Pick public in fight over lease

On this side are the schemers. On that are the scammers. You are a judge and you must choose.

Which side should you reward?

Ugh. Such is the dilemma faced by a federal judge in the case of Seattle versus its pro-basketball team, the Sonics. At 4 p.m. today, Judge Marsha Pechman will decide whether the Sonics must play for two more years at KeyArena, rather than moving this fall to Oklahoma City.

The June trial was ostensibly about the technical meaning of a 13-year-old lease. Can the team be required to play here, as it pledged it would, or can it buy its way out?

But the trial revealed, oh, so much more:

• The entire industry of pro-sports-arena financing is a sham. The Sonics owners this spring told Oklahoma City that a taxpayer-financed arena would pump $170 million a year into that city's economy. Here, though — where they don't want to be on the hook for those kinds of bucks — these same owners claimed in court that sports arenas don't matter a whit to the local economy.

• We used to call Slade Gorton "Slippery Slade" for a reason. The former-senator-turned-city-lobbyist has always had Machiavellian backroom game. The trial painted him as some sort of double-dealing Don, leading wiseguy Republican retreads — former Safeco chairman Mike McGavick, former Sonics general manager Wally Walker — in a goonish scheme to bleed the Oklahomans until they cry uncle.

• These Sonics owners are incorrigible. I figured that once under oath, Clay Bennett might hedge on that absurd canard of his. You know the one about how when he said he was "a man possessed, " he didn't mean possessed to move the team to his hometown, he really somehow meant hellbent to keep it way up here in Seattle. But no — on the stand he doubled down on that cock-and-bull. He must think we're rubes. If he gets away with it, we are.

• We also learned that our mayor is no whiz in the courtroom. That one deprives writer Sherman Alexie of cucumber sandwiches at one's own risk. And if you're ever in a bind of your own making — i.e. you're guilty — call local attorney Brad Keller. His silver tongue somehow transformed Bennett, his client, into a piteous victim. So he can rehab you as a saint.

OK, but what is the judge to make of this zoo?

How is she supposed to choose between schemers and scammers?

Here's my vote: Choose neither. Choose the public.

Yes, there's an overlooked third party in this mess: Us. Given the deplorable performance of the first two parties, it's the public interest that is most deserving of a boost from the judge today.

The public's interest is to have the arena's debt paid off as much as possible. For the Sonics to play here for our entertainment as long as possible. And to have the connivers and conspirers punished.

The best way to accomplish all these things?

Make the Sonics play out their lease.

Then, force the city to fire Gorton and his band of pranksters. Fine 'em if possible.

It isn't perfect. But the common thread here is: What's best for the people? It's not our fault the NBA and a series of owners have driven the Sonics into ruin. Nor is it our fault the city's hired hands bungled what should have been a simple, above-board task: holding the Sonics to a promise.

Bottom line: We lent money on the pledge the Sonics would play here for 15 years. Forcing the team to keep that promise — something it should have done on its own — would be a painful reminder, to the team and to the NBA and to whichever pro-sports franchise is out there looking to shaft the public next, of a value sadly lacking in this whole ethics-free episode.

That a deal is a deal.

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