What person in their right mind willingly moves from Seattle to Oklahoma City??

Seattle was on the cusp of inheriting the Sacramento Kings three years ago, until a last-ditch arena effort in California’s capital kept the team rooted. The city and local billionaire Chris Hansen have been trying to work to bring an NBA team back to the city ever since then, but the Seattle city council may have significantly hampered the efforts last night. On Monday, the city council voted 5-4 in opposition to a measure that would have effectively turned over a chunk of land near the Port of Seattle to Hansen so he could build an NBA arena. The measure was expected to pass until the days right before the meeting, but the death of the measure means that any potential expansion to Seattle will now be, at best, significantly delayed.

I’ve always loved Seattle. It’s a beautiful city with a lot of very good memories and personal history for me. Outside of its stunning physical beauty, I’ve long been fascinated by Seattle’s internal struggle to decide what kind of place it wants to be. There are the sort of committed Conservative business interests you’d expect to find in any large metropolitan area. There’s also a pronounced leftist, borderline socialist element determined to preserve the environment, safeguard Seattle’s livability, and put people before profits.

Yeah, I know…SOCIALISM!!!!

As you might imagine, watching the inevitable and frequent conflicts between these two forces can be (and most certainly is) highly entertaining…if you have nothing at stake in the outcome. Portland has it’s own ideological fault lines, but Puddletown’s public conflicts tend to be somewhat more prosaic and wonky.

A few years ago, the NBA’s Seattle Supersonics owner decided he wanted to move back to his native Oklahoma and take his toy with him. To keep this from happening, all Seattle had to do was build a state-of-the-art arena…a ransom demand many other cities have faced. This being Seattle we’re talking about, it was a simple idea that was, in fact, nowhere near being simple. In the end, the city council declined to meet the owner’s price and the team departed for Oklahoma City, where the franchise is now known as the Oklahoma City Thunder. Why any sane person would leave Seattle in favor of Oklahoma City (I mean, have you ever been there?? There’s no “there” there [apologies to Gertrude Stein].) defies rational understanding…but the Sonics left town and Seattle for the past few years have suffered the indignity of knowing that Portland has a successful NBA franchise, while they have nothing. Since the Grizzlies left Vancouver, BC, for Memphis (another “WTF??” head scratcher) a few year prior, the Portland Trail Blazers were left as the only NBA franchise in the Pacific Northwest. Because Seattle has always looked down on Portland as its provincial, kombucha-swilling, beer-soaked little brother, this “injustice” has irked denizens of the Emerald City to no end.

Over the past few years, local businessman Chris Hanson has spearheaded an effort to build an arena for an NBA and/or NHL team in Seattle’s SoDo district. As you might imagine, what some might think to be a great thing for the city and its sports fans has run into opposition from those upset by what they view as putting forward the idea that tax dollars should be used to subsidize a private business. Of course, there’s a solid argument to be made that this is exactly what’s being proposed. Whatever your opinion, the Seattle City Council just threw another wrench into Hansen’s grand scheme, and things have become a bit…uh, contentious.