Owners sent Sonics down crooked path

WITH NOTABLE EXCEPTIONS such as Bob Rule and Jack Sikma, the Sonics' history of big pivot players is dubious to the point of pathos.

So it was not really surprising to longtime Sonics watchers that the big man on the first day of Seattle's attempt to keep the franchise here turned out to be a woman.

After Mayor Greg Nickels wandered through four hours of passionless, sometimes contradictory testimony, former Seattle Center director Virginia Anderson offered a spirited account of the value of pro hoops and a decent history lesson in how the franchise's fate has come to hang by a litigious thread in federal court.

"We asked the Sonics for a partnership to define a state-of the-art arena," Anderson, Center director from 1988 to 2006 and a key figure in the 1995 renovation that became KeyArena, testified. "The Seattle Center is an unusual place, because (it has a place for) sports and arts, kids and elderly, and there's not many like it in the U.S. It's a unique tribute to democracy. (The Sonics and arena were) part of the mix, energy and stature" of the Seattle Center.

But Anderson didn't get to an important point yet to be discussed: the role successive Sonics ownerships and managements have had in putting hands around the franchise's throat.

Granted, five days of scheduled testimony remain for an opportunity to discuss all the factors that allowed the alienation to set in that has left the team vulnerable to predation from outlanders.

But seeing diehards gathered on the courthouse plaza Monday reduced to chanting oaths and encouragement toward a monolith of steel and glass, it occurred that their collective witness to a part of the story assuredly needs telling.

Since the run to the NBA Finals in 1995-96, KeyArena's debut season, Sonics basketball began a slow circle of the drain. Sonics business fortunes followed. In that time, under three ownership groups, the Sonics won a total of three playoff series, never more than one in a season. In seven of the past 10 seasons, they failed to make the playoffs.

As Anderson pointed out under cross-examination by Sonics attorney Paul Taylor, failure to make the playoffs is more than just a hoops disappointment.

"A shockingly large amount" of total season revenue can be generated from playoff games, she said. Although cautioning she was not an expert on team finances, her experience during the Sonics' big run in the 1990s informed her that up to 40 percent of total revenue could be made from the postseason: "If you go to the end, you could double your revenues."

Not only did the Sonics fail to maintain after the '96 Finals, they jettisoned one of their most popular players (Shawn Kemp) and most successful coach (George Karl). Then in 1998-99, the NBA abetted the decline by self-imposing a lockout of the players, a labor tactic resoundingly criticized for months, locally and nationally. Somehow, the consequences of the lockout were not discussed Monday.

After the NBA and its players union settled the dispute that did little to fix the long-term payroll problems plaguing the sport, the NBA played a clumsy 50-game season pickled with fat guys (see Baker, Vin). That wasn't mentioned in court, either.

But the events, all beyond the responsibility of the city and the arena, conspired to compromise the premise, created in part by Anderson, of the 15-year deal now at the heart of the legal dispute.

Her plan to finance the remodel of the aged Coliseum was novel: After a cash contribution from the city of $10 million and $21 million from then-Sonics owner Barry Ackerley, the remaining bond debt for the $84 million project would be retired through revenue from the building, primarily the suites and club seats.

It was called revenue sharing. Pay as you go. No major tax investment, no major private investment. Building on borrowed money is usually a proven idea -- as long as income covers indebtedness.

Attendance and suite sales kept the building in the black until the major disaffection of the lockout, although Sonics lawyers laid exclusive blame for declining sales on the arrivals into the market of Safeco (1999) and Qwest (2001) fields, and their much fancier, more lucrative premium seating.

The crowded local market, and the degenerating revenues from the supposedly crummy lease, didn't stop Howard Schultz and friends from paying $200 million in 2000 to purchase the Sonics. Nor did those conditions stop Clay Bennett from paying $350 million in 2006.

Based on those sales prices, one would think something of great basketball value was happening in Seattle. Yet listening to the statements and questions Monday from the Sonics lawyers, one would assume the Sonics were a tire fire that could never be put out.

Anderson rebutted the relentless poor mouthing.

"One of the lessons Barry Ackerley taught me was you have to anticipate (cycles)," she said. "One of the reasons he wanted a smaller arena (KeyArena seats an NBA-low 17,000) is that he anticipated down cycles. They can head down quick and head up quickly. The Sonics are in a trough right now. There will be a time when they can be up."

But because the Sonics trough extends through three ownerships, none of which see any connection or responsibility with one another, the city's connective tissue of the lease is being blamed, when in fact the city in 1995 took the financial risk of writing a check for the building debt that the Sonics revenues couldn't cash.

If Ackerley wanted the reward, he needed to take the risk of building his own building.

If Schultz wanted the reward, he could have built the building.

If Bennett wanted the reward, he could have built the building.

Instead, they watched the city take the risk, build the building, cover the debt and now pay again with a potential loss of a franchise, despite having no say over Jim McIlvaine, Calvin Booth, Danny Fortson, $100 million guaranteed contracts, the '99 lockout or crooked refs.

Quite the tribute to democracy. We'll see about justice.