Oracle Speaks

Greetings Oracle,

I think you would be proud of me today. I saw a defining moment and I seized the day in the name of all that is good in this world.

As you probably know, Clay Bennett is stealing the Seattle Supersonics from Seattle with the help of David Stern in his constant quest to extort cities for money and arenas. Now the Sonics are not a good basketball team by any means, but they have competent management now with two young studs and like 25 first round picks in the next three years with cap room on the way as well. This is eerily similar to when the Whalers were hijacked except for the fact that Seattle is a major market and the team has been here for much longer than the Whale so there is little financial sense to this (this is not to understate the aggregiousness of taking the Whale, but just to provide perspective).

This issue has struggled to gain national noteriety due to geographical location, David Stern intimidation, and the helplessness and resignation that Seattlites greet the topic with. In the first real show of national condemnation against this tragedy, our beloved Bill Simmons struck out and torched Stern, Bennett, and Co. in a series of columns that brought the topic back to life. Since then, the rumors of behind the scenes local efforts have been swelling coming to a head yesterday when it became public that a small group of local investors including the CEOs of Microsoft and Costco as well as some other notable millionaires have been working with the mayor and politicians and are trying to buy the team. As part of their offer, they are willing to foot $150mm of the necessary cost of renovation to the downtown Key Arena, which is publicly owned (read: they don't get anything out of it and it is basically a 150mm donations as all future revenues from the arena go to the city). $75mm will come from taxes generated from the new arena itself so basically the city will have to pay $75mm to get a new $300mm arena.

Needless to say, Stern, Bennett, and Co. are not that psyched about this plan as they thought they were already successful in their efforts to steal the team. I popped onto ESPN.com to read what they had to say about it and there was...nothing. Some of the world's most notable businessmen are throwing 150mm down the well to save a team's future in a city that has supported a team for 41 years and this isn't newsworthy? The only explanation is that Stern, as he is wont to do, intimidated the news sources to not run the story at first (and then bury it deep on the NBA page when it became inevitable that they had to show it).

I took offense to this. I started pinging ESPN with emails, including Simmons as I know that he would not stand for this nonsense. In addition, I started emailing smaller sites like Deadspin.com who would love to break the news before ESPN and make them look like asses for trying to control the information coming out. The response from all of them was that they had no idea and were working to get something up right away. Eventually, ESPN started moving it to a place where you could actually find it.

My reasoning for creating this media frenzy you ask? Sure, there was a little bit of post-Whalers sympathy for Sonics fans who deserve a team as this is a basketball crazy town. There was also a bit of Bill Simmons like outrage that a major team could be stolen this easily with the help of the commish.

But most importantly, I was motivated by laziness. You see, I live four blocks away from Key Arena and while I am not the biggest NBA fan around, I enjoy being able to walk down the street and see games. And for that I was willing to fight as in my book there is no more noble cause than preserving the right to be lazy.
-Matt, Seattle

Matt, a truly lazy man might have done nothing. The computer is the new tool of the revolutionaries my friend, and it sounds like you are determined not to let the children in Seattle suffer as we did when our team was ripped from us so swiftly and uncompromisingly. Keep up the fight sir, nobody deserves to go through what we did. A loss of innocence like that never really leaves you. I just recently saw Saw IV, and I think we may need to start making some of those Jigsaw Traps for Clay Bennett, and then once we practice on him....we'll set the ultimate one for Peter Karmanos.