Picture the first night that the Oklahoma City Thunder has to show up in Seattle to take on the new SuperSonics.
That arena will be packed and shaking. What a perfect grudge match – with more natural grudge, in fact, than any in their previous incarnation.
Premature to picture the NBA’s return? Maybe. Probably.
But developments in the past week have at least made it possible to consider such things without the accompanying sense of futility that has clouded the topic since the Oklahoma bandits rustled the Sonics in 2008.
We don’t know a great deal yet about investor Christopher Hansen, but it appears that he may have the money stash and dealing chops to get an arena funded and built in Seattle that would bring the NBA back to town – and maybe even a National Hockey League team along with it.
There are a lot of moving parts to this and so many tumblers have to fall into place before the doors of an arena open, but a couple good signs are this: A very wealthy man is already forking out money to buy the property, and the city has already brought in consultants to advise.
And from here, any status other than Dead In The Water is a massive improvement. This may be only the early stages of a long process that might have some false-starts along the way.
But the greatest hurdle is whether they can make an arena appear without tapping public coffers. Because if they can solve that puzzle, bringing back the NBA will be more a question of when than if.
Hansen, a Seattle native, founded Valiant Capital Management, reportedly a $2.7 billion equity hedge fund. Reports further hold that he’s been buying land south of Safeco Field to accommodate the construction of a privately funded arena as the presumptive home for NBA and NHL franchises.
“Privately funded” is pretty much a statutory mandate for such projects in Seattle since 2006.
In case you’ve blocked the memories, we’ve had no NBA since owner Clay Bennett moved the team to Oklahoma City and rebranded it the Thunder. This was done with the NBA’s consent after KeyArena was judged substandard and no funding was available for upgrades or replacement.
Now, it’s the Sacramento Kings going through the same dismal dance.
The Kings face a March 1 deadline for a viable arena plan. But it seems the team is far from having the moving vans reserved as city fathers are reportedly working to secure their own private funding to keep them.
The owners of the Kings, the Maloof brothers, have played the Relocation Extortion game before. We may question whether Seattle surfacing as an option will be exploited as effective leverage.
Fans who have had their team wrenched from them are going to feel conflicted about being a part of another city’s loss.
Here’s where a fan’s moral relativism becomes convenient. It was criminal conduct when it happened to us, but just a matter of the market speaking when it benefits us.
But if not the Kings, who? No other candidate seems so readily obtainable. At least right now.
Can the city really accommodate another arena so close to Safeco and CenturyLink? NBA and NHL seasons run concurrently, and from exhibition season in the fall through playoffs in early summer, they overlap parts of Seahawks, Sounders and Mariners seasons.
Who will be the owners of these new franchises?
The Sonics’ attendance dipped toward the end because of the obvious disenchantment with ownership, but it also was a function of potential ticket-buyers coping with a recessionary economy.
Even if they find a way to spare the taxpayer on the arena’s construction, have things loosened up enough that the sporting public will find the disposable dollars necessary to support two new franchises in town?
I can’t even imagine what skills it takes for somebody to become a hedge-fund billionaire in this climate, but I suspect he will need all of them to make this fall into place.
With so many challenges in such tough times, it’s impossible to even put a percentage on this possibility. But at least a possibility exists at some percentage above what it’s been: Zero.
And that seems like progress. Bring on the Thunder.
Dave Boling: 253-597-8440 dave.boling@thenewstribune.com
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