Obsidian Potency 3.0
Shady In Seattle
posted Friday, 29 February 2008
Though I enjoy Bill Simmons' writing, I'm normally not very passionate about his pet causes. This is an exception.
I don't care what you think about sports: what the NBA is allowing to happen to the Seattle Supersonics is disgusting. Basically, NBA commissioner David Stern allowed the team to be sold to a friend of his from Oklahoma...knowing that the guy would move the team from Seattle to Oklahoma City. Oklahoma City!
Why is this happening, you ask? Because Seattle refuses to use taxpayer money to pay for a new basketball arena in Seattle -- even though taxpayers spent 200 million dollars renovating Key Arena for the Sonics just 12 years ago, and all the fans are fine with the current venue.
The Sonics have been a part of Seattle for 41 years. They have won an NBA Championship. Several of the best pro basketball players of all time have played there (Incidentally, does anybody outside of Seattle remember how good Shawn Kemp was? If you forgot, this will remind you).
More and more often, pro sports leagues are demanding that cities and taxpayers foot the bill for stadiums and sports complexes, as if they were charities in need of support. And more and more, I am sickened by the practice. It's one thing for a city to build an arena in the hopes of attracting the business it will bring. It's another story when a league tries to extort a new stadium out of a team that has been a part of the city's identity for decades.
What law dictates that common city dwellers should be forced to pay for a place to see games played? Many owners in the past have either split the cost or funded the stadium entirely on their own. Late Redskins owner Jack Kent Cooke built The Forum in Los Angeles (home of the Lakers and Clippers) and FedEx Field (current home of the Washington Redskins) with his own money. I think he did pretty well for himself: The Redskins are now sports' most profitable franchise.
What's worse, evidence indicates that new arenas almost never bring the promised windfalls of new jobs and revitalization that pro-sports politicians and team owners promise. In fact, most of the time the new stadium ends up draining city coffers and not giving anything back except to the elites who can afford to go to games, and the casual fans who follow the team on TV and in the papers. One notable exception to this is the Verizon Center in Washington DC, a project that ended up completely transforming Gallery Place/Chinatown into one of DC's nicest neighborhoods. Here's the funny part: Wizards owner Abe Pollin built the Verizon Center with his own money.
I love sports, but I don't believe for one second that cities owe sports teams anything but traffic control and public transit on game days. No city should be forced to pay a multimillionaire just because he'd prefer to invest half a billion dollars of the average person's money instead of ponying up the cash him/herself. It's their business, and it should be their risk.
I don't care what you think about sports: what the NBA is allowing to happen to the Seattle Supersonics is disgusting. Basically, NBA commissioner David Stern allowed the team to be sold to a friend of his from Oklahoma...knowing that the guy would move the team from Seattle to Oklahoma City. Oklahoma City!
Why is this happening, you ask? Because Seattle refuses to use taxpayer money to pay for a new basketball arena in Seattle -- even though taxpayers spent 200 million dollars renovating Key Arena for the Sonics just 12 years ago, and all the fans are fine with the current venue.
The Sonics have been a part of Seattle for 41 years. They have won an NBA Championship. Several of the best pro basketball players of all time have played there (Incidentally, does anybody outside of Seattle remember how good Shawn Kemp was? If you forgot, this will remind you).
More and more often, pro sports leagues are demanding that cities and taxpayers foot the bill for stadiums and sports complexes, as if they were charities in need of support. And more and more, I am sickened by the practice. It's one thing for a city to build an arena in the hopes of attracting the business it will bring. It's another story when a league tries to extort a new stadium out of a team that has been a part of the city's identity for decades.
What law dictates that common city dwellers should be forced to pay for a place to see games played? Many owners in the past have either split the cost or funded the stadium entirely on their own. Late Redskins owner Jack Kent Cooke built The Forum in Los Angeles (home of the Lakers and Clippers) and FedEx Field (current home of the Washington Redskins) with his own money. I think he did pretty well for himself: The Redskins are now sports' most profitable franchise.
What's worse, evidence indicates that new arenas almost never bring the promised windfalls of new jobs and revitalization that pro-sports politicians and team owners promise. In fact, most of the time the new stadium ends up draining city coffers and not giving anything back except to the elites who can afford to go to games, and the casual fans who follow the team on TV and in the papers. One notable exception to this is the Verizon Center in Washington DC, a project that ended up completely transforming Gallery Place/Chinatown into one of DC's nicest neighborhoods. Here's the funny part: Wizards owner Abe Pollin built the Verizon Center with his own money.
I love sports, but I don't believe for one second that cities owe sports teams anything but traffic control and public transit on game days. No city should be forced to pay a multimillionaire just because he'd prefer to invest half a billion dollars of the average person's money instead of ponying up the cash him/herself. It's their business, and it should be their risk.
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