To make it all more exciting we have legal news. Officially a class action after so much time waiting…

I find it a little showy that the judge made this ruling on the one-year anniversary. It is reminiscent of the ruling a couple of years ago when a judge pronounced the PBC’s arguments as “as errant as a Shaquille O’Neal free throw.”

In some ways I wish the litigation would just be over. I always figured that it would be settled by now, but contrary to what the PBC would claim I simply have no control or influence over the matter. At least the former season ticket holders are going to get something out of this.

So here we are one year later. It doesn’t seem like that long to me primarily because I spent such a good chunk of the year fighting the battle in legislature. I’ve only been off the clock for a couple of months.

A year ago I got the call around noon that the deputy mayor and city attorney would like to see me at 4 p.m. A receptionist called me and I knew damn well that they were pushing the meeting to keep me off the radio. I let loose with a slew of calls and e-mails saying that I knew they had cut a deal and that if they didn’t call me I would be all over the radio and TV and there was no way we would play ball.

People don’t really get that it was like that. As an example, it came out in court that Tim Ceis disclosed the NY trip to me in violation of his confidentiality agreement. What did not get mentioned was that I initiated that talk. I had gotten wind from a source in the media that Slade Gorton and someone matching Tim’s description had been spotted in NY on 5th Avenue near the NBA offices. A second source confirmed that people were digging into city reciepts trying to confirm his trip. I then sent Tim an e-mail discussing his trip and asking how it went. At that time I had no confirmation whatsover that it had really happened; I was just bluffing. So there was a big conversation about how I had to be cautious over e-mail conversation, public disclosure, etc. I said “If you don’t tell me what you are doing then I don’t care about public disclosure. If it comes up in court that’s your problem. Keep me in the loop and I’ll work with you. Otherwise I’m a free agent.”

Months later, slightly more in the loop, they sat us down and explained the settlement package. It was made crystal clear that it was a done deal and that it could not be undone despite the fact that they had told us for weeks they would not settle without the promise of another team. It was also clear that the effort to get in line for another team or the $30M was going to be seriously undercut if we spent a bunch of time pointing fingers. If we wanted to try to be a part of the solution they would show us how serious they were in getting things done over the next year. I remember being in the room, trying to say the right thing, and being just shellshocked. My line then was, “Ultimately this move is going to be judged by how hard you fight for the building renovation. I’ll judge your performance a year from now when we see whether we got the building funded.”

We don’t have the building funded. They may claim a moral victory based on a decent effort that fell short simply because of unanticipated obstacles (the economy). They can make the same claims that we at SOS have. “You can’t judge us based solely on results. We put up a good effort but just started with too much adversity.”

The problem I have with that argument is that they really had substantial influence from day one. They were involved with the Schultz group. They were the ones who had a professional obligation to build relationships with Olympia. It is their job to be prepared against the unanticipated adversity. Had they laid the groundwork during good years we would not have been shot out of the water by a bad year.

Most importantly, they were the ones who decided to cut a deal with a guy who had lied to our city. If you cut that deal, take money from the devil, then you better not claim any type of “moral” victory. There is nothing moral about it. It was convenience, not right.

So I guess a year later there is some bitterness here. I do get the adversity faced but we have hindsight and it is completely and totally, 100% crystal clear. Guys like Aubrey McClendon do not sell their company before they sell their toy. The economic slaughterhouse these guys have faced, the downturn in OKC tax revenue, the whole situation makes it obvious that had a deal not been struck we would have won. They would have sold the team and spent the energy saving their businesses.

The strategy would have worked.

There are many amusing anagrams of the phrase ‘microcephalic dingdong’:among my favorites,

A Conceding Rich Old Gimp
A Good Clinched Crimping
and A Cliche Gnomic Prodding.

Hoo-haw.

I highly doubt it.

I have to point out how simply offensive it is to me personally to see the Portland Trailblazers extend their marketing campaign in this city so quickly.

They are our hometown freaking rivals!!!

I grew up hating the blazers. I have hated them from day 1. They are not “my cities team” just because they happened to be the closest other team after our team was taken away?

Do they really think we’re that cheap? Do they really think we’re that quick to rush to the consolation prize?

I guess the whole reason they think we’ll do it is because, IN A MOVE THAT NEARLY MADE ME VOMIT AS A SONICS FAN they signed our most loyal hometown guy to be their coach. He left for a bigger contract. I am supposed to love,appreciate and respect him despite that fact that “Mr. Sonic” never did a goddamn thing while the Sonics were ripped away. He never called the radio to say he appreciated the fans. He never made any move that wasn’t “business is business” but I am supposed to love and adore him so much that I pay money and chear when THE TEAM I HAVE HATED MY ENTIRE LIFE, in building whored out by the mayor, introduces the guy who didn’t do anything for me but is still taking advantage of our fans loyalty in order to boost regional ratings for his new team.

Imagine when they introduce the home team Portland Trailblazers in Key Arena the fans are chearing and Nate MacMillan comes to center court. They introduce him as “Mr. Sonic” and he comes out waving and talking about his love for the fans, etc. Some crack gets made about how he never in a million years thought he would be there coaching the blazers.

He is the coach of the freaking Blazers! Should he be standing on a Sonics logo when he is trying to convert us to rooting for the Sonics archrival? Isn’t that freaking offensive? Do they cover up the logo with a Blazers logo? Which one of those two actions offends me more?

The mayor will use this as a claim that his relationship with the league is healthy. He wins a few votes, the blazers win a few fans. A rent check changes hands and they all wink and nod, knowing that they’ve gotten away with it.

I’m bitter. It is too early.

The hometown Blazers

Durant is repped by the Seattle/Oakland based Goodwin Sports and those guys are none to happy with what went down. He is due for free agency a full 3 years earlier than Griffen and his free agency will occur before the next collective bargaining agreement. If you acquire Griffen you get a hometown kid, longer term on a rookie deal, and you don’t have to extend that deal until after you have Green and Westbrook locked up and after the next bargaining agreement.

It would also create an instant 15 year rivalry with the Clips and really I think for the OKC franchise creating rivalries is a very good thing.

Who knows, maybe they will consider it. I think the logic actually holds up IF you believe that Griffen is a stud player. Durant and Collison for Griffen and Camby? Then they draft Rubio or Harding and have a lineup of Rubio/Harding, Westbrook, Jeff Green, Blake Griffen, and their big stiff center. Something along those lines?

Unfortunatelly my musings lately have little to do with basketball. The mayors race is swirling and just like the draft gossip and speculation are everywhere. People call at odd hours, and second guessing is everywhere.

I don’t think it is any huge stunner to anyone when I say that I pretty frequently have to answer questions about whether I was taken advantage of by the Mayor. People think he lied to me. People think he duped me. People think that I got snowed by a force that was just more politically savy than I was. Maybe it is all true.

Our relationship with the Nickels administration was never an easy one. I think if they are going to be accused of using us then I have to acknowledge up front that I did my best to use them. I always knew that they were a lukewarm ally and I always questioned that either the agenda did not match mine or else their efforts to make something happen bordered on incompetence. Knowing this we had choice after choice, do we call them out or try to make push them our direction.

I can probably say that I was the driving force in the “political niceness” we practiced. I believed strongly that until we had someone more powerful than we were pushing this thing that we had no choice but to avoid powerful enemies. The mayor, for all his faults, was the only guy publicly saying he would do something about this. It seemed like it was all talk but talk was better than nothing. I continued to tell everybody that the best way to pressure him into action was to try to add as much volume as possible when he said something we liked. If he said he was going to enforce the lease then we needed to make sure that it was in every paper “Nickels offers guarantee that he will enforce the lease.” By doing so we increased the political liability of settling. He would be viewed as going back on a publicly made promise to us and the fans everywhere. In private settings they were extremely clear and consistent with us that they would not settle. We repeated those comments a lot and I personally looked like an idiot when the settlement was reached.

At the time I really thought that was the right play. I really believed that this was a tough situation and that if he played a little dirty it didn’t matter. Politics is a little dirty and if you don’t like the rules you shouldn’t play the game.

Now in hindsight I wonder if I would have been better off going on the attack a little more, especially with the city electeds. Did they simply do a better job using me than I did using them? Could we have made up any ground and affected the matter if we had been more aggressive and confrontational. Should we have publicly called out every lie as it happened instead of just acknowledging them internally and trying to make the best of the situation? If we’d done so we may have gotten locked out of the room really quickly. We may have forced some other really substantial action. I really don’t know.

For the most part I just feel like I did what I could, made the best decisions I knew how to make. There is not a lot of sadness or regret in the actions, only in the outcome. It was a great time and I did better than most people would have. We simply started the game 20 points down.

Still there is some part of me that is looking back and saying that perhaps if I hadn’t been so selfish there would have been a different outcome. Instead of trying to manager all the various personalities and get them to buy into my strategy I could have turned lose the dogs in SOS that really wanted to go out and burn some things down. Instead of continually looking at it and saying “Nobody else is stepping up, we have to do it.” I could have stepped aside and seen if someone more capable would have stepped into the role. Sometimes you need to create a void to see if that void will be filled. By being there SOS sent a message that the problem was being addresses and concievably a force that would have stepped up never did.

We were not pushovers for the mayors office like many people think. We forced our way in the room and went toe to toe whenever we felt we had any leverage at all. A good chunk of that story will probably never get told. We kept that 100% behind the scenes and I think now I can legitimately question whether that was the correct call.

Anyway it is somewhat of a rambling message today. As I sit and contemplate whether I am going to accept one of the invitations to publicly endorse a candidate for mayor a lot of these feelings roll around. I never really thought I would wind up being this political, having my endorsement solicited, etc. It is an odd place to be.

I had a really odd moment the other night when it suddenly occured to me that it could be my fault. I could have been the single person who made the wrong move and cost our city a team. It was somewhat of a stunning concept when it really hit me. That said I don’t need 20 messages saying “feel good BR - You did a great job.” For the most part I’m comfortable in my actions and have few regrets. I do things every day that have consequences. I win far more than I lose but I always have to live with the results of my own actions. I do think the conversation about whether different actions would have gotten different results is really valid. It is a debate I am having internally and I don’t take it personally when it spills over onto the web. It is interesting to hear from some of the other 10-20 people who were really critically involved in this process whether they think we could have taken a different strategy or how they personally are going to move forward.

My best guess is that the former Sonics either make a dramatic trade for the #1 pick or they trade down to NY at #8. By all acounts NY is infatuated with a couple of players and would want Rubio or Stephen Curry. Presti has shown that he is willing to take players that he loves but have less name recognition. If Harden were to drop to #8 they are thrilled but if not there are a number of other guards they could be happy with.

Enjoy the draft if anyone cares.

By then it should be clear that people are still not spending money they do not have on things people are too unsure that they should produce because there might not be a market for that unmade, unsold, not purchased, thing.

I’ll offer KeyArena, and low-income housing as stimulus spending, using tourist taxes, as being a good idea.

Top lawmakers, meanwhile, said a special session of the Legislature is likely in October, if only to approve new school-spending and criminal justice policies that were not resolved during this year’s regular legislative session.
www.seattlepi.com AP story linked here!

This story story originally posted at http://seattlecenterarenareboot.blogspot.com/2009/06/seattle-times-wash-treasury-to-see.html.

As noted in the comments there, Peter said:

i posted it on this site about a week ago, that kohl-welles told me the special session will be in october if there is one. that said, do you think the key arena renovation is a oneshot thing, or will the city try again when economy gets better and the state budget looks a lot better?

.

Good work Peter!

Have a great day,
Mike Baker

The Detlef Schrempf Foundation puts on the event. More information at www.detlef.com.  

My question to you is: if you were out on the course as a caddy or even in one of the foursomes, what would you ask each of these players?  Det, Bones, Big Smooth and Mase were among my favorite players when they wore the green and gold.  I would love to know how they feel about their NBA legacies being tarnished by the league…

You all probably remember this too, but one of my favorite obscure Sonics memories was a regular season game in 2001 on the road against the Lakers.  It came down to the final seconds with the Sonics down 3 and GP at the free throw line in one of those impossible ”make the first, miss the second” situations where you need a miracle.  He made the first and missed the second, and all the sudden Desmond Mason came rushing in from the top of the key and soared through the paint over all the rebounders, tip-jamming it in to tie the game at the buzzer!!! Supes won in OT.

Nothing new.

I think a few thoughts before listening to any interview with David Stern, I think he:
Does not own an NBA team, so he can not make promises involving something he does not own.

When talking to the press about a particular franchise he is paid to always take the position of the owner of a given franchise, that is why it looks like he is talking out of both sides of his mouth, they are not his words.

When talking to a particular owner he is speaking on behalf of the other 29 other owners.

He has the right as the Commish to rule on arenas and the revenue the league requires. So, he has said KeyArena needs a remodel paid for by mostly public money (Howard Schultz), then a new arena paid for by public money (Clayton Bennett), then a remodel of KeyArena would be fine and only half public money paid on the common public portions (Steve Ballmer).

A privately funded building would be fine if it were fine with some owner.
KeyArena would be fine as-is if some owner were willing to pay the league the balance of the revenue they require (10’s of millions of dollars every year).

When talking to anybody about Seattle he has said the same thing for 7 years, his personal opinion is that he would rather have a team here.
I think that when he does give just his opinion that he really does want that to happen.
The problem is, I think, that he is rarely, ever, giving his opinion.

His “power” comes from the owners supporting what he says and does, voting on what they want him to say and do, and hiring him to say and do it through 2010.

It reminds me of a joke:
David Stern is standing next to a dog.

Sonics fans walk up to Mr. Stern and say, “does your dog bite?”.

Stern says, “No.”

Sonics reach out to pet the dog, and the dog bits off 4.1 fingers.

Sonics fans yell at Stern, WHAT the heck is wrong with you, you said your dog does not bite!!!!

Stern replies, “That’s not my dog.”

Have a great day,
Mike Baker

Sent from my iPhone
Visit me here:
http://ManyWordsForRain.blogspot.com

Originally posted here:
Seattle Center Arena Reboot.

It’s still 1979. Chris Van Dyk is getting shot down by a girl after he asks for a date. He turns on the radio and hears the championship parade going downtown. Hearing the cheers his blood pressure rises. His fingers grip the wheel tightly, like greasy Jimmy Dean sausage links wrapped around a rusty tire iron.

Pulling up to Mickey D’s he is appalled when he finds out that the cost of his McDonald’s cheeseburger comes to a whopping twenty-six cents with tax. He throws the bag back into the hands of the buck-toothed, buzz-headed kid with an Oakie twang to his voice. His fries, along with the Grimace Happy Meal toy land in his lap, scalding his thigh hairs.

He will never look at fast food, taxes, Oklahomans, or large purple anthropomorphic corporate mascots the same way again. To this day he shudders when he sees Barney out of the corner of his beady eye … but can’t quite remember why.

In a perfect world, Greg Nickels’ punishment for losing the team is being forced to walk from City Hall to Belltown and back wearing a pair of John Stockton tightie whitie shorts. Suddenly, even the considerable tensile strength of the Everlast elastic wasteband gives out circa 5th and Pike.

Separated At Birth?

Clay Bennett

What’s Up My Chute? Oh … It’s David Stern’s Hand.

Remember the Simpsons episode where Homer becomes an astronaut? There’s a part in it where they describe the crew of the latest Space Shuttle mission as “A mathematician, a different kind of mathematician, and … a statistician!”

Just thinking that that describes the Seattle mayor’s race pretty well.

LA- Orlando … are you kidding? Go Magic! If for no other reason than my 3 year old niece thinks Dwight Howard is the bomb. Smart kid.

Jan Drago specifically mentioned the Sonics during her press conference yesterday. James Donaldson has obvious Sonics ties. What I wonder is whether any Sonics fans are willing to campaign for a politician who is willing to make this an issue for them. Could we get people working sports radio? Would people put up flyers in sports bars? Could a “buzz” develop over the events of the last two years?

This is going to be a close race. A small block of voters could make a difference and it seems like we may have been targeted as that small block. Drago’s comments were not accidental.

I think it is unlikely that SOS will endorse an individual candidate. We will very likely make an available forum for any candidate who wishes to speak about our issue and we may weigh in with some stories of past experiences. It will be interesting to see if people on a state level want to chime in with their opinions of various candidates.

Go Magic!!!!