participant. It was from watching my dad that I grew to love basketball, weather it be watching him coach a gaggle of middle school girls or out rebounding the best ballers in the upper Marysville church pool of basketball talent. I have many fond memories, watching, keeping score and shooting between games during these early Saturday mornings.
       As I started to care about throwing a leather ball through a metal ring, my interest in the NBA quickly swelled up. Some of my first memories are involving the  92 Dream team and George Carl's first season at the helm. Soon after that Halloween I wanted to be a sonics player(or Micheal Jordan) usually Detlef mainly due to the fact he looked like me. Guess which one is me.

       As I grew up my passion for the sport would only wain once due to a minor organ rupture. Once this was in the rear view, I was in full fledged fan mode again even if I had yet to play much basketball my self. I fully cheered thru all those Ray Allen, Rashard Lewis and of course Luke Ridnour (My favorite player during these years. Yes again my favorite is a white guy, but I mean he again looked like me and he was a local prep legend and only an inch taller than me, and I'm justifying and writing run-on sentences, so just let me have this one).

Twins?

       Soon those years were getting long in the tooth, and we (The Sonics, sorry to be confusing but I am in no way part of the organization and shouldn't use that pronoun, but I'm going to use it.) had to move on. Amazingly, our team lucked out, got the number two pick in the draft just as rumors about the team moving to Oklahoma of all places started to really gain steam. Many optimists in the area thought that Kevin Durant could be our savior. His skill and star power would be enough to galvanize the city to keep the team in it's original home. Sadly missteps by countless persons (Schultz, Greg Nichols, Stern and many others) led to the hijacking of our team. During that last year I attended 10+ games and saw the frame of a great team forming, but in my head I highly doubted I would be able to reap the benefits of watching this team mature, grow up and contend.

       It was at this point I became a fan free agent. I loved the sport too much to stop consuming it. Around this time my health had picked up and I was now fully into the pickup games around town and that only fed my desire to consume more of the sport. I however could never find a team to root for it always felt wrong, like buying a new dog right after the other one died. As some cruel reminder I would make the trek down to Portland a few times just to attend a game in person. I would root for the Blazers, but more in the tradition of rooting for an anti-hero. I liked certain players (Lebron, Nash, Duncan, Wade, Deron Williams, Dirk, Griffin and weirdly Javale Mcgee) and cheered for their success but it never got beyond that. It is with this I have been clinging to NBA life.
       Enter Chris Hansen, the man I would be if I ran a hedge fund and had hundreds of millions of dollars to throw around, he is the perfect package of charm and wallet size. He came with a plan and he seems to be pulling it off. News broke the other week of possible sale of the Kings to the Hansen Group. It is the resulting swarm of news and Sacramento backlash that has lead to the creation of this blog. My next post will be my response thoughts and ramblings on the prospective news.
       It is here I wish I had some gag or catch phrase but I don't... so... till next time I write a bunch of words for the Internet.