Bringing an NBA and NHL team to Seattle

I have loved basketball for as long as I can remember. When I was 3, my dad carried me around our neighborhood so I could make a shot on each of the hoops there. In the living room was a Fisher Price kids basketball hoop, which allowed me to play through imaginary games that my favorite team, the Seattle Supersonics, always won. I grew up rooting for those great Sonics teams of the '90s, with Gary Payton, Shawn Kemp, Detlef Schrempf, Sam Perkins, Nate McMillan, and my favorite player, Hersey Hawkins (as a kid I thought his name was Hershey). The early 2000s Sonics couldn't match the glory years, but the departure of Sonics legend Gary Payton brought the sweet-shooting Ray Allen to the team, who quickly earned the love of the fans. I was a proud Sonics fan until I was 16.

That's when they left.

The NBA has never been the same for me since my beloved Sonics were taken to Oklahoma City by Clay Bennett and his crew. You probably know the rest of the story. Young team builds around one of the best players in the league and becomes a perennial playoff contender. Seeing them play in the finals is like being punched in the stomach over and over again, because that could have still been Seattle's team. Taxpayers in King County didn't want to finance another professional sports venue, seeing as we had just provided a lot of funding for Safeco Field (baseball) and Qwest Field (football). That doesn't make it less disheartening to see the Thunder achieve so much. 

Some people ask why I can't just root for the Thunder. That's not my team. Yes, there are some players I rooted for in Seattle. I like Kevin Durant and Nick Collison as players, because of that connection. But the thought of Clay Bennett smugly holding that NBA trophy up, after he came here and pretended that he wanted to keep the team in Seattle, prevents me from rooting for that team. It's hard to explain, but I guess if you are a passionate sports fan you might understand. There's a connection that combines civic and regional pride with a love of sports, and somehow that becomes even greater. Communities get united by their teams, fostering the civic pride that we all claim to want.

That sort of pride that citizens have in their favorite teams is a huge benefit that economic analyses of the viability of professional sports struggle to capture. How do you factor in a 5-year-old me wearing my Hersey Hawkins t-shirt as the Sonics dominate their opponents in my imaginary game? What about 9-year-old me checking the Mariners' record and stats every day during the 2001 season, during their incredible run to 116 wins? While those examples may seem small, random, or irrelevant, think about the millions of sports fans in the area who each have little stories like those. Maybe it means someone is excited to go to work, if just to discuss the Seahawks' game with their coworkers, or a kid who wants to try hard in school to be able to play on the basketball team.

At this point, you can probably tell that I love sports, and that I have a powerful connection to my teams. Maybe you do too, but that's not entirely the point of this post. Seattle city councilman Richard Conlin stated that he opposes using any public funding for the proposed arena. Whether we like it or not, public funding for professional sports venues is the reality now, and the arena proposal from Christopher Hansen and his ownership group is incredible as far as financing these venues goes. You can read about it here.

I have a sneaking suspicion that Conlin is voting against these because he doesn't like professional sports, as is the case with a fair number of Seattleites. I can respect that. The concern I have is what he views about for public funding for entertainment in general. If he opposes the SoDo arena proposal on the principal that no public funding should be used, then he shouldn't be voting for public funding on any sort of entertainment venue or event. Conlin shouldn't be able to use his personal tastes to influence what type of entertainment Seattle funds. If he wants to support the use of public funding for the Seattle Symphony, or a new concert hall, or a new art museum, then he shouldn't be opposing this arena proposal.

He has no right to determine what entertainment or art I should like. That's not the city government's role. I fear that the powerful, progressive Seattle elites who look down on professional sports oppose this because of their personal tastes, but support something like an art museum or symphony hall. They should know that even if professional sports didn't exist in Seattle, I (and thousands of other kids) would not have grown up liking the symphony or modern art. Not everyone is going to appreciate every form of entertainment. But denying some the chance to enjoy their favorite form of entertainment while forcing them to fund yours is just a horrible thing to do.

I happen to think this arena proposal is an incredible deal for the city, given that people who use the arena are the ones paying taxes for it. Christopher Hansen seems to have addressed concerns that people have raised in his letter to the community.

Hopefully the Seattle City Council will allow the next generation of kids the chance to grow up loving basketball like I did, and give the city a chance to discover the great sport of hockey (we have a championship tradition). Bring back our Sonics!