Sonicsgate documentary is painful, worthwhile
I’m actually not sure that watching this is a good use of your time. It made me angry. I guess when I say this documentary chronicling the demise of the NBA in Seattle is “worthwhile”, I’m saying that it is well made. Or something.
The scene that stuck out to me was where hundreds of Sonics fans gathered outside the courthouse – during the last ditch case to enforce the team’s lease with the city – to give Clay Bennett a piece of their collective mind. Bennett sneaked out the back door, and a man holding a camera sprinted around the back to catch Bennett.
The winded man with the camera yelled “Save our Sonics” to a non responsive Bennett who was safe inside the tinted windows of his SUV. The futile yelling perfectly represented the very real impotence of Sonics fans then and now.
The team was going to move. We had no say in it. It never mattered that we cared. The whole tragedy was a hard lesson in the realities of pro sports that I have still stubbornly yet to fully process.
It is hard for the part of me that loves sports to admit what the rational side of me knows: these teams are not beholden to the cities they play in. Anyone can move. The NBA and other leagues will pit cities against one another in an effort to create and exploit the best possible economic situations for themselves.
I suppose I have no theoretical problem with this. I have not read enough about economics to be totally sure, but I posit that capitalism is teh bombz. Talk to me in a decade when I have my subscription to the New Left Review, after spending terrible hours weighing Wealth of Nations against Das Kapital.
I still watch the NBA and pro sports in general for a couple of reasons. Nick Hornby wrote in Fever Pitch that people follow sports because they are a refreshing contrast to the ambiguities of, you know, reality. There is an agreed upon framework of rules in which the game is contested. There is a winner and a loser and it will be decided in a relatively short period of time. I like that. I understand it.
The other reason is explained in the documentary by Sherman Alexie. This is a rough paraphrase. Ray Allen might have been the greatest shooter in the history of basketball. Because of the Sonics, the greatest shooter of a basketball in the history of the world lived in Seattle during the prime of his career. Probably some of the greatest computer programmers in the history of the world live in Seattle as well. Probably some of the greatest designers of airplane parts. Or whatever. I can’t really relate to that. I have however shot a basketball thousands of times. I could appreciate the majesty of Ray Allen’s jumper, and it was on display for relatively cheap 41 nights a year.
As if you couldn’t tell by reading this far, I’m rambling. I guess the last thing I want to say is that the Seattle based attorney for Bennett’s group, Bradley Keller, comes across as a smug asshole. Keller basically credits the settlement of the Key Arena lease that ultimately sent the Supes to Oklahoma City to his brilliance in the trial. Keller doesn’t appear to care about the case one way or the other, just so long as everyone notices that he is awesome. Congrats dickbag. You are a real credit to your profession.
I suppose the documentary is actually worthwhile if it can inform a few people that the reason the Sonics left Seattle is a hell of a lot more complicated than the notion that the city or the people didn’t care one way or the other. We cared. It just didn’t matter.
Watch it. Hate the situation. Resolve to put yourself in a position one day to fuck over everyone who fucked us. Failing that, someone will be fucked. Fuck.
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I love wagering on National Football League. The unfortunate part is that I’ve lost about $ five this month. I think the most enjoyable part is doing the research and using research to find holes in the odds.