Who Are the Bigger D-Bags: the NBA or Seattle City Council?

As I type this, the moving trucks are heading down I-5 or I-90, on their way out of Seattle and off to Oklahoma (do they even have interstates in Oklahoma?). Clay Bennett, his merry band of redneck a**hole buddies, and The Commish David *%& You Stern got what they wanted: they successfully moved an NBA team from the league's 12th largest market (and one who supported the team faithfully for 41 years) to the nation's 46th largest, who supported the Hornets for a year and a half. The NBA- Where Bending a City Over and Doing Them Dry Happens. There's a lot of blame and a lot of stupidity to be spread around here to a lot of rich people, but after yesterday's settlement which allowed Bennett to leave, a special standing ovation of sarcastic golf claps needs to be given to Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels and the rest of his city council, who when needed most did what city governments do- instead of meeting the needs of their people, they simply go to the highest bidder. I suppose this is nothing new, yet it just sucks to see it happen again to a group of people in Seattle who fought really hard to keep the Sonics. If it wasn't for them the Sonics would have left last year, yet they helped to pull city and state govt along and rally for the cause. According to lawyers and those in the know, it looked like the city of Seattle had a strong case to hold Bennett to the lease and keep them there until 2010, if not buying more time, then at least putting the screws to the Lying Dirty Redneck. Not only that, there's the still the pending lawsuit Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz had against Bennett, which had a legitimate chance to cancel the sale and give Schultz the team back (just in case I haven't made this point clear before, Schultz is as much to blame as anyone in this for selling the team to Bennett in the first place. He's only suing to get the team back to save face in his native city. Is it a coincidence the coffee giant announced they have to close 600 stores? I'd like to believe

its karma, but it's more just a case of over saturating the market. There's just about a Starbucks on every corner here in Vancouver). The final kick in the crotch for Sonics fans was Nickels steadfast promise and guarantee that no amount of money would be enough to allow Bennett out of his lease, and that they would do everything possible to hold him and the team in Seattle until 2010...well at least until yesterday, when apparently $45 million was all it took to convince them otherwise. Two faced, promise breaking politicians is nothing new. I see it here in Vancouver, I've seen it when I was in radio in small towns in North and South Dakota, so I'm not sure why I'm surprised it happened again. Maybe it would have been more surprising if Nickels would have stuck to his guns and forced Bennett to stay. Their claim is that Stern has said getting another team to relocate to Seattle is a distinct possibility if they move fast, and that's why they caved to Bennett. Makes no sense considering you they're the 12thlargest market in the country. You would think Seattle and its region would hold the hammer here, because if the NBA is dumb enough to leave that market for good, that's their problem. It's not good business sense to do so, and Stern is showing that he knows that by trying to keep the door open for relocation ASAP. If the Sonics get a team in the next 5 years (from either Charlotte or Memphis) this issue goes away while fans of neither Charlotte or Memphis would put up much of a fight to their team leaving.

(Can't blame the folks in Charlotte for this. They had an incredible sellout streak for a long time until current Hornets owner George Shintz ran the team into the ground, then moved them to New Orleans. The new ownership group and management- sorry MJ- has been one of the worst in pro sports. How can you expect people there to support that team after they've been burned once, and the new group has proven they have absolutely positively no idea what they are doing. As for Memphis, it's not a pro sports town , and neither is Nashville. Tennessee, along with all of those states in the Deep South, are college sports- especially football- crazy. Pro sports gives them something to do between college football season and spring football).

So Stern knows the best thing for his league is to have a team in Seattle, which makes you wonder why the city wouldn't play hardball knowing they had the upper hand. You also have to wonder that if/when the NBA does return to the Emerald City, how well it'll be supported the second time around. Reading the papers and blogs down there, as you can imagine, there's a REAL bigtime sense of bitterness, betrayal, and hatred towards the NBA. I wonder if a new team would be welcomed with open arms, or if the NBA has burned its bridge in Seattle. I think it's probably more of the latter. While the city doesn't have a hockey team in the winter, UDub is in town and is very well supported, and they'd really only be bored from when the NFL season ends until baseball starts in March.

For now, we at least know one thing the NBA and Seattle mayor Greg Nickels and his local government have in common: both will choose money over doing what’s right for the people who support them and pay their salaries.