As a Mariners’ fan, and as the only representative of this blog who currently lives west of the Hudson River, I spend a majority of my time writing about the Mariners, or at least using the Mariners as a reference point for articles with a broader scope. Beyond saying that the Mariners are disappointing and setting records for low attendance, this post will not discuss the Mariners at all. In fact it will not discuss baseball at all. It will instead tackle the NBA, David Stern, the Kings, and ownership groups from the Seattle and Sacramento areas. Enjoy.
I despise the current iteration of the NBA and everything to do with it. I hate the OKC Thunder more than most fans can imagine hating another team. Even Boston and New York don’t hate each other as much as I hate OKC. Don’t get me wrong, I love Kevin Durant and have a fondness for Russell Westbrook and Nick Collison, but the team, city, and fans–I hate them more than anything else in the sports world. (I even boycott Starbucks, which as a non coffee drinker isn’t that difficult, but remember I’m from Seattle and every time you meet up with someone it’s “for coffee.”)
There is yet hope for the NBA however, and that hope has a name: Chris Hansen, the Patron Saint of the Seattle Supersonics. If you don’t know already, he is the lead man for the ownership group trying to buy the Kings and bring basketball back to the Pacific Northwest (where it belongs). He has successfully orchestrated an arena deal that not only guarantees that the city of Seattle and state of Washington will not have to pay anything in the long run–but might even make the city some money. In a time where owners are forcing cities like Miami to pay for brand new stadiums that nobody will use, Hansen has agreed to basically pay the city his own money to build a stadium, and has sold out season tickets already. On top of that, he literally bought everybody a beer.
With that said, there is no guarantee that Hansen will even get to buy the Kings, let alone move them to Seattle. Currently the NBA is deciding whether to allow the sale of the Kings–a sale agreed upon by the current owners, the Maloof Family–to the Seattle group. Beyond that simple step, the Mayor of Sacramento, former NBA player Kevin Johnson, has tried to stop the sale from going through and has put a group together to try and buy the Kings themselves. There is a very long and arduous process involved with the sale and/or relocation of any NBA team, but only once has the NBA blocked such an endeavor, so as I said, hope remains. (As an aside, I will state for the record that David Stern is a jerk and did not allow Seattle to fight for the Sonics of old the way he is aiding and abetting Sacramento.)
If (hopefully when) the Kings move to Seattle and once again become the Sonics, I have some allowances I want to make clear for the people of Sacramento: They get to root agaisnt the Sonics in every possible way. If the Sonics reach the NBA championship like the Thunder did last year, they get to root for the other team as hard as possible, even if that team is a bunch or overpaid superstars that people hate regularly, like the Heat. Sacramento fans get to root for the Sonics to finish in last place every year, and then get screwed in the lottery. They get to root for the team to leave Seattle, and for every player on it (excluding players who once played as Kings) to go down with injury or in some other way disappear so as to cost the team dearly in salary cap space.
Beyond that though, Sacramento fans get to hate the city of Seattle. They even get to make up excuses to hate it. The Space Needle isn’t even tall, it has no purpose, and it isn’t downtown. Seattleites are stupid hipsters who don’t know how to shave. Any reason at all they get to hate us. If I wear Sonics gear in Sacramento I fully expect to be berated and yelled at; called names reserved for only the truly bad people in the world. They can spit at me, taunt me, and make fun of me as much as they want. I took from them something that belonged to them and had no right to it in the first place. I am a terrible person and I deserve everything they throw at me.
I hope that happens. I hope I can never set foot in Sacramento (allowing for a moment that anyone would want to anyway) without being treated like Bin Laden or a Batman villain. I hope to be yelled at and spat at, because that means I have a basketball team again.
To end this post, I want to preemptively apologize to any Kings fan. It will suck if we take your team away. It will be painful, and it will be all Seattle’s fault. But I don’t care. I will have my Sonics back. Sorry I’m not sorry, I’m a cocksman.
-David Ringold
@dhringold
