Sonics: Signs seen at the protest

"Signs, signs, everywhere a sign/Blocking out the scenery, breaking my mind/Do this, don't do that, can't you read the sign?" - "Signs," The Five-Man Electrical Band [Andrew Bucholtz photo]

Signs seen at the aforementioned Sonics' rally...

"The NBA: Where deception happens."

"Hey Clay, I'm a fan possessed!"

"Burn In Hell, Bennett!"

"Hey Aubrey, white-out doesn't work on e-mails!"

"Not aBout fAns."

"Clay: Owners come and go, but e-mail is forever."

"NOklahoma."

"Hey David: Donaghy called: He can't fix this one!"

"E-mail, lieS, decePtion, collusioN"

"The NBA: Where team-stealing happens."

"Hey Clay, I'm a man about to be repossessed."

"soNics Belong in seAttle"

"Don't steal our 41 years."

"No Bennetts Allowed."

"Stuck Fern"

"The NBA: Where douchebags run the league."

"We're fans possessed: keep the team in Seattle!"

"Boo hoo, Clay, no team for you."

"Once in a lease, you're on a leash: no buyout!"

"The NBA: Where fixing the 2002 Western Conference Finals happens."

"God, Save our SuperSonics."

To close, an excerpt from Gary Payton's speech:
"This team should not move, I don't think they are going to move, and I want to see them turn it around here in Seattle."

Irony, thy name is Stern

I was perusing the Sports Illustrated Vault (greatest way to kill time ever) and came across this great profile of David Stern, written in November 2006 by Jack McCallum. It features some great unintentional comedy, as many things written about Stern then seem hilarious in retrospect. Consider the following examples:

"Over the past months the NBA drafted a mission statement of which Stern is exceedingly proud. It talks about values and social responsibility, and it pledges that NBA employees will "conduct ourselves in accordance with the highest standards of honesty, truthfulness, ethics and fair dealing."

Commentary: Guess that was before Clay Bennett joined the club.

"Now, there is plenty of room for cynicism when bottom-liners start talking altruism. And the many NBA haters in the U.S. would suggest that players such as Stephen Jackson are living repudiations of the league's mission statement. But Stern holds that the document has had a 'profound effect' on him and on those who work for him. He hardly gets through a day without mentioning the NBA's Basketball Without Borders program, which each summer sends dozens of players to conduct clinics in far-flung and often impoverished parts of the world, and he fumes when the league is criticized for too often airing its NBA Cares spots. 'We're going to keep right on showing them," the commissioner says pugnaciously, "because social responsibility is extremely important to us.'"

Commentary: Apparently, social responsibility permits stealing deeply-entrenched franchises away from fans who have loyally supported the league for generations while falling over backwards to help sleazeball corporate raiders.

"It troubles him, then, that the league is increasingly doing business in countries with abhorrent or at least questionable government policies." ... "China presents an even greater conflict for Stern because it has both colossal business potential and a terrible human rights record. The commissioner has traveled throughout the country, both for business and to satisfy his intellectual curiosity, and there is no doubt that China is critical to the global future of the NBA. Yet its repressive policies fly in the face of the league's mission statement."

Commentary: Yeah, that hasn't stopped him from seeing "more of a need for new pro basketball teams in China than in North America."

"'Believe me, the China situation bothers me,' Stern says one day, traveling between Paris and Cologne. 'And a voice at home [he means (his wife) Dianne, who is more outspoken about politics than he is] reminds me about it all the time.' He sighs heavily. 'But at the end of the day I have a responsibility to my owners to make money," he says. "I can never forget that, no matter what my personal feelings might be.'

Commentary: Stern can play the self-effacing political martyr all he wants, but I've got a feeling the cash is more important to him than he lets on here. We do get a bit of truth here though: Stern lets out that it is the bottom line behind every NBA decision.

There is one image from the piece, though, that makes it possible that Stern has merely been played as a pawn by Bennett, who, after all, considers him "just one of my favorite people on earth." "Though Stern's inner compass in leading the NBA has been largely unerring, he has trouble finding his way back from somewhere if his wife is not along," McCallum writes. "As he enters hotels, for example, he invariably makes the wrong turn to get to the elevator, though he makes it decisively. 'He has no sense of direction,' says Dianne, 'yet he always knows where he's going.'" That damn-the-torpedoes attitude that doesn't allow for admitting that you're wrong may have doomed Stern to the wrong side in the Sonics situation: enticed by Bennett's flattery, he jumped onto the Oklahoma bandwagon and promptly refused to entertain the notion that Clay and co. could be lying out of the sides of their faces, going so far as to say that he hadn't even studied the e-mails in question before the crucial relocation vote.

However, that kind of naivety doesn't seem to fit with the workaholic, obsessive, detail-oriented character McCallum describes.

"He has been traveling abroad for so long that he knows not only the names of international basketball officials and TV executives, but also their kids' names. Stern's attention to detail is astonishing. As he greets Coca-Cola officials in Barcelona, his first question is, 'How's Sprite Zero doing?' Perusing a notebook full of bar graphs and sales-figure charts during a meeting in Rome, he stops and points to one. 'You left a percent sign out here,' he says to Umberto Pieraccioni, Adidas Italy's managing director. Before the tour's final doubleheader, in Cologne on Oct. 11, the commissioner's eyes run over the seating chart. 'How about if you move George Bodenheimer over here?' he says. The ABC Sports/ESPN honcho is duly moved. On planes and in cars Stern usually decides who sits where, calling for a reporter to sit near him on occasion and, on others, exiling the scribe to a different seat or different vehicle, depending on whether or not he feels like answering questions."

It sounds like a disservice to that sort of man to suggest that he's unaware of what each and every one of his owners is up to, and he's clearly paid some attention to what's going on in Seattle, as evidenced by his fine of Aubrey McClendon for telling the truth. That leaves two possibilities. The first is that he was deceived by his first impression of Bennett, is loath to change his mind, and thus conveniently blames everything negative on the others in the group.

The second possibility is that this shifting of blame is merely a PR tactic to appease the factions calling for Bennett's head, and that Stern has secretly been backing the move all along. As I pointed out earlier today, the NBA may lose a large media market, but all of their owners gain substantial leverage in negotiating with local governments. They can threaten to move elsewhere if the pursestrings aren't loosened, and use the Sonics as a key example: "Look what happened to Seattle."

It's the old extortion tactic, but it makes perfect sense for a sports league: no one wants to be known as the politician who let the local team walk, so you can bet that there will be a considerable amount of enthusiasm for publically-funded arenas in NBA or soon-to-be-NBA markets. As TrueHoop's Henry Abbott wrote, "The more I see the situation play out in Seattle, the more I see that David Stern is really good at his job. His current assignment: getting as many dollars as possible from taxpayers and to NBA owners. Oklahoma City stepped up to the plate, with public dollars to remodel the public building they built some time ago."

That kind of Machiavellian manipulation sounds like a project worthy of a brilliant workaholic like Stern. Perhaps his comments about social responsibility, honesty, truthfulness and the like are merely spin. What would be even worse, though, is if he actually believes in those laudable goals and somehow thinks he's serving them. At the end of the day, he's sold his soul and his ethics to the almighty bottom line. It may be ironic, but after further reflection, it isn't all that funny, especially if you're one of the Seattle fans he's trampled on in the process.

Sonics: The smoking e-mails

Wow. Just when it looked like the earth (or the gaping pit known as Oklahoma City) was about to open up and swallow the Sonics, the Seattle Times finds solid proof that Clay Bennett, Aubrey McClendon and Tom Ward have been lying through their hat all along about trying to keep the team in Seattle. City lawyers preparing to sue the Sonics if they break their lease found some fantastic e-mails between the ownership group. In terms of pure evidence of blatant lies, these easily surpasses most of the Nixon tapes and is up there with Monica Lewinsky's famous dress. Just read this exchange from April 17, 2007, during the one-year grace period where they were supposedly making every effort to stay in Seattle:

Ward: "Is there any way to move here [Oklahoma City] for next season or are we doomed to have another lame duck season in Seattle?"

Bennett: "I am a man possessed! Will do everything we can. Thanks for hanging with me boys, the game is getting started!"

Ward: "That's the spirit!! I am willing to help any way I can to watch ball here [in Oklahoma City] next year."

McClendon: "Me too, thanks Clay!"

Compare that to Bennett's statement last August after McClendon was fined by the NBA for publicly announcing the group's plans to move. "It is my hope we will see a breakthrough in the next 60 days that will result in securing a new arena for the Sonics and Storm in the Greater Seattle area," Bennett said then. Back in April, he pledged to make a "good faith" effort to keep the team in Seattle.

Even better is an e-mail Bennett sent to NBA commissioner David Stern in August after the McClendon story: "You are just one of my favorite people on earth and I so cherish our relationship Sonics business aside. I would never breach your trust. As absolutely remarkable as it may seem, Aubrey and I have NEVER discussed moving the Sonics to Oklahoma City, nor have I discussed it with with ANY other members of our ownership group, I have been passionately committed to our process in Seattle, and have worked my ass off. The deal for me has NEVER changed: we will do all we can in the one year time frame (actually fifteen months) to affect the development of a successor venue to Key Arena, if we are unsuccessful at the end of the timeframe, October 31, 2007, we will then evaluate our options. I have never wavered and will not. Further I must say that when we bought the team I absolutely believed we would be successful in building a building."

This e-mail shows Bennett's arse-kissing skills in their full brilliance (and also, perhaps a bit of a conflict of interest for Stern?), along with his dire need of a lesson on punctuation. What's more important, though, is how he has been blatantly caught in a lie to the commissioner of the NBA. The other e-mails prove he discussed moving the team with both McClendon and Ward several months earlier, and was anything but "passionately committed" to Seattle: indeed, he told them he was "a man possessed" who would do everything to get the team out of town. Anyone in the same room as Bennett in the near future might not want to sit too close: his nose could unexpectedly grow a couple of feet.

Another really interesting piece of information can be found in the above e-mail, which also contains Stern's response to Bennett. "you and i are fine; i have been acting on the premise that everything you say about aubrey and your efforts is true--well before you said them; it pains me to to see the situation you are in, and i have difficulty conjuring a happy ending in seattle, but i appreciate your efforts and greatly value our friendship. i have a meeting with the ref advisory board on monday morning, which i will spend the day tomorrow preparing for, but we should try and talk early in the week--so i can calm you down. in friendship, david."

Well, the head of the NBA also could use some lessons in capitalization and punctuation. It's not entirely shocking to see such a lovely e-mail from Stern, who after all, served as Bennett's presenter when he was inducted into the Oklahoma Sports Hall of Fame last November. Funnily, as Seattle Post-Intelligencer columnist Jim Moore wrote in his great piece on the Stern-Bennett relationship, Stern usually tries to act more intelligent than everyone else. "You don't know pompous until you've met David Stern, who talks condescendingly to the media and always sounds like he thinks he's smarter than you," he wrote. Apparently, his brilliance extends to writing poorly-punctuated uncapitalized love-in e-mails to his buddy Bennett.

What's more interesting is how this response really showcases Stern's bias in this situation: according to his e-mail, he presumed Bennett's claims of innocence even before Bennett offered them. Is that really the response the NBA commissioner should be taking to serious allegations in a sport so recently rocked by scandal? The e-mail exchange shows the depth of the Stern-Bennett ties. It will be interesting to see if Stern's at all upset to find out Bennett's been lying to him for months, or if he knew all along the "keep the team in Seattle" rhetoric was hollow. In any case, Stern's conflict of interest seems pretty apparent, and he should recuse himself from the upcoming April 17-18 Board of Governors deliberation on the move.

These e-mails should cast significant doubt on the proposed relocation. Do the other owners and governors really want a guy in their club who blatantly lies to the NBA commissioner, the media and everyone else? That might be even worse PR for the league than Mark Cuban's ill-fated attempt to ban bloggers (apart from himself, of course). In fairness to Cuban, he may have ridiculous policies towards bloggers, but even he recognizes that moving a team from Seattle to Oklahoma City is a terrible idea. Hopefully, some fellow owners will join him and listen to former U.S. Senator Slate Gordon (the lawyer representing the city of Seattle)'s plan to force Bennett to sell to local heroes Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, Costco CEO Jim Sinegal, Seattle developer Matt Griffin and wireless magnate John Stanton: wouldn't you rather have those guys, their megabucks and their squeaky-clean by comparision images over a group that even co-owner McClendon described as "some rednecks from Oklahoma" who "made off with the team"?

There's one other possible outcome here: the return of former owner Howard Schultz, the Starbucks chairman and CEO who sold the Sonics to Bennett in the first place. Seth Kolloen, the executive editor of Sports Northwest Magazine, has a great piece about this on his blog. Schultz, as the previous owner, had Bennett sign a good-faith clause (Update: Link to a July 20 story by Jim Brunner of the Seattle Times confirming the good-faith clause) when he sold the team, which the e-mails clearly show him violating. Kolloen consulted University of Washington professor Joel Ngugi on if this could be enforced, and he came to the conclusion that it would probably have to be Schultz who took Bennett to task, rather than the city. However, it seemed from Ngugi's response that there's a pretty good chance Schultz could win (I included all of Ngugi's comments that Kolloen posted to make sure I wasn't misrepresenting him).

"Generally, even absent a specific 'good faith' term in a contract, every contract imposes upon each party a duty of good faith and fair dealing," Ngugi wrote. "As you can expect, it is notoriously difficult to determine if particular conduct comes within this definition. However, willful evasion of the spirit of a contract and lack of diligence in performing a specific term would usually come within the heart of the definition. The problem, of course, is determining if the good faith obligation assumed by Bennett and Company here was part of the spirit of the contract. ... The fact that Bennett and Company seemed not to have been acting in good faith during the negotiations of the contract (not just during its performance stage), however, raises other issues as well.It means that his lack of good faith goes to the very formation of the contract--because it vitiates [ed: law talk for 'invalidates'] the quality of consent given by the other side... Misrepresentation and fraud make the contract invalid."

That's awfully compelling. It's unclear if Schultz would be willing to step back in, but Starbucks is apparently looking for feedback on how to improve its lagging sales: saving an historic local franchise in your brand's global headquarters and recasting your CEO as a hero instead of a traitor in the process sounds like a pretty good start to me.

Update: Some more related pieces:
- Henry Abbott's piece on TrueHoop, where I first found this.
- Seth Kolloen's original post: he's been right on top of this situation.
- Commenter Charlie Anthe has some good analysis on this mess over at The Foghorn, particularly with respect to how it might cause more damage to the NBA's image.

Sonics: A last chance to save a historic franchise

Note: this is another piece on the Sonics that was originally earmarked for my Journal blog, but got pulled from there due to an upcoming column on the same issue. Thought I'd put it up here: this situation deserves all the coverage I can give it, in my mind.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer finds himself in an unusual position this week. Instead of the usual vilification and curses that accompany mentions of his company, he’s now seen as a potential saviour—at least in Seattle. As the Associated Press reported Thursday, Ballmer and three other local businessmen—Costco CEO Jim Sinegal, Seattle developer Matt Griffin and wireless magnate John Stanton—have agreed to put up $150 million towards a $300-million renovation of Seattle’s Key Arena, the home of the NBA’s SuperSonics. The rest of the cost would be publicly funded. The cash would go towards adding new restaurants, stores and club space. The money’s desperately needed: owner Clay Bennett has repeatedly threatened to relocate the team to Oklahoma City, and is set to do so if the league approves the move at a meeting next month.

This is the perfect chance to check Bennett’s sincerity. When he bought the franchise, he told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer he would keep it in town if a suitable arena was found. Co-owner Aubrey McClendon later told the Oklahoma Journal-Record what many had suspected all along: the group had no intentions of ever staying in Seattle. "But we didn't buy the team to keep it in Seattle; we hoped to come here,” he said. Bennett tried to distance himself from the comments, and the league fined McClendon, but a poorly kept secret wasn’t even a secret anymore. Throughout this process, Bennett has been holding a gun to the city’s head to try and force them to build him a new arena or upgrade the existing one. It has now been shown there are local interests willing to contribute the money Bennett won’t. It’s clear he doesn’t particularly want to keep the team in town, but it would be only reasonable for him to sell to a local group willing to put up this kind of cash. Ballmer and his partners have the deep pockets to pay any reasonable price Bennett asks for. If he turns down this offer, it becomes particularly obvious that he was out to move from the start.

Ballmer, Griffin, Sinegal and Stanton are proving to be local heroes in the best sense of the word. As Griffin told the Post-Intelligencer, none of them particularly wanted to buy a team in the typical manner of millionaire playboys. "These are people with other jobs and lives to lead,” Griffin said. "Being a Sonics owner isn't their objective in life. But knowing we have to save the team and fix Seattle Center is important to them." They saw a need to step up and save their city’s beloved team, and they admirably filled the void. The other great advantage of having Ballmer at the helm is it would further enhance the team’s biggest rivalry—the I-5 duel with the Portland Trailblazers, owned by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, who left the company after clashes with Ballmer and Bill Gates.

There’s a time crunch, though. As a story in yesterday’s Seattle Times pointed out, only half of the public money is coming from the city, which has already stepped on board: mayor Greg Nickels is a strong advocate for keeping the franchise in Seattle. The rest would come from the state legislature, via the extension of a King County-only car rental and restaurant tax that’s currently used to pay off the debt on Safeco Field, the recently built home of the Seattle Mariners baseball franchise. This seems like a reasonable proposal, and according to the Post-Intelligencer’s Chris McGann, the legislature and Washington governor Chris Gregoire are far more favourable towards it than they have been towards the previous solutions advocated, largely driven by the massive up-front commitment from Ballmer and company. Unfortunately, the legislature’s slated to adjourn next Thursday, and it seems unlikely a bill could be passed that quickly. Gregoire hasn’t ruled out the possibility of addressing the issue this session, but it will likely take substantial public pressure to cut through the normal bureaucratic red tape. Fans rallied at the state capital Saturday to draw attention to their team’s plight: hopefully, this will get the legislature to act quickly. As the Times' Steve Kelley wrote, unified action is desperately needed. "Now, let's see some action from the legislature," he wrote. "Let's find out who the lawmakers with courage and creativity are. Let's find the politicians who aren't willing to take the easy way out by telling us their "shot clock" has expired." Unfortunately, it doesn't seem like that's too likely at the moment.

There’s yet another villain in the mix—NBA commissioner David Stern, the Emperor Palpatine to Bennett’s Darth Vader, cleverly manipulating events from behind the scenes. Stern’s ties to Bennett run deep, and he served as the presenter at Bennett’s introduction into the Oklahoma Sports Hall of Fame in November. As Post-Intelligencer columnist Jim Moore rightly pointed out about the Bennett-Stern collusion, “I'm not sure what this reeks of, but it reeks of something.”

Stern has other evil motives at work as well: he would surely hate to see a city refuse to pick up the majority of a tab for a not-really-needed new arena or renovation, as that would set a dangerous precedent for professional sports. Taxpayers are supposed to not only fling their wallets open for team tickets, merchandise and overpriced beer, but also throw money at billionaire owners to buy them new arenas free of charge. As ESPN sportswriter Bill Simmons pointed out, this is a ludicrous idea that, if fulfilled, means any team’s owner could pack up and leave if he didn’t get the arena deal he was looking for. “Why should citizens spend tax money paying for a new arena just to make a billionaire wealthier than he already is?” Simmons wrote. “If the precedent is set here—‘Pay for my new arena or I'm leaving’—then really, the same thing could eventually happen to your favorite NBA team.”

The Seattle situation is important for anyone who has ever felt a connection to their local team. Fans in Seattle have been there for 41 years, through the glory days and the dark times. They deserve more than having their team pack up and walk away in the dead of the night. Simmons captured this brilliantly in his column. “I think it's reprehensible to watch someone hijack a franchise away from the people who cared about the team and loved it and nurtured it through the years,” he wrote. “It belittles not just the good people of Seattle, but everyone who loves sports and believes it provides a unique and valuable connection for a city, a community, family members and friends.” I couldn’t agree more.

Things are looking dim for the Sonics, but there’s still a chance they can be saved. Ballmer’s gone from a role in everyone’s favorite evil empire to an unlikely leader of a small band of rebels who won’t accept the unilateral seizure of their team. Stern’s boldly making pronouncements about the inevitability of victory for the dark side, but the fight isn’t over yet. "It's apparent to all who are watching that the Sonics are heading out of Seattle," Stern told the Associated Press during his annual all-star weekend press conference Feb.16. "I accept that inevitability at this point. There is no miracle here." That’s the thing with miracles, though: they tend to show up when you’re not looking for them, especially after someone has just declared their invulnerability. All plans this dastardly inevitably have a fatal weakness—here’s hoping Ballmer and company can find it before it’s too late.