Seattle won't lose everything when Sonics split
March 26, 2008
By Ray Ratto
CBSSports.com Columnist
Tell Ray your opinion!
Clay Bennett, the bagger of carpets who is well into his spiriting of the Seattle SuperSonics to Oklahoma City, is apparently willing to leave the team names (both Seattle and SuperSonics, thoughtfully), the logos and the history behind with the defrocked city.
Clay Bennett may be taking the team, but he will be leaving the 'SuperSonics' behind. (Getty Images)
Apparently he has no use for any of them, which seems all well and good for you sentimentalists.
But he is still taking the team, which leaves with one of those awkward Cleveland Browns moments, where an expansion team claims a history it actually doesn't own, because the team that made the history was taken to Baltimore.
And the fact that he is willing to let Seattle keep the bric-a-brac while taking the furniture indicates that Seattle is going to get another team, probably as a side deal to the city letting the Sonics go without further to-do. Maybe they get New Orleans, which continues to fight the tough fight attendance-wise, or some other unfortunate team in some other unfortunate town.
But somehow, Seattle will be made whole, likely after their sense of loss overcomes their sense of shame and they throw money into a major renovation of Key Arena, or worse, Key Arena 2.0. And then they'll try to graft the history the old Sonics left behind onto the new team, probably while the transplanted team leaves its old history behind when it leaves its town.
Get it? Of course not. It's just another way of bending reality so as not to hurt people's sense of self-delusion.
Look, the Sonics are going to Oklahoma City; the city didn't cave in to Bennett's extortion, but he had the deed and David Stern had his back. That's the game in the fast lane, kids, pure and simple.
But leaving the history and the records behind as some sort of sop to people's memories is just dishonest. The memories can't be taken, so the records themselves aren't really relevant. It's a gift without meaning, an act of generosity without value. It's not quite a scam, but it comes close.
Browns fans have the old team's records, too, but their pain and suffering through the expansion team's birth and early years were made no easier by having Otto Graham in their media guide rather than Baltimore's. It was symbolism, but the new Browns were making their own history, so their glories in 2007 were their own and couldn't be negotiated away because Randy Lerner got a wild hair some day.
That is Seattle's burden now, and having Jack Sikma in the records section of a media guide that won't be published for years doesn't really help the town all that much.
Thus, having the logo is fine, and the nickname, too. But the records? Bennett should keep those, because civic brigandry aside, it is one of the things he paid for when he bought the old team, and Seattle trying to pass off the next Sonics as the extension of the old Sonics is, well, just plain dishonest. It simply isn't so.
These are the deals that fool people into thinking they got a pound of flesh out of someone who took the entire meat market. Seattle isn't getting anything of value out of this deal unless it really wants to own the name SuperSonics in perpetuity, and the truth is nobody else is going to want the name.
The new teams want a ferocious animal as the nickname, or something that ends in "zz," and a logo that more than not is predicated on a triangle rather than a circle. The name "Sonics" is already Seattle's forever, and nobody uses the green-and-gold motif for a new team any more. It's all teals and coppers and silvers and dark grays.
In short, if this deal goes through, Seattle gets the records of a team it won't have, which is worth nothing in the grander scheme. Clay Bennett got what he wanted, and what he's willing to leave behind is of no value -– if it was, he would have taken it with him.
But hey, if an empty gesture now helps the city overpay for a new team later, and then overpay again with a new or tarted-up arena, and everyone thinks it's a bargain ... well, it worked in Cleveland, right?
It just took about a decade, is all.
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