What part of No! Heck No! don't they get?

Hit the road already!

Stop whining and MOVE!

oh, but they can leave the Storm, we like them ...

Ah yes, let's compare destitute homeless people with multimillionaire basketball players and team owners.

why not? i mean, if it weren't for the multimillionaires, we wouldn't have Downtown and Pioneer Square pushing the homeless people onto Fremont and Ballard.

Wonder how many are wearing old dirty Sonics shirts? I've seen a few.

If the new ownership will work toward getting an nhl franchise or a major indoor lacrosse franchise and kick in the vast majority of the cost of the new facility, I'll go along with it.

The 22% figure is a severe distortion. The Seattle media is united against the Sonics, but ordinary people are not. For example, if you asked people if they'd like the Sonics to stay if it didn't cost taxpayers $200 million, you get a much better response than 22% positive.

Well, the old ownership are the people who demanded all that money, but the new ownership--you are aware that the ownership has recently changed, right Sarah?--has taken much more reasonable, nuanced approach.

Save the Sonics. Basketball is cool.

The history of sports teams holding cities hostage is short, but it has plenty of anecdotal examples - enough of them to know what almost always happens. Seattle already has two monuments to this. Both the baseball stadium and the football stadium had heavy opposition from voters, and yet there they stand. Even when stadiums/sports arenas are voted down, the legislature, who thinks they know better what people need and want, overrides public will time and time again.

It's all business, of course, and money. The businesses that spring up around stadiums - tacky little T-shirt kiosks and meat market bars - fear, rightfully so, they'll collapse if a team goes away. Those that watch city coffers fear they'll lose revenue. Hotel owners freak.

It's all about as unsporty as it gets and that is why I don't understand the attraction of professional sports anymore. Rarely are the team players from the city for which they play. So there really isn't a hometown boy or girl aspect to the games. The joy that some receive by experiencing the we-won-and-you-lost euphoria has to be displaced by the fact that the attendee probably won't make in a year what each of the player has made playing that one game. Is there some internal feeling that Seattle is somehow better than, say, Denver because the Seattle team won a ball game? I just don't get it. The quick conclusion is simple-mindedness, but I know better.

Nope. Let 'em go. Send a message that mediocre management and crybaby millionaires are no longer welcomed in this city. If the support for an NBA team truly is there then another investor will come along and bring a real team here.

See ya Wally, good riddence Howard Schultz. Too bad Rashard and Ray had to end up with such terrible owners and managers.

Huge Sonics fan, by the way, so save it. I think we need to fix the viaduct/520 bridge/mercer mess before we award a boatload of cash to a bunch of multi-millionaires who say they can't afford a new arena.

Howard, you may have duped a bunch of mouthbreathers into buying a $4 cup of coffee, but there's no way I am buying that sack of shit you just tried to pull.

Dear Steve Pyeatt and other obsessive Sonics fans:

If you love your team so much that you want to fleece your fellow citizens to support them, please don't hesitate to follow the Sonics when they leave.

YES! GUILT BY ASSOCIATION!

That said, they are in the minority and the Sonics are gonzo. Unless he and his cohorts are willing to pay out of pocket for the Sonics' desired arena or renovations.

I'm not into professional sports, but I have nothing against them - Obviously, there are a lot of people who enjoy them.

The only thing that irks me about the Sonics situation is this: We (i.e. taxpayers - I wasn't alive yet) built the Washington State Colliseum in 1962. We renovated it - largely to the Sonic's specs - back in the 90's (at which time the Key Bank people stepped in and insisted that the thing be renamed the Key Arena) and now - not even 15 years later - they want us to do it again.

If the Seattle Symphony insisted on a totally renovated symphony hall every 10 years, people would rightfully scream bloody murder.

To all who think that seattle wants the sonics to leave, I think you're wrong. I think that the thought of paying more taxes for yet another sports palace boondoggle for millionaires makes people in seattle want to vomit. Since the question posed is not "Do you like the sonics?" (mostly "yeah, sure") but: "Are you willing to pay more taxes for corporate welfare to keep the sonics" (mostly "FUCK NO").

So: Sports franchises = YAAY!
Paying for Sports franchises = Mr. Owner guy go drown yourself

Yo, Sonics!

Just got one thing to say to you from a Seattlite and all my fellow Seattleites:

Nah Nah Nah
Nah Nah Nah
Hey Hey Hey
Goodbye!

p.s. you still owe us rent till 2012, suckers!

Tennis stars photos here: <a href=http://tennisstars.info>Tennis Stars</a>