Brent Barry: Ballsy Comment on NBA TV

yeah, because the Rose Garden was sold out when the blazers were winning 20 games a year....

 

I actually agree with this. I think GS has to have the most rabid fans. That building is always full, always loud, and the team has sucked more than it hasn't.

 

Go right ahead and compare the two. If you have been to a Kings game, I'm not joking, they might have had about 2,000 people in that arena the past few years we have gone down there. You can never believe the attendance #'s teams release anyway.

 

Wow, David Stern bears an uncanny resemblance in that picture to the Penguin-all thats missing are the top hat and monocle.

 

Yeah, it was sad. One was some dude sitting right behind me that cheered as loud as he could... FOR BOTH TEAMS

Also, I still think it is sad that there are Sonic fans that would still root for this team. I would never follow that squad again, it would hurt too much.

 

I am hopeful in the next expansion Seattle will get another team, so a rivalry may once again be renewed. That, and the fact that we would kick the shit out of them mercilously the first few years in the league, padding our record by 4 games per year.

 

Key Arena isn't a dump. You're comparing it to the luxury Rose Garden (thank you, Paul Allen). Key was designed per NBA instructions to minimize cost to the taxpayers. When Key was new, Stern said Key was great, and there are quotes of that. It was built from scratch (it is NOT merely a renovation) in about 1997. Only about SIX YEARS LATER, Sonic owners started whining theat they had to have the taxpayers make enormous renovations. The politicians correctly said, go to Hell.

It IS true that Seattle Mayor Nickels dropped the court fight too soon. He was only in it to win a settlement (which was never collected, because it was contingent upon renovations to Key). The purpose of the court case should have been to punish Bennett by forcing the team to stay 2 more years until the contract ended.

And now for the real reason the Sonics couldn't make money. Key Arena is a smokescreen. Irrelevant.

The contract with the City prevented ownership from making money. It was the only contract in the NBA which came out taxpayer-neutral. In other words, the team paid its own way 100% without subsidies. Stern has built the league on irresponsibility. That's what they meant when they said that his economic model is broken. These millionaires must have public subsidies, taking away money from winter shelters for hoboes in the snow, hungry welfare children, etc. The contract was to end in 2 years, in 2010, at which time it could be renegotiated. The vast majority of Seattlites demanded that the contract not be redone midstream before it ended. In the court case, the asinine judge was siding with Bennett (she was trying to look tough and neutral), and the City put up clown witnesses.

Stern is intimate friends with Bennett (see picture in this thread) and because of Hurricane Katrina, OKC had just finished demonstrating that it can support a team. This rare confluence of events caused Seattle to lose the Sonics. I haven't mentioned that attendance was down because of the economy and because the team had sucked for a decade after Wally Walker replaced Bob Whitsitt, who set a gold standard that could not be duplicated. I haven't mentioned that Sonic ownership was unusual in that no one guy dominated (Shultz didn't really dominate). There were about 80 owners and they couldn't afford to put up money when needed.

I argued this for 2-3 years on the ESPN Sonic board (which died because I left and came here). There are more general themes of this conflict that I could fill you in on, but I'm tired of typing.

 

We'll see how rabid they are when the Maloofs move the team to Vegas in a year or two. The Kings were 29th this year in announced attendance at 13,254/game.

http://espn.go.com/nba/attendance

 

Luckily, we had the richest own in the NBA, who was able to eat the losses when the fans went away. Sacto can't do that, and neither would OKC be able to do it. Those franchises depend on a revenue stream, and Sacto doesn't have one right now.

Plus, they literally play in a barn in the middle of a subdivision.

 

On a tangent, I went to a Seattle U. game at the Key this year. They curtained off the upper levels, making it around 7k or so for seating. My brother bought 2 season tickets for something like $40 each, 2nd row, under the hoop. Of course, the game I went to, Charles Garcia decided to dog it, and Dollar benched him for much of the game.

 

Well, the game was kind of lame, and it went down to the last shot. First time I've really sat through an entire game and literally did not give a shit about who would win the game. I couldn't even remember who they played until I just looked it up. Utah Valley State!

 

I went to Key Arena the first year after the renovation and remember thinking it was nice, but already outdated. It was only slightly larger than Memorial Coliseum in terms of attendance.

Seattle politics has a strong tradition of underspending to solve problems in a half assed way. The Kingdome was supposedly a great bargain and it barely lasted 20 years. Now they're about to spend huge bucks on a new 520 bridge and they're saving money by not making it light rail capable (it's one of only two bridges across the lake.) And, the mayor is trying to save more money by doing away with the viaduct, which would leave I-5 as the only freeway/highway through Seattle (and you think Seattle traffic is bad now.)

 

Man, I have proven this over and over on the now-dead board, and now I have to argue this all over. I had to argue this out with Okies, not Seattlites.

The roofline is just that, a curved line on blueprints. Yes, the curve was duplicated on the brand new, not renovated, Key Arena. The roof's physical materials were all new, and not from the Coliseum, which was built for the 1962 World's Fair. Only the DESIGN of the roofline continued, not the physical roof.

Everything, and I mean, everything, was new, not brought out of the Coliseum. There might have been a hot dog stand or something tiny that was reused (even the builders couldn't say for sure that some detail had not been rescued from the garbage), but all the walls, seats, floors, roof, foundation, etc. was ALL NEW. There is ONE exception--the four cornerstones. These were giant, curved metal girders, one at each corner of the building, that held up the roof like the spokes of an umbrella. They were stylish and were retained. They extended far beneath the ground. EVERYTHING else was new.

Many websites get this wrong and call Key a renovation of the Coliseum. Wikipedia has it wrong. I have some sites that get it right, and I used to cite them in posts on the ESPN Sonic board. But I don't really care about sites backing me up, because I have a witness I trust more--

When I drove past the construction site, it was a massive pile of rubble. Recognizable were the 4 skeleton girders that I described. They towered about 200 feet up (I used to have the exact height and weight, I can find the sites and everything again if need be). Beneath them was total chaos--50 foot long splinters, hills of debris within mountains of debris.. The wrecking ball had taken down the Coliseum.

Key Arena is NOT the Coliseum, renovated and refurbished. This was a BIG argument made by Okies to justify their theft. The Sonics were NOT playing in a 45-year old stadium, they were playing in a 10-year old one when they stole the team.

I used to give a link or two here to back me up, and I can find it all if need be, because there are sites that tell the truth, and there are sites that are too lazy to care. I've lost my sharpness on details but I could get it back. Damn Okies.

 

The only reason that the 4 corner girders were retained is that they are anchored in underground concrete blocks that each weigh a couple of hundred tons. To take those out would have been expensive and unnecessary. A second reason for keeping them was that they enabled the curving roofline to continue (which as I said, was built from all new materials--the roofline design, not the roof, was retained).

The Sonics had a very new arena, not a 45-year-old one. Stern praised it when new (his office had recommended the specs), but then under Bennett, Stern said that the arena MUST be replaced, not refurbished, and then once Bennett moved the team Stern flip-flopped to a stance that refurbishment would be adequate to bring in an NBA team. Stern was obviously lying to help his best friend Bennett make up an excuse to do his original intent (e-mails proved intent) to move to OKC, no matter what happened. I haven't mentioned his insane demand for a $500M arena, totally paid for by taxpayers (Sonic ownership refused to put in a dime), out in the sticks in Renton or the Eastside where downtown movers and shakers would not have attended, making it a sure moneyloser.

But to remind you of the big picture, all this controversy about Key is irrelevant. The real reason the Schultz group didn't make money was that they were a bunch of impoverished guys who were only worth a few million each, and because the most responsible contract in the NBA didn't subsidize them. They couldn't wait for the contract to end before renegotiating to get big subsidies beginning in 2010. And even had Seattle given in and made a new contract in 2008, the Bennett group intended to move no matter what, as proven by e-mails.

 

I'd argue the Raptors and Jazz fanbases are more 'rabid'.

 

Well, isn't that just kick-fuckin'-ass? Thanks for letting us know and please update us as to when we might, reasonably, be able to expect your first installment of said argument!

 

OH GOD IT BURNS! WHY WOULD YOU PICK THAT COLOR?!