Oh man, this lawsuit attempting to force the Sonics to honor their Key Arena lease is gonna be a lot of fun, as city attorneys use the discovery process to reveal the dishonest dealings we all assumed were going on behind the scenes, but our sports-page-hawking editorial boards refused to acknowledge. And it looks like I’m going to get the opportunity for some delicious gloating.
For example, today the Seattle PI reports on recently uncovered emails between Clay Bennett, his fellow Sonics owners, and NBA Commissioner David Stern, that establish once and for all what an unrepentant bald-faced liar Bennett has always been. “I so cherish our relationship,” Bennett breathily wrote Stern on August 17, 2007, after co-owner Aubrey McClendon frankly told Oklahoma City’s The Journal Record that “we didn’t buy the team to keep it in Seattle.” In what can only be described as a digital blowjob, Bennett described Stern as “just one of my favorite people on earth,” attempting to reassure him:
“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 ANY other member of our ownership group. I have been passionately committed to our process in Seattle, and have worked my ass off.”
Uh-huh. Yet only four months earlier, during an April 17 email exchange, Sonics co-owner Tom Ward bluntly asked Bennett if there was “any way to move here for next season or are we doomed to have another lame-duck season in Seattle?”
Bennett’s reply: “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!”
Those e-mails came during the one-year grace period supposedly earmarked for good-faith efforts to keep the team in Seattle.
Isn’t legal discovery fun? In fact, just two weeks after purchasing the team, Bennett’s co-owners made their intentions absolutely clear :
Corresponding after one partner had dropped out of the group, apparently after deciding a move to Oklahoma wasn’t certain, Ward told McClendon on Aug. 2, 2006, that Bennett was angered by the defection.
“I don’t think that you and I really want to own a team there either, but we are better partners,” Ward wrote.
Shocking, huh? Well, I assume it is to the grownups on the editorial boards at our two dailies, who repeatedly vouched for Bennett’s character and intentions throughout the entire sham arena process. On February 15, 2007, the PI naively insisted that “Clay Bennett deserves credit for sincerity in his efforts to work out a deal that keeps the team in the Seattle area,” while on May 2, 2007 the wise old folks at the Seattle Times went so far as to chide cynics like me for suggesting otherwise:
There have been whispers and shouts that SuperSonics owner Clay Bennett is only buying time until he can move the teams to his home state of Oklahoma. This is an unfair claim. Bennett has done nothing to suggest that moving the teams is a foregone conclusion.
“Nothing to suggest that Bennett is being insincere?” I responded at the time…
Um… how about seeking $400 million in taxpayer subsidies on a $500 million hoops palace, just weeks after 74-percent of voters rejected $200 million in subsidies on a $220 million Key Arena renovation? If that’s sincere, it’s sincerely stupid.
And it’s not like I’m puffing up my analysis with the benefit of hindsight. Our local media reliably reported Bennett’s pronouncements at face value, refusing to read between the lines while excoriating those of us who did. But I never believed Bennett ever intended to keep the team in Seattle, and the basis for my cynicism seemed obvious:
Even the most casual observer of Washington politics could have told Bennett that his $530 million hoop dream would be D.O.A., so I can’t help but view it as a disingenuous con game intended to fill Key Arena with gullible fans until the lease expires in 2010.
I’ve never believed that Bennett ever seriously wanted to keep the Sonics in the Seattle area, but rather has always intended to move the team back home to Oklahoma City, where he will be welcomed as a conquering hero. In that admittedly cynical scenario the arena proposal must be just believable enough to keep gullible fans (and editors) in their seats until the Key Arena lease runs out in 2010, but outrageous enough to make the deal politically DOA.
And what if I was wrong, and state lawmakers actually caved to Bennett’s unreasonable demands and gave him his taxpayer funded hoops palace? Well, I always believed Bennett and his partners had that angle covered too:
See, if as expected, taxpayers (and the lawmakers representing them) rejected his extravagant proposal, he could claim he made his “good faith effort,” and then pick up and move the team to Oklahoma City, where he’ll be greeted as a local hero. But if we foolishly caved to his demands, well, he still might end up with an Oklahoma City team… just not the Sonics.
The Renton deal would dramatically increase the value of the team, allowing Bennett and his partners to sell out, taking a couple hundred million dollars in profit… money which could defray the cost of buying a smaller market team, like the Hornets, and moving it to Oklahoma City instead. In that scenario, Washington taxpayers would indirectly subsidize professional basketball in Oklahoma. Sweet.
Yeah, I know, it sounds a little too devious. But the fabulously wealthy generally don’t get that way by being artless and uncalculating.
Which brings us back to those emails, where Ward wrote to McClendon about just such an eventuality:
“I assume that I will be ready to sell there and work on a team here if they build a new arena, but we shall see.”
Bennett and his partners never intended to keep the Sonics in Seattle, and never negotiated in good faith; that not only should be obvious by now, it should have been obvious the day they purchased the team. As McClendon bragged to that Oklahoma City paper:
“We started to look around, and at that time the Sonics were going through some ownership challenges in Seattle,” McClendon told the newspaper. “So Clay, very artfully and skillfully, put himself in the middle of those discussions and to the great amazement and surprise to everyone in Seattle, some rednecks from Oklahoma, which we’ve been called, made off with the team.”
They certainly did. And in the process they played our local media for fools.
Again, I have to ask: Is there something in the water here that causes schizophrenia?
Summary of today’s headlines in the Seattle Times:
Captain RenaultGov. Gregoire: “I’m shocked, shocked to find thatgamblingdeception is going on in here!”Funny, I went to IMDB to make sure the quote was right from Casablanca (before I modified it). But right before the link to the Plot Synopsis, it warns me: “Warning: May Contain Spoilers”.
Is there anybody who hasn’t seen that movie yet, at some time in their lives?
Shennanigans by rich poofs? Gullible press? Who’da’ thought? I am shocked. Shocked I say.
I have not seen Casablanca. I am ashamed. Adding to Netfix queue.
I, like Goldy, have always seen through Bennett and Co. (though I don’t have the blog posts to prove it). And there are rumors going around that Stern intends to make an example of Seattle for refusing to cave to the NBA’s ridiculous demand for two arenas in fifteen years.
Stern, Bennett, the NBA can all go f@#!@ themselves. I’m a big sports fan but I won’t ever watch the NBA again if the Sonics leave town. Nor will I support building an arena to attract a new team to this town. Bring me NHL, professional wrestling or Jai-Alai for that matter. The NBA can suck it.
Okc loved the New Orleans Hornets while they were playing basketball after Katrina. I write captions for sports on the tube and wrote many Okc/Nola Hornets games. The arena was always sold out, from what I understand the Hornets did not want to go back to Nola because they were so well-liked in Okc.
I wonder if they will have the same relationship with the subsonics?
I’m astounded that an oil man from Oklahoma would lie. Oil men from Texas don’t lie. Or do they?
Howard Schultz owes us ALL a profound apology.
@5
Bring me NHL
I second that. The only way I’d be okay with any arena deal is if it comes with an NHL team. No way should this area build or refurbish an arena for the NBA alone.
Clay’s bidness pardner gave $250,000.00 to the Swift Boat Liar Sack Of Shit group.
That done it for Jim.
s/
Jim, a genuine musician
(never operated a bagpipe assembly)
David, do you really believe the two local newspapers are as naive as you suggest? Sports coverage, among other things, drives newspaper sales, and the newspapers need what you call those “gullible fans” as much as the team. To use a sports expression, take that cynicism “all the way.”
Luigi @10,
No, I don’t really believe they’re that naive. As I’ve previously (and sarcastically) noted:
The real question here is “ WHO THE FUCK CARES???
Sonics can leave and I don’t give a shit. These asshole sports team owners who want The Producers to subsidize their stoopid fucking teams can go fuck themselves.
Pack your shit and leave Clay. Don’t let the door hit you in the ass.
E.G. @ 6 said: “I’m astounded that an oil man from Oklahoma would lie. Oil men from Texas don’t lie. Or do they?”
That’s why the Bush administration, and their allies in Congress, insisted that oil company executives should not be placed under oath when they testify before Congress. It was “too insulting” to them, they said.
Personally, I think they should show up in jailhouse coveralls, handuffed and manicled, until they can prove that they have told the truth.
The lessons the Bush administration learned from Watergate & the Clinton years:
(1) Never, never, never get into a position of having to testify under oath. Unless you are the designated scapegoat (Scooter Libby).
(2) Destroy the tapes, e-mail records, and back-ups. Claim that it is part of “best business practices” to recycle the backup tapes, even though it is clearly in violation of the Presidential Records Act.
(3) Never allow anyone who ever worked for you to appear before Congress on a Subpoena, citing executive privilege.
(4) Don’t leave office without pardoning everyone, no matter how bad it looks.
Where is all the blame that goes on Howard Schultz’s shoulders. Sells the team to an out of state interest and the public is the only skeptic? Schultz could have sold to someone who honestly intended to keep the team in Seattle.
Don’t blame Bennett (who didn’t know he would move Sonics from day one), blame Schultz for giving him the chance to pull this crap.
Our local papers have to a degree always treated sports like a freak show, playing on sensationalism to try to attract readers. Witness the incredibly stupid “Boz Watch” of a couple of decades ago when the local media went berserk over the arrival of a steroid-marinated egomaniac who was far better at running his mouth than he was at running plays.
If the Sonics do stay, and they do get five hunnert large, let’s hope they use a wad of it to get some friggin’ ball playahs.
Remember when Boz got knocked on his ass by Bo Jackson on MNF? Bo went on to score and there’s Boz wondering what the fuck hit him. That was great.
I looked on YouTube for the clip and nothing there. Anybody got one?
The NBA and the Sonics can fuck off. They’re mostly owned by rich Republicans…well, welcome to the free-market bitches! Build your own stadium, charge people whatever the market and economics demands and take the profit from whatever is left over. Problem solved. But don’t ask me to pay to build your arena when you get all the profit. If someone wants to take the Sonics non-profit like the Seattle Symphony or Opera, then I’ll consider tax money for the “civic benefit”. But if it’s going to be a privately run company where the owners get all the profit, they can damn well put up the capital too. The public doens’t pay to build supermarkets for Safeway, coffee shops for Starbucks or factories for Boeing (tax breaks yes, but Boeing has to build and furnish their own factories).
@19 – Funny you think the rich republicans own most of the NBA?
David Sterns contributions: http://www.newsmeat.com/sports....._Stern.php
Howard Schultz contributions:
http://www.newsmeat.com/ceo_po.....chultz.php
Jerry Reinsdorf contributions:
http://www.newsmeat.com/sports.....nsdorf.php
Just a few big names, Bennett contributed $1,000.00 to the republican committee in Oklahoma (wonder why)
But basically it has NOTHING to do with dem vs rep when it comes to ownerships of NBA teams or commissions.
re 20: It’s the irony of ‘stand on your own two feet/bootstrap’ style Republicans doing the big WAH WAH to get socialistic welfare dollars for their supposed ‘private’ enterprise
@21 – I agree the reps keep wanting more and more to pay for their private corporations and investments, but so do a lot of the dems…we need those people OUT. Howard Shultz did a big FU to Seattle when he sold out because us taxpayers said enough is enough! Just like our state government did a big FU to Wshingtonians with the Safeco field tax approval. I am sick and tired of paying taxes for sports team owners who are multi-millionaires and making millions more each year off the teams we pay to play.
#5, #8: Agreed. I’m not a sports fan, but that would change if a Seattle NHL team were in the picture.
Fortunately, I’ve never been a basketball fan, so I won’t miss the Sonics at all. Good riddance to the NBA. If we really want to get even with the NBA, which allows & encourages this sort of behavior by owners, we might consider a consumer boycott of any advertiser of NBA games. Sure, Seattle isn’t a huge market, but I’m thinking if we all switched to the local microbrews and left the national beer labels on the shelvss, it might get some attention at NBA headquarters. And we wouldn’t really be making a sacrifice at all – we’d be drinking better beer.
Football, though, is another matter. It’s not a game, it’s a reason for livin’!
@24 – AMEN!!!! If we nix football, I WILL go PSYCHO!
The only thing that surprises me is Bennett was stupid enough to have left an e-mail trail.
Corporate welfare should end, regardless of whether it has Republican or Democratic origins. If they can’t make a team profitable under general market conditions, then they shouldn’t expect the public to pay the costs (twice, once in subsidies, and again as ticket sales), and then they take the artificially-inflated profits.
Hey, if they want to sell the team to the City of Seattle at it’s fair market (unsubsidized) value, I’d be all in favor of it. Of course, what is a business worth if it loses tens of millions of dollars each year? Maybe we could take it off their hands for a million bucks – provided they pay that million bucks to the City of Seattle by certified bank check (no personal or business checks, please – we already know how good your word is).
Supporting The Troops — Not
The GOP used to pay lip service to “supporting the troops,” even though they didn’t support them on things that matter — like vehicle and body armor, helmets, combat pay, medical care for wounded soldiers, veterans benefits, and having a large enough military so individual soldiers and their families aren’t run into the ground by repeated and prolonged deployments.
But even the GOP’s oft-practiced pretense of “supporting” the troops with hot air — which, unlike the other stuff, is free and therefore doesn’t impinge on more tax cuts for the rich — vanished when efforts were made to rename Phoenix’s Squaw Peak in honor of Lori Piestewa, the first Native American woman ever killed in combat.
Piestewa, a mother of two, gave her life for her country.
Arizona’s Republican legislature, and assorted wingnut bloggers and complainers around the country, gave this attempt to honor her sacrifice a raft of shit.
It was one of the most contentious geographic renamings in Arizona history, and resulted in a nasty political fight between Democratic Governor Janet Napolitano and the Republican-controlled Legislature.
It seems that Republicans in Arizona, and elsewhere around the country, feel very strongly that “Squaw” is a more appropriate name for this hill than the name of a young American who died in the war they started (and can’t finish).
Now, not even the GOP’s phony-baloney pretense of “supporting” the troops with hot air, which is free, holds up a balloon anymore.
Does anyone else smell the pungent odor of racism in that affair?
Anyway, the Republicans lost their battle to stop Arizona from honoring a fallen soldier. “Squaw Peak” is no more. The U.S. Board on Geographic Names, which has the legal power to decide such matters, officially renamed the mountain Piestawa Peak today. Good for them. And a pox on the unpatriotic, troop-hating, America-nating, Republicans, wingnuts, and rednecks who to keep the old name because (a) it’s politically incorrect, (b) they knew it would piss liberals off, (c) they hate Native Americans, and (d) when you get right down to it, they despise our soldiers too — including, maybe especially, those who died in the service of their aggressive war of conquest in Iraq.
“I wouldn’t call it fascism exactly, but [an American] political system nominally controlled by an irresponsible, dumbed down electorate who are manipulated by dishonest, cynical, controlled mass media that dispense the propaganda of a corrupt political establishment can hardly be described as democracy either.”
Edward Zehr
“Oh man, this lawsuit attempting to force the Sonics to honor their Key Arena lease is gonna be a lot of fun …”
Not really. You usually can’t enforce a lease by specific performance, although injunctions against moving sports teams aren’t completely unknown. But this is mostly about how much money it will cost Bennett & Co. to break the lease they inherited from Howard Schulz & Associates. The price just went up, but will not in any event exceed the contingency kitty they said up for this purpose.
But the legal judgment is beside the point. The city should reject any all settlement offers and insist on trying the case in a public courtroom. The entertainment value will be priceless.
Hopefully the OKC media will cover the trial so the good citizens of that one-buggy town will comprehend just what kind of weasel they’ve entrusted with $125 million of their civic funds.
You can pretty will bet that a few years from now OKC’s remodeled cow palace won’t be good enough either and he’ll be blackmailing them. I understand Fairbanks is angling for a team …
well not will
So Goldy does this thing work now or did you give up? This page looks (and works) exactly like the old code.
Plenty of Native American women have died at the hands of the United States.
I fear that her sacrifice was as a pearl before swine.
It’s a rare day indeed when I can agree with MTR. Clayboy can take his toy and get the fuck out. I think the City of Seattle should just void the lease right now and kick ’em out. I’m just gonna swear off pro basketball altogether.
But if Seattle wants the NHL, or just about any other indoor sport, say like Arena Football, or make a bid for an Olympic Games, a larger arena capable of holding a surface of that size is an absolute must. And truth be told, that’s just not gonna happen in our lifetime.
This news is no more shocking than yesterday’s revelation that Dick Cheney orchestrated the torture and top-ranking administration officials worried enough about going to jail over it to demand ass-covering memos from DOJ lawyers (most of whom are compliant bootlickers who graduated from mail-order law schools within the last 9 months) so they’d go to jail instead if the torturers got caught.
We sort of knew that all along.
The only surprise in yesterday’s news was that Colin Powell sat in those meetings. There was a time when I believed he had more class than that. I won’t make that mistake again. From now on, an “R” after a politician’s name automatically disqualifies him/her from public office in my book, no matter who it is.
@38
Not within Seattle city limits, but I’m actually somewhat surprised that something hasn’t been put together for Bellevue yet. If a new arena is to be built in this area, it would make sense for it to be over there.
@5 “I have not seen Casablanca.”
You ought to. You’ll never think of love in the same way ever again.
@7 “Howard Schultz owes us ALL a profound apology.”
I don’t want an apology, I want my Starbucks stock to go up. Just because I bought it back when it went for fifty cents a share doesn’t mean I’m satisfied with today’s measly $18 a share. I want to see $40 again. Otherwise, piss on him.
My husband is lying through his buck teeth! He didn’t want to buy Starbucks for 50 cents a share! He said it was overpriced and would never hit a buck. Boy was he ever wrong and believe me I’m not going to let him forget it! Good thing I made him buy it, so he can keep me in bon-bons in my old age.
Re 44, the fact is I bought it for 50 cents a share and the rest of what Mrs. Rabbit says are mere technicalities. Besides, it’s her fault I didn’t sell it at $40. She fell in love with the stock and wouldn’t let me sell it! You NEVER fall in love with stocks, you think only of the bottom line, and you buy and sell them like Asian sex slaves! If you want to be a sentimental fool then fall for a married French girl running from the Nazis.
@11 And this from a guy who thinks a modest tax on inheritances over $2 million is socialism …
RR at 33: I checked the Oklahoma paper’s web site today, and they had the story buried deep in the sports section. They went on to say that NBA will be voting on the move shortly, and it is “unclear” whether these e-mail revelations will have any impact on the
moveparty they are already planning there.@12 What do you produce besides hot air? But I know what you don’t produce: You don’t produce the $100 you owe Goldy, and haven’t produced it for 2 1/2 years now. Pay your gambling debt, you dishonorable lying sack-of-shit welsher!
@13 What this country needs is a legal presumption that anyone from Texas is a liar until proved otherwise.
But we don’t need any legal presumption to automatically consider every Republican to be a liar. That’s a proven fact.
@14(4) You don’t get it, do you? And neither do the gullible young things fresh out of Wingnut University who were so awed by the high positions and power being handed to them that they didn’t think to ask for “Get Out of Jail Free” cards in advance.
Only the Big Boys get pardons. The rest are wolf food.
@15 I will forgive him if he sells lots of lattes and makes me Starbucks stock go back up.
my not me
RR @ 34: “You can pretty will bet that a few years from now OKC’s remodeled cow palace won’t be good enough either and he’ll be blackmailing them.”
Oh, I don’t think it will take a few years before that happens.
http://www.gocomics.com/tankmcnamara/2008/03/17/
http://www.gocomics.com/tankmcnamara/2008/03/19/
@19 That’s not how “free markets” work. When you take away the socialism, there’s no profit in capitalism anymore, and they’d rather put their money in CDs.
The Big Dreamers know people aren’t stupid. That’s why they try to use the power of government to lift your wallet. The only way you can get a $500 million hoops palace or a $500-million-a-mile light rail tunnel from the University to a parking lot that holds 100 cars at no cost to yourself is by using the power of the state to coerce taxpayers into paying for it.
222 “I agree the reps keep wanting more and more to pay for their private corporations and investments, but so do a lot of the dems…”
Well, here we go again. Hannah the Stealth Wingnut is playing the oldest and most cliched wingnut game on this board: “The Democrats do it too.”
No, they don’t. Not remotely like the Republicans do. The GOPers are in a class by themselves.
@26 Arrogance and stupidity often go hand-in-hand.
@12: Finally, something I can agree with Mark about! LOL.
RR @ 51: In the past pardons were only given when someone was already convicted of a crime, in the process of being prosecuted. The only pardon in advance of imminent prosecution that I am aware of was Ford’s pardon of Nixon. But even Nixon didn’t have the chutzpah to pardon himself. Even though Clinton passed out quite a few controversial pardons at the end of his presidency, he didn’t pardon himself or his wife, even though there were still threats of prosecuting him in criminal court for perjury.
So when I referred to “everyone”, I wasn’t thinking of the low-level guys, although some might be pardoned just to keep them quiet. Instead, I was thinking of Rove, Cheney, Rumsfield, Gonzales, and even Bush himself. I don’t think Bush has any sense of shame left which would prevent him from pardoning himself, and his place in history is pretty much trashed no matter what he does at this point.
Perhaps my choice of words could have been better. But I’m thinking that there will be a lot of partison pressure on Bush to pardon anybody who’s ever been a member of the Republican party.
Our local media reliably reported Bennett’s pronouncements at face value, refusing to read between the lines while excoriating those of us who did.
Sounds like the Bush administration. I have called bullshit on their lies since 1999, but a bunch of idiots believed them, and a smaller bunch of idiots still do.
@57 – read posts 19 and 20! THAT’s the facts of who owns what in NBA teams, I was pointing out to post 19 who claimed it was all wrich wingnuts that own NBA teams and I already knew Stern (NBA commish/liar) and Shultz were both huge dems…so yes, the dems do it too and as I have said a hundred times, the dem party needs to clean out the few cheaters because those few will always be used against the party, especially when people start pointing out the “rich”
60 rhp
The only pardon in advance of imminent prosecution that I am aware of was Ford’s pardon of Nixon.
What about George HW Bush pardoning Cap Weinberger before he was tried for lying to Congress?
62 H
Huh?
Hey, do ya think Clay Bennett is a Democrat? I mean, because we’re actually talking about him and his lying, cheating business partners and all.
@64 – I never said Bennett was a dem, I actually pointed out he contributed to OKC reps….where’d you get that? Stern and Schultz are dems
DL @ 63: I must have missed the Weinberger one – I have no recollection at all of it. But I’ve got at least two years during the G.H.W.Bush administration where I was working so hard that I don’t remember much of anything that happened, other than the Gulf War.
Then, of course, there are the “grants of immunity for testimony” which are so broad and unskillfully drafted (or perhaps skilfully drafted?) that as soon as the person testifies under immunity, it operates as a virtual pardon. (Example: Oliver North).
25
Hanna, honey, fortunately it is a short trip for you. :)
@67 – yes it is a very short trip when one depends on a Seattle teams actually making it all the way…the Hawks send me into cardiac arrest and psychosis at least a few times each season.
@60 “But I’m thinking that there will be a lot of partison pressure on Bush to pardon anybody who’s ever been a member of the Republican party.”
Nah. The GOPers are more than willing to sacrifice their own cannon fodder.
NEWS SHOCKER: Clinton is a bold faced liar.
NEWS SHOCKER: Obama is a bold faced liar.
357 Roger Rabbit says:
Of course not. (wink wink)
Hannah@20:
You’ve learned well padowan. Way to use data correctly to make your point. Now you will be labeled a troll for disagreeing with 16%ers.