Well there you go.
A region with Microsoft, Amazon, Starbucks, Boeing, Washington Mutual, Safeco and Weyerhauser couldn’t find enough tax dollars to keep a piece of history intact. An international talent pool of software executives, engineers, bankers and real estate moguls, with more college graduates per capita than anywhere in the nation, couldn’t find a few people to hammer out a suitable solution.
So who do you blame? Sure, you want to blame Clay Bennett. While he may be a liar, he’s simply a guy who is going to be given a hero’s welcome and key to the city in his hometown. He never again has to fear taking a wrong turn and running into a homeless heroin addict drinking a latte on Broadway. Given the chance to take your two-bit town and and make it a major league city, wouldn’t you do the same thing?
So now try to blame Howard Shultz. He got snookerd into selling to Bennett. But he didn’t want to sell. He did everything but beg for some money to renovate Key Arena. The team was losing money like there was a hole in the bottom of its bank account. And here’s the dirty secret. It wasn’t Howard that was getting killed. His 50+ partners, the guys who retired from Microsoft and thought the stock market would never stop rising, were the ones who needed to stop writing checks every year to cover the losses. So they went to Olympia, and Olympia gave them the finger.
So is it Olympia’s fault? The City Council’s? Well of course, but there is a bigger culprit in all of this.
It’s the fault of the fans who live in and around Seattle. It’s at least partly our fault.
We did the famous passive-aggressive Seattle shuffle. We complained, but took no action. How many of us vote regularly, or ever, in a City Council election? How many of you know your District Rep or State Senator in Olympia? One day we all looked up and realized some pseudo communist named Nick Licata, who starts meetings about the Police budget with a poem, was in charge of the team’s fate. And even then, we relied on the Save Our Sonics guys. (Great effort guys. I exempt you from this. You really did all you could, and we should commend you.)
But scroll through the list of successful executives who live in Seattle, and then match it to the backgrounds of the people on OUR City Council. It’s a shame. It’s embarrassing. We voters have all been asleep at the switch.
Now let’s take it one step further. It’s just basketball. There are really WAY more important things than basketball. Like Schools and Transportation to name two. These are complex problems with many variables. The Sonics situation was a simple problem with a single variable – how do we creatively make a fiscally responsible decision that also helps the owners of the team? Simple problem. Give me and 10 friends a night at Dad Watson’s with all of the relevant data and we could come up with something.
But OUR elected officials couldn’t handle something this simple. Now, what makes you think they can handle Transportation or Education?
The team is gone. For most of us, it’s the first time we realized our leaders were so inept. But it’s our fault for not paying attention. We should have clued in after the Monorail debacle, and we all paid $500 for car tabs for a mode of transportation that didn’t exist. We should have clued in when our gas tax skyrocketed and the roads got worse. Now maybe we’ll get it. Do some research. Personally, I don’t know much about Drago, Godden, Licata, Curly, Larry and Moe, but I will certainly find out.
If the loss of basketball in Seattle pains you, then realize this Council, this Governor, and this Legislature, WILL hurt you again. Blame the first pain on your own naivety, but blame any upcoming pain on being inactive, and not working hard now to correct who is "representing" you.
