04/27/2007 - VIVA LAS VEGAS, SONICS!
Or, more appropriately sub-titled: DON'T LET THE DOOR HIT YOU ON YOUR WAY OUT, SONICS!
Owner Clay Bennett tried on the "Las Vegas Sonics" moniker for size and made sure that every local Seattle television station would air it over and over and over again. It's a thinly veiled threat, with a distinct used-car-salesman tactic. "Well, you'd better buy it now. I can't promise that it will still be on the lot this afternoon." Bennett asserts that the team could very well end up in Las Vegas but add that (of course) keeping the team local is still the preferred option. My six-year-old daughter uses the same tactics and any reasonably adult can see through the idiocy.
I know I speak for many when I say that Seattle residents ARE TIRED OF BUILDING STADIUMS ON THE PUBLIC DIME. While not quite as big a fiasco as this whole "gas tax" thing (with new taxes and projects proposed continuously in the two years that have elapsed with no progress on the "big issues"), the whole public funding of sports arenas thing comes close. There was the NASCAR issue in Kitsap County which, fortunately, left egg on the faces of those who would have prostituted our standard of living in Kitsap County for the economic benefits such a track would bring. Show me the economic benefits that the Mariners and Superhawks stadiums have brought and by that, I meant the NET benefits, after infrastructure, law enforcement, crime, etc. costs are subtracted. But, I digress. I have another post coming on that.
I know that Sonics have a fairly strong fan base here. Clay Bennett is using them for gain and I don't know why they are not more upset about it. I attend non-basketball events at the Key Arena several times and year and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that facility.
Go away, Clay. And don't let the door hit you on the way out you big cry-baby.