In a word, ridiculous.

I’ll be in the seats on Nov. 5, and I’m glad Seattle’s apathy led their team to OKC.

What a silly, ill-informed idea.

Hey Coach,

Lucky you to have the chance of seeing the C’s playing in your state every season from now on. I was impressed by how the basketball fans of OKC supported the Hornets during their stay there. Great stuff. Have fun seeing the kids (and even more seeing the Celtics beating them!)

Leaving aside the NBA talk for a moment, good luck to you and your team on the upcoming season.

Thanks, Cordobes. I think we’ve got a chance to be a little better than I thought, thanks to some transfers.

I’ve been consistently amused about the uncanny sense of entitlement Seattle-ites had about this basketball team. It’s ours. We don’t have to support it. But it’s ours.

OKC supported the Hornets full-bore for two years, and they’ll do it again with this club. I look forward to as many games – including the C’s Nov. 5 – as I can get to. Pretty glad, actually, that the Champs come in before pre-season practice starts.

I second everything you said Coach! The Thunder won’t be very good for a while, but I believe they have a good young foundation to build on for the future. It’s hard to believe the C’s will already be here a week from Wednesday!

It will be nice to have NBA games to go to, and a team to cheer for…except for when the Celtics come to town!

I’m with you on the Oklahoma City strike. They shouldn’t have been granted the Sonics under these circumstances. Seattlites didn’t deserve to go through this whole thing and why is their loyalty questioned before the owner’s? Clay Bennett was all about the money and completely ripped the team out of Seattle for this reason alone.

I’m sure Oklahoma City has a great fanbase and will be tremendous supporters of that team but I can’t support them if they got the team this way. I don’t agree that David Stern should’ve resigned or any of that business but he should have given the Charlotte idea some more thought. Now that’s a bad fanbase yet they are rewarded over Oklahoma City?

Just ugly all around.

OK City should have never had to give the Hornets back to New Orleans. They supported them with an atmosphere I’ve seen in few sports venues with boisterous fans who were also nice people. We got plenty of good natured razzing about our Celtics garb. Apparently, jchamorro has never been to one of their games.

Perhaps if Seattle was a little more interested in supporting something they actually derive substantial income from instead of the silly deviant social stuff they thrive on they’d still have an NBA franchise.

It’s not Bennett’s or the OK City people’s fault that Ok City has an NBA franchise.

The problem I have with OKC is not the fan base. The problem I have is with how the Seattle franchise was stolen by Clay Bennett while David Stern looked the other way. When Bennett purchased the team from Howard Schultz, the agreement stipulated that Bennett would make a good faith effort to keep the team in Seattle. Almost immediately upon becoming the new owner, Bennett put in to motion plans to move the franchise to OKC, his hometown. He poisoned negotiations with the city of Seattle from the get go. Take it or leave it, or I’m moving the team to OKC. Stern watched and did nothing.

If you remember Orthwein’s attempted move of the Patriots to St. Louis, in the early 90’s, you should have a better framework for what went on in seattle.

The major issue was the lease of KeyArena. Clay wanted out of the lease because well, it was a bad stadium with the fewest number of seats. There are hardly any luxury suites so he wanted to build a new arena that would yield him greater profit. He also wanted to relegate some of the cost of the stadium to the city of Seattle, but it was too much of a burden for the taxpayers. When Seattle bucked at that, Clay immediately put the idea of moving the team to Oklahoma City into motion. There wasn’t any fair discussion between the owner and the city. What we saw in the news for the last year and half was Clay TRYING to get out while Seattle was trying to work out a deal.

The fans should’ve bought the franchise themselves? Please. Don’t get up on the high horse just because our basketball franchise is secure here. It’s tough to support a basketball team when the owner is messing up the works. Bill Simmons is with me on this.

Oklahoma City deserves the Bobcats, not the Sonics. If you don’t have a clear understanding of what this whole thing is about, that’s fine but you can at least understand that it was an ugly situation and that there is reason to believe Clay’s actions were shady.

The silliness of this discussion astounds me. Bennett bought the ballclub, and he made Seattle an offer to build a building. The city said no, and if they did that not expecting the consequences that resulted, Seattle’s leadership are idiots.

The city lost the ballclub, plain and simple. No one’s entitled to a pro sports franchise – not Seattle and not Boston, frankly. Big business today is built on public-private partnerships, whether it be sports, aviation, manufacturing or whatever. If the public doesn’t want to play, there are plenty of cities that will.

Seattle got exactly what it deserved.

Spend a few days there and it’s pretty obvious that basketball is like priority Z on the Seattle “cultural values” (in Seattle, cultural values is the ultimate oxymoron) list.

CoachBo is right. Seattle reaped what it’s sown for decades.

some of you folks use the sonics deal as a way to attacking the leftist leanings of the city. And the connection is what? This same people of that city supported the team for around 40 years. The same government and population built what may be the best football and baseball stadiums in the country within the past ten years. Billions were spent. The sonics drew decent crowds while everyone knew they were leaving and while they were losing. The mariners drew 2 million fans while losing 100 games last year. All the teams here have great attendance records over time.The city leaning FAR left has NOTHING to do with how they lost the team or whether they deserved to. You think its karma or something because they are a bunch of lefties??

The simple truth is that Schultz sold the team to an out of city owner and he did it on purpose because he was pissed that the city didn’t build him an incredible stadium like the Hawks and Mariners have. David Stern brokered the deal. The gov acted too late and acted like idiots whether they are left right or otherwise. Wealthy area citizens made offers to the NBA and Stern and Schultz but the barn doors were already open. It was the perfect storm all around.

OKC is already not selling out. they sold out game one and just missed on the last two. With the oil bubble deflating their economy may be pretty rough for the next decade. we’ll see. I am going to guess that OKC will lose that team within the next 15 years, and Seattle will have a team within ten. The best thing of all for the NBA will be when David Stern retires.