To Sonics: How to win us over

So Clay Bennett, the "proud Okie" who just bought our pro basketball teams, has gone back home and told everyone there he feels like we Northwesterners are disrespecting him.

What a sketchy start. He's owned our teams for only six days. Maybe we need to explain ourselves.

Mr. Bennett, it's not personal. In fact it's not about you at all. Yet.

You couldn't have known, but we Seattleites have just had it.

We've had it with pro sports on the dole. With the constant millionaire mewling about substandard luxury suites. With an NBA that used to be a ballet of skill and teamwork and is now a shoving match — interrupted only by trips to the free-throw line.

Don't take this from me. The other day I suggested in the paper that it wasn't the city that lost the Sonics. The Sonics — the NBA — lost the city. So far 213 readers have written or called to agree with that. Only 11 disagreed.

I hope Bennett checks out some of their stories.

There's former fan Bob Weiss (not the former coach). In the early '70s, he was a busboy who would drink dollar beers at a topless joint across from the Coliseum, called Popeye's. Then he'd grab a $4 ticket to watch the Supes from the arena's lower bowl.

"Last time I checked," he writes, "that very same $4 seat cost $80 at taxpayer-financed Key Arena. Strange that since the early '70s, beer barely quadrupled, and a basketball ticket has gone up 2,000 percent."

OK, so it's really 1,900 percent. Math isn't that guy's strong suit. The point is, the economics at work here really hack people off.

Or take Jenifer Aydelotte of Kingston. She was raised on the lap of a mother who never missed the Sonics on TV. If bedtime arrived before the game ended, little Jenifer would press her ear to the heat vent, straining to catch the tinny play-by-play piping from the living room.

"We could never afford to go to the games, but we were die-hard fans who took to the streets when they won the World Championship," Aydelotte recalls.

She hasn't watched a game in more than a decade.

"The Sonics lost us through their greed," she says.

Or take Bob Archey. For years he "religiously traveled up from Olympia, sat in the high-altitude seats, and rooted my head off."

Now he lives six blocks from the Key. He goes to maybe one Sonics game a year. The lackluster play, the sucking up to corporations instead of common fans — all of it has soured him on the NBA.

"Each time the experience couldn't even be classified as entertainment," he says.

On and on these stories go. It's understandable Bennett was put off by all the carping up here. But the people I just described aren't sports-hating elitists. They once bled green and gold. Now they're part of the disenchanted 78 percent who told pollster Stuart Elway the Sonics should probably just get on down the road.

So what can Bennett do? Well I've got a notion as crazed as a bull in line at an Oklahoma castration station. What if our new owners defied all expectations and actually tried to win us over?

Like ... what if they lowered ticket prices? Howard Schultz kept telling us he would lose money even if he sold out every game (which he didn't). So make it a loss leader. Bennett could tell City Hall he'll slash ticket prices if the mayor renegotiates his lousy lease. That'll at least get the people back on the team's side.

I also note Bennett is a Republican. That normally wouldn't win points around these parts, but here's the great thing. Public subsidies for pro sports is one of those freak issues where right and left meet on the backside.

As a Republican, Bennett no doubt believes that less is more when it comes to government. Well, as far as tapping the treasury to pay for private sports arenas, that's what liberal Seattle thinks, too!

So I'm seeing a trailblazing odd couple. The red-state Okies and blue-state Mossbacks, arm in arm, building a sports arena with little to no tax dollars. Trying to earn a profit the old-fashioned way. You know, by actually earning it.

Or probably not. If this doesn't work out, maybe Bennett could do us just one little favor on his way out of town.

In droves people e-mailed to tell me there's a team here that does play hard. That you can still see for cheap. That isn't obsessed with corporate suites.

It kind of reminds some folks of those '70s Sonics.

Mr. Bennett, you may well ride off with our Sonics. But could you leave us the Storm?

Danny Westneat's column appears Thursday and Sunday. Reach him at 206-464-2086 or dwestneat@seattletimes.com.