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Sonics Angst: Why No Pity for L.A.?

July 3rd, 2008 · 4 Comments · Baseball, Basketball, Sports Journalism

This is starting to annoy me.

The NBA franchise leaving Seattle for Oklahoma City is being treated by various and sundry observers as an injustice that borders on the criminal.

OK, it’s not a nice thing. Leaving a city after 41 seasons.

But do any of you recall any sort of nationwide condemnation and gnashing of teeth when Los Angeles lost both of its NFL teams in a matter of months, after the 1994 season? One of which, the Rams, had been in town for 49 (!) seasons?

Why the double standard? Why is Seattle poor and downtrodden and abused by the NBA? While the Rams and Raiders bolting … is “just something that happened” to Los Angeles?

Let’s just stipulate that is what’s going on. Wailing and moaning on Seattle’s behalf. Silence and even sniggering, toward L.A.

How come?

I have some ideas.

1. Seattle is cute and cuddly. It’s not a city that leaves other major-league cities all jealous. Nice downtown, progressive place. Sure. But it rains all year and it’s not the center of any major industry (unless coffee is an industry) since the decline of grunge rock … So outsiders are comfortable rising to Seattle’s defense.

2. Seattle Did the Right Thing by waiting for expansion franchises. The Sonics, the Mariners, the Seahawks. All just awarded to the city, thank you very much.

3. L.A., meanwhile, has a history of taking/accepting other people’s franchises. The Rams, Dodgers, Lakers, Clippers, Raiders, in that order. Only the Angels, Kings and Ducks, among this area’s “major league” franchises, were expansion teams.

So no pity for you if you lose one of those “stolen” teams to someone else.

4. Los Angeles is threatening. It certainly isn’t small and weak and some marginal market. A lot of people don’t like L.A. or what they believe it represents. And if it loses teams (for much the same reasons that Seattle lost the Sonics; owners with interests elsewhere, looking to cash in on a great stadium deal) — well, you’re on your own. Mr. ESPN Columnist isn’t going to rush to L.A.’s defense.

Let’s just recap some of the realities of these situations:

1. Seattle is a marginal major-league city. It lost its original ball team (the Pilots) to Milwaukee because the city didn’t support it. The Mariners were the second go-round. The NHL has expanded all over the continent but never bothered to go to Seattle. Hmm.

Seattle attendance is generally modest, middle-of-the-pack, and its corporate sponsorship is nothing special. It seems to be hurting for local owners, too, if the Sonics were purchased by a guy from Oklahoma City and the Mariners are owned by a Japanese company.

If “civic support” for a franchise is a factor in competitive success, and I believe it is, Seattle is a massive failure because it has exactly one championship (the Sonics, 1979) in a major-league sport.

2. L.A. “stole” its teams at a time when the distribution of major-league franchises was completely out of whack with the nation’s demographics. Hide-bound baseball was stuck on its original 16 franchises, never having gotten further west than St. Louis into the 1950s. Moving a team from a hugely overserved region (the Dodgers were one of three MLB teams in greater New York City) to the virgin territory of the West Coast made perfect sense. The Rams were dying on the vine in Cleveland, which also had the Browns. The Raiders were keen to escape Oakland. Let’s see, an NBA team in Minneapolis or Los Angeles (which had just opened the Sports Arena)? How tough a call is that?

Is it somehow L.A.’s fault that it was attractive, at the time?

Of course not. And the city wouldn’t even have been so wide open if baseball and basketball leagues had realized, in the 1950s, that they really did need to be on the West Coast and awarded expansion franchises of the sort they were to begin to bestow liberally in the 1960s. That is, after L.A. (and San Francisco) demonstrated the viability of West Coast franchises.

It’s just hypocritical. All the wailing on Seattle’s behalf, when all it did was suffer the same fate that would have befallen other cities — had those other cities not capitulated to ownership demands for new facilities/leases.

Part of this is the realization that, “Hey, wait, it could happen to my team too!” Maybe if the condemnation of the league is vigorous enough, “my team” will stay in Salt Lake City/Kansas City forever, too.
The reality is, if your marketplace is no longer attractive, watch out. But at least you can expect nearly universal condemnation, of your departing team, and lots of sympathy for your plight.

Unless you’re Los Angeles. Then, apparently, you’re on your own.

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4 responses so far ↓

  • 1 David Lassen // Jul 3, 2008 at 7:01 PM

    I think one big reason for the angst is that Seattle had rebuilt Key Arena to the specifications requested by the Sonics just 14 years ago (I’ve read that on the reopening, David Stern praised the quality of the upgrade), and before that remodeling was even paid off , the Sonics were asking for another rebuild or a new building. There is, apparently, a limitation to the amount of times the public will accept a private enterprise feeding at the public trough, and this seems to have exceeded it.

    Personally, given the choice between being held up by a team for a facility and watching that team leave, I’m more than happy to say see ya. I’d love it if Seattle takes its $45 million settlement, puts it to real civic us, and told the NBA what it could do with its offers to find another team if it builds a new facility — but so far, only L.A. seems to be secure enough itself to go that route.

  • 2 John Hollon // Jul 4, 2008 at 9:46 AM

    I understand the Raiders leaving LA and going home to Oakland, but the NFL letting Georgia Frontiere to destroy the LA Rams fan base so she could leave was criminal.

    It kills me to see the Rams in St. Louis … where Georgia worked to destry any evidence of the Los Angeles Rams. You can buy retro Baltimore Colts gear, but not Los Angeles Rams gear. Why? Because Georgia felt threatened by the successful LA Rams and any comparison with her St. Louis Rams.

    The NFL should have never allowed the Rams name and records to go to St. Louis, just as they did with the Cleveland Browns and the NBA is doing with the Sonics.

    Georgia and the NFL leadership destroyed LA as a pro football city. People just don’t care and won’t pony up for a new stadium. So be it. Let the Rams rot in St. Louis. Go Trojans ….

  • 3 Jim Alexander // Jul 5, 2008 at 11:03 AM

    It’s the same reason people in almost any other city get such a kick out of chanting “Beat LA!” There’s a healthy smidgen of jealousy involved.

    But I also suspect people elsewhere didn’t sympathize with SoCal because this region didn’t turn right around and prostitute itself to get another team (i.e., approving a taxpayer-funded stadium). That suggested that we somehow “didn’t care” or “didn’t want the NFL badly enough.”

    Maybe that’s correct. And if so, I give our region a lot of credit. IMHO, the more I see what the NFL has become, the better LA looks for not capitulating — aside, that is, from the few politicians and civic leaders who get sucked into the league’s periodic dog and pony show.

    If all of that makes LA supposedly a bad sports city … well, that’s other people’s judgment. Not mine.

  • 4 George Alfano // Jul 6, 2008 at 7:50 AM

    The Sonics were Seattle’s first major league team, and the city seemed to embrace the team for many years. In most of the cases in and out of Los Angeles, it was a question of ownership rather than the city being a bad market.

    Clay Bryant purchased the Sonics with the clear purpose of moving the team. When you think of attractive cities to a major league team, does Oklahoma City come before Seattle? I don’t think so.

    When the Hornets moved from Charlotte to New Orleans, that wasn’t a case of Charlotte rejecting the NBA – it was Charlotte rejecting George Shinn, a toxic owner. With the Rams, it was a case of another toxic owner, dear Georgia.

    The NBA recognized the unfairness and gave Charlotte a franchise. I think the NBA will do the same with Seattle, because there is a tradition and to resist losing the market to the NHL.

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