Looking forward to it. I hope Seattle can get another NBA team at some point, I have friends from there who were pissed when the Sonics left.

and this movie will bring the pain of losing a team you love to attention and increase it’s fanbase. They’d sell out so many games especially if Durant is paired with a few more key players they’ll start winning more games and moving them back to Seattle would be a great idea for revenue. I’m a huge Blazer fan but I do miss the rivalry and XMAS game Green/Red

The stuff that goes around in my head:

-A business has the right to make money in the way they see fit (legally mind you).
-The NBA is a monopoly, so standard business practices don’t apply.
-Seattle wasn’t going to shell out any bucks for arena upgrades.
-Taxpayers shouldn’t have to subsidize these rich guys.
-Communities, big cities and states should be more welcoming to business, e.g. tax breaks, subsidies if necessary.

So there’s a lot to either side, but here’s what sways it for me. The whole thing was a shady deal. Now, I actually don’t mind much that the Oklahoma boys were in on the shady deal. I more or less expect that. They lied and went through the motions and left in the night. What I didn’t expect was Stern to be in their pocket, which doomed the deal from the start. I’m just about certain he was fully aware from the beginning that they never had any intentions of remaining in Seattle. I think if the fans, in the beginning, were faced with a choice of kicking in some bucks or losing the team, they probably would have ponied up. Through guile and manipulation the fans were slowly strangled, and they didn’t even know it.

What I don’t know is how much Howard Schultz knew beforehand. If Stern was part of the mechanism that convinced him that the team might stay in Seattle, they whole thing stinks even more.

Don’t forget these words by Stern, mid way through the process:

Stern: "If the Sonics do move, that would be too bad, because the NBA would be very unlikely to have a team in Seattle again."

This was a hostage situation, plain and simple. One side was holding all the cards and already knew the outcome. It burns me.

The NBA needs to get a team back to Seattle asap. The I-5 rivalry was sick, Seattle is a great hoops town, and Seattle is a great base to market the game to Asia from.