Eric Williams covered the Sonics' last season in Seattle. A Tacoma native, Eric graduated from Mount Tahoma High and the University of Puget Sound.
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This is an Associated Press story picked up from Phoenix. I'll have some reaction comments from local government folks later.
PHOENIX (AP) — League commissioner David Stern warned Thursday that if the SuperSonics leave Seattle he sees no way the NBA would ever return to the city.
“I’d love to find a way to keep the team there,” he said, “because if the team moves, there’s not going to be another team there, not in any conceivable future plan that I could envision, and that would be too bad.”
At a news conference following his announcement that the 2009 All-Star game would be held in Phoenix, Stern criticized the city of Seattle and the Washington Legislature for its handling of the issue of funding a replacement for Key Arena.
Stern repeated earlier criticism of Seattle’s mayor and City Council for promoting a measure, overwhelmingly passed by voters, that requires any funds to help build an arena earn money at the same rate as a treasury bill.
That measure simply means there is no way city money would ever be used on an arena project, Stern said.
He also lamented that the Legislature refused to even consider continuing a tax that helped pay for Seattle’s baseball and football stadiums.
“To have the speaker of the house say well, they just spend too much money on salaries anyway, so we need it for other things,” Stern said, casts aspersions on the whole league’s operations. “We get the message. Hopefully, maybe cooler heads will prevail.”
He was referring to a remark by House Speaker Frank Chopp last February when funding for a new arena in the Seattle suburb of Renton was proposed.
“They ought to get their own financial house in order when their payroll is over $50 million for, what is it, 10 players? I think that’s a little ridiculous,” Chopp said at the time. “They need to get their own financial house in order and if they did, they wouldn’t have to ask for public help.”
Stern’s comments were much tougher than the ones he made last June, when he said he believed the issue was “just going to work itself out.”
SuperSonics owner Clay Bennett told the NBA last Friday that he plans to move the team to Oklahoma City. When that move would occur depends on outcome of litigation with the city over the franchise’s KeyArena lease. The lease calls for the team to play in Seattle through the 2009-10 season, but Bennett wants out sooner.
As the issue becomes more and more contentious, Stern said he hopes “that a white knight that hasn’t existed before, somebody who has a building plan of how to keep the team there, will step forward.”
The commissioner’s comments came at the end of a news conference where he spent most of his time rehashing the one-game suspension of Amare Stoudemire and Boris Diaw for leaving the bench after San Antonio’s Robert Horry slammed teammate Steve Nash into the scorer’s table in last season’s conference semifinals.
NBA rules require a one-game suspension for any player who leaves the bench in such incidents.
This was the first time Stern had made a public appearance in Phoenix since that decision. He said the rule is clear and was established to prevent incidents that could result in serious injury. Making the rule subjective, depending on why the players were leaving the bench, “is a problem,” Stern said.
“The one that I lived through was that I was assistant to (then-commissioner) Larry O’Brien when Rudy Tomjanovich almost got killed coming off the bench as a peacemaker,” he said.
“That in some measure deeply affected his life as well as Kermit Washington’s,” Stern said. “If we had had that rule and enforced it that never would have happened.”
Tomjanovich, a player with the Houston Rockets at the time, was critically injured when he rushed the court during a 1977 game and ran directly into a punch thrown by Washington, then of the Los Angeles Lakers.
Stern said that when he recently brought up the idea of changing the rule, the ex-players on the NBA competition committee “thought I was out of my mind.”
“That’s a serious issue of large men coming off the bench,” Stern said the players told him. “It’s a scary place. When you’re out there, you just don’t know. When people come at you, you’re liable to do just about anything.”
COMMENTS:
the list of F-ups he has had since he took office is disgraceful. I still am in shock over his allowing of the NBA refs to gamble...! This coming from a guy who has said he will never put a team in Vegas because of the gambling temptations that it would have on refs. All this happened AFTER Timmy D was busted for gambling!!! Stern needs to be fired. Here is hoping to Paul Allen steps in with his monsterous check book and makes some moves that would piss off Davey boy.
Stern is a failure.
What Stern is saying is just bizarre. I mean, almost unhinged. He just sounds like an arrogant dope. mariners_2k5 is right. Stern has just been screwing up every time he tries to do anything. Memphis, Charlotte, New Orleans, the betting referees, San Antonio. Smells like a mental collapse.
Not unhinged - Stern is deliberate, his words and actions are always carefully planned. He is setting it up so that whatever committees are formed, by whatever owners, they already know what Stern wants. And Stern introduced Bennett tonight in the Oklahoma Hall of Fame - what does that action tell?
"We have a lease that is valid and enforceable and his owner is in litigation with us to try and break that lease," Ceis said. "It appears that Mr. Stern is aiding and abetting that effort.""
I'd LOVE to see Seattle sue Stern for aiding & abetting. That might put the jacka** in his proper place.
There are part owners out there that know this! If they let the team move shame on all of them, they took their profits quietly, as the grease was applied to the fans.
I never ONCE heard the team was being sold to out of state owners, where was the local buyers then?
So now we are left with Clay & Stern and their NBA $500M new arena anywhere but the Key blackmail move.
I was there with Steely_ed and it was SO GREAT! NBA Champions...Seattle...YES!
I also blame our lack luster leaders for not having any vision nor creativity. Yes we built two new stadiums within 7 years and are now asked to build a third. Poor attitudes never got anything accomplished.
The other two had unique situations that wasn't facing the Sonics and both put up a minimum of $100M of their money. The Seahawks were in LA and the Kingdom roof was literally falling on the heads of the players of both teams! The timing was good for them to get new seperate arena's because their were cooler heads leading the way.
Shultz bum rushed the legislature with his woe is me me me attitude along with gimme gimme gimme I want I want I want, but no give no $100M ante chip on his part. So when the vaults closed and the hot heads emerged here we are with the Clay & Stern show.
Who in their right minds would fund a project knowing that in 5 years it would be obsolete and still was only a quarter of the way from being paid off. Now you are asked to fund a billion dollar arena or else?
You know one day some city mayors of NBA cities are going to stand up and unite against the NBA and push legislation nationwide that says if you buy "any" PRO Sports team you must also have the money to build your own stadiums and arenas if you want or even need one NO exceptions.
Let that out and watch the heavy weights make Stern squirm. His broke out of control NBA model, ref's gambling and his stupid demands, may cause the rest of the PRO Sports world owners to have to start poning up more of their money...heaven forbid that!
Because they need to remember their is only 32 cities with NBA teams that might care enough to vote for them...think about it :-)
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