Spilled Starbucks

With LawsuitFest 2008 pitting Howard Schultz against Clay Bennett's legal dream team, it appears that our friends in Seattle are crying over spilled starbucks. Everyone seems to realize that OKC is better for the NBA except for a delusional Yahoo! writer and some sporadic chatter at the Dark Tower's website.

As a City, we've endured this garbage before when we temporarily borrowed the Hornets from the underwater Orleans. They needed a place to stay, and we had a place for the then-horrible Hornets to play. This poor little market produced better attendance than Boston, Houston, and that zit on Puget Sound, Seattle the last year the Hornets played downtown.

At the time I said repeatedly -- and got flamed, repeatedly -- that the right thing to do would be let the Hornets fly home. I had faith that the NBA's financial department would have a brain, see our home attendance, and provide us an opportunity for a team. I was right then and I am right now.

Clay Bennett played a role that few would want to play. The people of Seattle ostracized the owner of their team based on his residence in Oklahoma. He spent $350,000,000.00 on that franchise -- more money than the entire GDP of an independent country. If Bennett gets the green light from the NBA to move that team to just inside the gates of hell, it is his right to do so.

The fact is, we're profitable and Seattle is not. Had the City of Seattle, the State of Washington or the people of Seattle lifted a finger other than to complain the same "woe-is-me" song they sing about their Warshington Huskies since their fluke against OU in 1985, I would feel sorry for them. Dressing up like a bunch of hippies and crying at a town square is not going to make a market profitable. New arena? Yes. Schultz' business sense, no.

The longer this cavetching continues, the more inclined I am to push renaming the Ford Center the "Sonic" Center, rip on former Seahawk Steve Largent's dismal career, and boycotting Starbucks. Anyone else in?