Sonics Owners Fumble Midwest Move
It's amazing how people who brilliantly operate their businesses can turn into buffoons as soon as they purchase a pro basketball team.
We're familiar, of course, with the lunacy of James Dolan's stewardship of the Knicks. His tenure essentially consists of throwing good money at bad players and rewarding Isiah Thomas with a contract extension because — well, why'd he do that again?
We've also recently come face to face with incompetence with the Minnesota Timberwolves, where Glen Taylor's "strategy" consisted of hiring the most famous basketball player from the state, Kevin McHale, to run the team — and then leaving him in charge for a decade, even after he proved beyond any reasonable doubt that he was in over his head and not motivated. That resulted in wasting the prime years of one of the league's greatest talents, Kevin Garnett, until he was traded to Boston this summer.
Those aren't the only bad ones. We've got confirmed cheapskates running the show for Charlotte, New Orleans, and the Clippers; a reclusive, bizarre regime calling the shots for Golden State; and who-knows-what going on in Orlando.
But the latest team that could use a copy of "NBA Ownership For Dummies" is the Seattle Sonics. The Oklahoma City-based group that purchased the team last season has always been viewed with suspicion by folks in the Emerald City, who feel that the owners aren't sincere about keeping the team in Seattle and just want to move it to Oklahoma as soon as they can.
Their suspicions have now been confirmed, because one of the owners, Aubrey McClendon, was apparently unaware that a newfangled technology called the Internet allows people to read out-of-town newspapers.
He gave an interview to an Oklahoma City-based business newspaper called the Journal Record: The piece included such self-incriminating gems as, "We didn't buy the team to keep it in Seattle, we hoped to come here"; and, "We know it's a little more difficult financially here in Oklahoma City, but we think it's great for the community and if we could break even we'd be thrilled."
Both quotes are hugely damaging, for different reasons. The former is hurtful because the terms of the Sonics sale to the current group from Starbucks founder Howard Schultz require the new owners to make a good-faith effort to keep the team in Seattle before moving it. By McClendon essentially admitting that the new owners never intended to keep the team in town, he opens the ownership group to legal challenges to an attempted move that could drag on for years.
The second, however, is the one that really stings. McClendon is saying the team will make less money in Oklahoma City but he'd like to move it there anyway? How do you suppose that one will go over in the commissioner's office?
Remember, this is a league that shares most of its revenues, so a team moving into a less profitable situation is an issue for the league's other 29 owners — the same people who have to approve the Sonics' application to relocate. Maybe this just means it will take a bigger buy-off to get approval, but that's still a cost.
Then there's the players association. The league's salary cap is set as a percentage of basketball-related income. This means that the amount of money the Sonics make (or don't make) directly impacts how much money every single player in the league will make as well. The players association is sure to find it interesting if a team isn't working to maximize its income by playing in the most profitable city, as McClendon seems to be admitting.
In a way, what he did was great for Sonics fans: McClendon couldn't have done more to keep the team in Seattle. The potential legal challenges, and those from their fellow owners, could provide the impetus for the Sonics to stay put and get a deal done on a new building to replace the outdated KeyArena.
But it also could make things really, really ugly. Keep in mind that the Sonics have a lease at KeyArena until 2010, and that the city of Seattle has indicated they will not allow the team to buy its way out of it early. In fact, a ballot referendum this fall may remove that option from the table entirely.
Clay Bennett, the lead owner in the Sonics' group, has said he'll petition the league to move the team to Oklahoma City in 2008–09 if he doesn't have a stadium deal by the end of October. But if he's contractually required to stay in Seattle through 2010, then what happens? The Sonics might be faced with three seasons of playing in a virtually empty arena while waiting to move the team to Oklahoma — all so they could make less money.
If that were the case, it undoubtedly would affect the team as well. Think any money would be spent on free agents over the next three years if they were tied down in Seattle? How about on coaches, scouts, and all the other elements of running a team?
Alas, this is not Bennett's first misstep since his group took over. There was his weird dalliance with Lenny Wilkens, the sloppy firing of Bob Hill, and his needless tweaking of Seattle mayor Greg Nickels in the press (that should help get an arena deal done, eh?). The damage control on Monday was similarly awkward — Bennett and McClendon each issued their own press releases, both of which fell somewhere short of a full denial.
Now the owners has an enraged fan base to deal with if he stays, and a perplexed league to do some explaining to if he tries to leave. The irony is that Bennett has tried to build the Sonics on the model of the San Antonio Spurs, going so far as to hire away Sam Presti and P.J. Carlesimo from the Spurs to be his coach and general manager.
The Spurs, of course, are the league's model franchise, and one of the keys to their success has been the simple but mundane task of keeping from doing things that are tragically stupid. If Bennett's group wants to end up more like them and less like the Taylors and Dolans of the world, the first step is finding a way to contain this latest outbreak of foot-in-mouth disease.
