Seattle still cares about loss of Sonics

We met in front of the saddest place in sports, on a day that was as dark and gray and depressing as winter.

For most of the 41 years the Sonics played in Seattle, this spot on the First Avenue side of the Seattle Center was home to some of the city's most thrilling sports moments.

Everybody from John Havlicek to Jerry West, Wilt Chamberlain to Shaquille O'Neal played here. Michael Jordan won a dunk contest here. Julius Erving swooped to the basket and John Stockton threaded no-look passes.

Shawn Kemp and Gary Payton, Dennis Johnson and Fred Brown grew up here. Jack Sikma perfected his drop-step jumper and Ray Allen drained the sweetest threes on Earth, on this hallowed piece of real estate.

For most of the past four decades, except for those seasons the team played in the Kingdome and the one year it was housed inside the Tacoma Dome, this was the time of year KeyArena came out of hibernation.

This was the time when 17,000 people would begin spending the dark wintry months warming up to NBA basketball.

But now, the First Avenue side of the Seattle Center is a constant reminder of what we lost. The empty Sonics team store almost mocks us.

The electronic marquee on First tells us who's not coming to town — no LeBron, no Kobe, no Dwyane Wade or Carmelo Anthony — as much as it tells us who is coming.

Sesame Street on Ice?

On a bleak, wet day last week, under the canopy in front of the abandoned team store, I talked with Pete Holmes about the loss of the Sonics. Both of us attended the opening night of the very smart documentary "Sonicsgate" a week earlier.

It reawakened our anger, and it saddened us once again.

Holmes is running for city attorney against incumbent Tom Carr, who was part of the city government that caved in to the NBA in the hours just before federal judge Marsha Pechman was to make her ruling on whether the Sonics franchise could get out of its KeyArena lease two years early.

"You feel like you were burglarized," Holmes said about losing the Sonics. "I've had that happen to me. You go in and see that one of your prized possessions has been lost. You just feel violated.

"The franchise was a huge asset for the city and should have been protected. And, I submit, not just with hindsight, that the litigation was mishandled."

Most of the villains in this sad story are obvious. But it was Carr, the city attorney, who had responsibility for the conduct of the litigation and the final decision to let the team go to Oklahoma City.

In a blink, Carr and the city flipped.

"We were out-lawyered in this lawsuit," Holmes said.

Think nobody cares anymore?

Think again.

In the first week since "Sonicsgate" was released free on the Internet, it has gotten 25,000 plays, according to producer Adam Brown. The numbers will grow much higher.

On the second night of Pearl Jam's two shows at KeyArena last month, singer Eddie Vedder prefaced the show's first encore, "Supersonic," with a tribute to the Sonics. This was the first time Pearl Jam had played the Key since the Sonics left.

Vedder pointed to the rafters, where the championship banners and the retired numbers once hung, and spoke angrily about the injustice of the NBA robbing Seattle of its NBA history. He rewrote the lyrics to "Supersonic," scathing lyrics about the loss of the Sonics that had the packed house roaring its support.

Who knows what might have happened if Pechman had ruled in favor of the city — a likely scenario — and held the Sonics franchise to the final two years of its KeyArena lease?

The subsequent economic downturn drastically affected the Oklahoma City ownership.

The owners of the Thunder have lost billions, and the money they would have continued to lose in Seattle because of their antipathy toward the city very well could have forced them to sell to Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer's group.

At the very least we know we still would have NBA basketball in Seattle this season.

"I just know we had a really good shot at keeping this team here for the next two years," Holmes said. "And, in this economy, I don't believe the Oklahoma City group would have been able to perform had we held them to the two-year lease. I think we lost sight of what the target was: keeping them here."

It would be easy to give in to the gloom on First Avenue. But the feelings for the NBA haven't died. We heard the passion at the premier of "Sonicsgate." We heard it in the encore at the second Pearl Jam show.

The heartache lingers, and the NBA still belongs in Seattle.

Steve Kelley: 206-464-2176 or skelley@seattletimes.com. More columns at www.seattletimes.com/columnists