Curse the Thunder?
I’ve got two important things to tell folks in Seattle.
I’m sorry.
Move on.
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A couple nights back, the Thunder opened the NBA era in Oklahoma City. It was a rousing, rowdy, glorious night. It was sign of how far our fair city and state have come.
It was also a bitter moment for Seattle and fans of the Sonics.
I get that. I think everyone in Oklahoma gets that. It wasn’t like the NBA left Seattle after a couple years. The Sonics were there for 41 years. They were an institution. They were a mainstay. Now, the team formally known as the Sonics is in Oklahoma City. I understand how that must feel.
But really, it’s time for Seattle to move beyond that. Citizens and fans need to channel their energy behind getting another NBA team there. Despite the animosity between the city and the league, the market is too big, the money too available for the tall guys in the short pants to stay out forever.
And yet, there’s evidence that everyone is not behind moving forward.
Earlier this week, I received an e-mail from about some Sonics fans who have started a website, www.cursethethunder.com. That’s right — Curse the Thunder.
Now, you might just chalk this up as a couple crazies with too much spare time on their hands. That’s what I did at first. Then, I decided to check out the website. It confirmed that this is the work of a couple crazies with too much spare time. They have “Curse the Thunder” gear, for goodness sakes.
But they’ve also had almost 11,000 people “curse” the Thunder. All a curse requires is a click of a button, but still … 11,000 curses? That says to me that Sonics fans haven’t moved on, haven’t started focusing on getting a new NBA team.
Listen, I think Seattle deserves a team as much as anyone outside of King County, but the only way to make sure that happens is to stop making crazy websites and all get on the same page.
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Comments
Silly websites WON’T prevent Seattle from getting a team. Just ignore them—-the fact that you mentioned it is a waste of time.
Jenni
Reading your article posted Oct 31 2008
It’s very clear that you don’t understand! Clay Bennet came into our town and Lied, Deceived the city of Seattle, Howard Schultz and the fans. It was very clear from the begining on what his plan was, buy the team and move it asap. And you think he is a wonderfull person for doing it!
As a loyal Sonic fan for over 25 years, to have some one come to my town and do what Clay/David Stern did, you would be furious as well. The fan base is not mad at OK, we are glad you have a team.
So yes we have some bitterness here, and you would have the same if it happend at your end. So allow us some time of closure, after a while it will go away, for some it never will.
Get over it? Move on?
OKC experimented with the NBA for a couple years. They took one hit of the New Orleans Hornets, became helplessly addicted and acted like a marauding crack fiend looking for any way to sustain the high (Didn’t even wanna give up the Hornets-fix when they were on there way back to NO).
In less than 2 full seasons you guys became addicted to professional basketball. You didn’t get over it . You didn’t move on.
I doubt OKC will ever know the feeling of the 40 year high that was the Seattle SuperSonics or the enduring pain that comes with this type of withdrawal.
So check out this article by Bill Simmons of ESPN, as he exemplfies these feelings…
“Here’s why the Seattle situation should matter to everyone who cares about sports: After being part of the city for 41 years, the Sonics are being stolen away for dubious reasons while every NBA owner and executive allows it to happen, including David Stern, the guy who’s supposed to be policing this stuff. I think it’s reprehensible to watch someone hijack a franchise away from the people who cared about the team and loved it and nurtured it through the years. It belittles not just the good people of Seattle, but everyone who loves sports and believes it provides a unique and valuable connection for a city, a community, family members and friends.
Nobody has ever summed up being a sports fan better than the New Yorker’s Roger Angell in his piece “Agincourt and After,” in this passage about Carlton Fisk’s famous home run in the 1975 World Series:
It is foolish and childish, on the face of it, to affiliate ourselves with anything so insignificant and patently contrived and commercially exploitive as a professional sports team, and the amused superiority and icy scorn that the non-fan directs at the sports nut (I know this look — I know it by heart) is understandable and almost unanswerable. Almost. What is left out of this calculation, it seems to me, is the business of caring — caring deeply and passionately, really caring — which is a capacity or an emotion that has almost gone out of our lives. And so it seems possible that we have come to a time when it no longer matters so much what the caring is about, how frail or foolish is the object of that concern, as long as the feeling itself can be saved. Naivete — the infantile and ignoble joy that sends a grown man or woman to dancing and shouting with joy in the middle of the night over the haphazardous flight of a distant ball — seems a small price to pay for such a gift.
That’s what this Seattle thing is about. It’s about caring, and joy, and memories, and what a franchise can and should mean to a city and a fan base. It’s about the infantile and ignoble joy that causes people to drown out the PA announcer before Game 3 of the ‘96 Finals. It’s also about naivete, for better and worse, and it’s about greed and ego above everything else. I’m an innocent bystander with this whole thing, but still, I can’t shake one simple point: How could David Stern allow a team that won a championship while he was working for the league to move? How could he claim to care about the league and let that happen? How could he allow one of the 30 NBA fan bases to be extorted? How is this OK?
The Bennett supporters argue that this “mess” is really about Seattle refusing to pay for a new arena, which would be fine except taxpayers helped pay to rebuild KeyArena back in 1995 — and besides, why should citizens spend tax money paying for a new arena just to make a billionaire wealthier than he already is? If the precedent is set here — Pay for my new arena or I’m leaving — then really, the same thing could eventually happen to your favorite NBA team.”
Watch out OKC, karma’s a b!#$%
–Stuck Fern, Seattle WA
It’s actually not just Seattle fans. I’m in Detroit and have heard of this site… a lot of people think the thunder are a joke over here….
i’ll echo that sentiment – karma is a beawtch…. 1-16 is proof of that… there’s no reason Seattle fans should get over their hatred of a thieving city… i hope fans stop coming out and the franchise loses millions over the next few years… it would only be justice, karma, just-dues or whatever you want to call it… 1-16… i love it…
Bennett claimed the only reason that the Sonics were not winning was do to an aged stadium. He then expected us Seattlelites to pay for a new Key Arena. When we were too smart to pay for a second stadium without representation (Safeco Field humor) Bennett decided to move the team to a stadium in a “fly-over” state where Ford Stadium sat vacant.
What I find provocative is that while this was taking place, Clay had ordered a fully custom mega-yacht totalling 220 feet with 6 decks of luxury interior. This was commissioned by the most expensive shipyard in the world, Lurssen in Breman, Germany. This yacht has a price tag of 120m euros!! A damn site greater than any such improvements needed on the Key. BTW, in 1996 the Key did not seem out-dated when the team played in the finals. It was named the loudest stadium in the NBA.
One more note: Bennett is trying now to off-load the yacht to avoid catastrophic losses. 1-16 start as Karma? I am happier about the massive financial losses!! Guys like them get rich by stealing on a daily basis.
Seattle fans have no real reason to “get on the same page” when you look at the odds of them getting another franchise, EVER. The NBA is not going to expand and there currently is only one team for sale in a struggling market which is Memphis and they have a lease that virtually guarantees they will never leave there. So all they have left for an NBA future is their past, the one thing Clay Bennett could not take away.
I agree that logically and practically the should move on, but emotionally why would they?
LMAO!
Actually, I’m thrilled with their curse. Everything else they have predicted – NBA BoG vote, city lawsuit, Schultz lawsuit – turned out the exact opposite.
If they keep this up, we may win the championship this year!