OKC Moves Forward With Preparations of SuperSonic Proportions

Fine.  You win.  The headline is really lame.

But you have to admit, it makes the point.

As reported by ESPN:

Oklahoma City voters approved a sales tax extension Tuesday to fund $121.6 million in improvements to a downtown arena and build a practice facility in hopes of luring an NBA team.

The proposal received support from 44,849 voters, or 62 percent of those who cast ballots, according to final results from the Oklahoma County Election Board.

The plan calls for a one-penny sales tax to be extended by 15 months to pay for $97 million in upgrades to the Ford Center and another $24.6 million for a brand new NBA practice facility.

"I think we're really set up to get an NBA team. I know people want to know which one and when, and I don't have the answer to those questions," Mayor Mick Cornett said. "There's a process to this, and that process is going to play out. You can't circumvent the process. We have to be patient and see what happens."

In the midst of the basketball catastrophe occurring in Seattle, it's worth taking a moment to stop and remember how wonderful this is for the folks on the other end of the spectrum.

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Without a doubt, what's going on with the Sonics is horrendous.  What is reputed to be a great basketball city is on the verge of losing its team for good, just a year after drafting the supposedly generational superstar expected to revive the franchise (and Jeff Green, too!).  As has been well-documented, the people of Seattle deserve their Sonics, and the Sonics belong there.

But it's worth remembering that while Clay Bennett comes off as the villain here, the people of Oklahoma City shouldn't be labeled similarly.  All they did was embrace the New Orleans Hornets as though they were their own in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, and they spent the better part of two seasons providing excellent support to a team without much history of recent success at the time.  Meanwhile, the year the Hornets really begin to play to their potential just happens to double as the season they return to New Orleans full-time.

These OKC fans showed that they could indeed get into professional basketball in the opportunity received, and they certainly deserve another chance at having a local team.

Optimally, that team wouldn't be the Sonics, but at least the fans most likely to receive these Sonics will be doing so with open arms.