If the Sonics return, great — but I still haven’t forgiven the authors of their exit

On the day the Sonics were sold into a hostage situation, I boarded a red-eye flight and headed to Oklahoma City.

It was July 2006, and I was in the first week of my third stint in the sports department of The Seattle Times. I’d been dispatched to write about Clay Bennett and the other men who’d just purchased our region’s NBA team.

In retrospect, I should have been more cynical. Much more cynical.

It’s not that I believed Clay Bennett when he said he wanted to keep the Sonics in Seattle (I didn’t).

I wasn’t naïve about the possibility the team would be relocated, either. I knew keeping the Sonics would require a new arena, which was going to be an uphill battle in our state.

What I failed to anticipate was just how freaking angry I would be when the franchise was ripped out from beneath the Space Needle, roots and all, in 2008.

I suppose this wasn’t an entirely professional response. I am a journalist after all, having written for two Seattle newspapers, one glossy Seattle magazine and worked at ESPN.com . I was also a radio host for eight years at KIRO 710 AM.

The loss of the Sonics just felt so very personal though, and as someone who’s now spent 25 years covering sports in the Puget Sound, I know what that meant to this region. The Sonics were our first modern sports franchise, their 1979 championship a local landmark.

So as excited as I am about the seemingly imminent return of the Sonics, I’m still mad they left in the first place. We got hosed in a very deliberate, methodical way: not just by Bennett, but the NBA in general and David Stern in particular, and that was only after we’d already been sold out by Howard Schultz. For the record, he’s the one I will always believe to be the most loathsome toad in a chapter chock full of loathsome toads.

He was the one who considered Seattle home. He went so far as to refer to our sports teams as civic trusts in his book “Pour Your Heart Into It,” which I (stupidly) read. Then, five years after buying the team, he didn’t have the intestinal fortitude necessary to extort the region himself, so he sold the team to some Midwestern heavies who would.

I relished the general indifference that greeted Schultz’s 2020 announcement he was exploring a run for president. I’ll admit I laughed when he paused that process that summer, citing the fact he’d undergone multiple back surgeries, but that’s only because I had been under the impression he lacked a spine.

Stern deserved blame, too. He’d gotten his feelings hurt by the state’s politicians, especially state Rep. and Speaker of the House Frank Chopp. After the region’s initial indifference to funding a new arena, Stern made sure to fend off any last-minute saves that would have kept the team in Seattle.

The Sonics’ forcible removal is the most painful loss I’ve ever seen. I say that as a Husky alum who watched Tyrone Willingham’s emotionless death march to 0-12 in 2008 AND was in Arizona when the Seahawks finished 1 yard short of a second consecutive Super Bowl victory.

As painful as those defeats were, it was possible to bounce back. The departure of the Sonics was a fundamental betrayal of the basic agreement that sits at the heart of any spectator sport. We volunteer to be irrationally invested in the outcome of something we have absolutely no control over, and the team promises to at least pay lip service to both its ambition for success and its loyalty to the area.

While writing this column, I called several former team and league executives whom I’d gotten to know in the three seasons I covered the Sonics as a beat reporter at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. All of them seemed certain Seattle and Las Vegas would be awarded expansion teams. None wanted to be quoted, though, saying they didn’t know the specific timeline for an announcement. A couple speculated that the litigation regarding the new TV deal might need to be resolved. Each expressed curiosity at the size of the expansion fee, with a couple suggesting it will reach $4 billion, which made me chuckle because Mr. Coffee and crew only got $350 million.

But during these conversations, we eventually got around to talking about what a shame it was the team had left. It’s hard to believe not only that it happened, but that we’ve gone 16 years without pro basketball. While an expansion team will fill that hole, there’s always going to be a scar.

I don’t mean to imply what happened to us is unique. Jim Irsay once moved the Colts out of Baltimore in the middle of the night, which created the opening that Art Modell later used to get his team out of Cleveland. For whatever reason, our country has given these rich guys all sorts of anti-trust exemptions that allow them to operate their cartels without doing anything to prevent those same rich guys from extorting the cities where they play.

In the mid-‘90s, we narrowly avoided losing the Mariners to Florida and the Seahawks to Los Angeles. However, the prevalence of this sort of thing doesn’t make the loss of the Sonics hurt less.

There are some people who are utterly indifferent about the possibility of the Sonics returning. Honestly, I can’t say they’re wrong to feel this way. I’ve simply chosen a different, and in my opinion, more productive outlet for my anger: I root against the Oklahoma City Thunder. I do this fervently and without reservation.

I want their losses to be painful. World changing. Like 2016, when the Thunder blew a 3-1 lead over Golden State in the Western Conference finals and then watched Kevin Durant leave in the offseason. Or three years later, when Portland’s Damian Lillard dropped a nuke from the logo to not only bounce the Thunder from the playoffs but triggered a down-to-the-studs rebuild.

For years, I cracked a Redhook ESB every year when the Thunder’s season ended. Twelve ounces of Extra Special Bitter seemed the right way to chase their suffering. Then – after I got sober in 2017 – I switched to soda water with a lime wedge and 15 dashes of bitters.

I’m going to need a new recipe to toast the Sonics’ first victory over the Thunder, though. Something sweeter, because THAT will absolutely be a reason to raise a glass.

Danny O’Neil was born in Oregon, the son of a logger but had the good sense to attend college in Washington. He’s covered Seattle sports for 20 years, writing for two newspapers, one glossy magazine and hosting a daily radio show for eight years on KIRO 710 AM. You can subscribe to his free newsletter and find his other work at dannyoneil.com .