Seattle fans patiently waited. After having a team stolen from them with disingenuous owners working to rob a devoted city of its franchise, Seattle put itself in line to get a team from a group of disingenuous owners working to rob a devoted city of its franchise. They knew that would be what had to happen to return the Sonics to Seattle.
Seattle did just about everything right in its bid to bring the Sonics back at Sacramento's expense. Not their fault, of course. It was nothing personal, it was just business.
Like Kings fans, Sonics fans want their team too. They want it bad.
The news earlier this week that the NBA's Relocation Committee would unanimously recommend against the Kings' move to Seattle hit the city hard. Mayor Mike McGinn told Dave Mahler of KJR in Seattle that the news was disappointing for him and his city:
I was disappointed, too. I was really hopeful that this was going to go our way. But, you know something? The fans have a lot to be proud of here. I’m speaking from where I sit. Without the fan support around the Sonics, we wouldn’t be where we are today. Obviously we have a great investor team. … If we can go a little bit higher, too, when we entered into that memorandum of understanding, we didn’t know what team we’d be getting. We didn’t even know what team was on the horizon. And we put five years on it, too. So the fact that it was happening this fast was amazing.
A lot was personally invested in this bid. The Maloofs had agreed to sell the team to a group led by Chris Hansen and Steve Balmer and the only thing left was to rubber stamp the move. Kevin Johnson organized an ownership group to help keep the team in Sacramento and submitted a competing bid to the NBA's Board of Governors.
Things could still turn out good for Seattle fans this year. The Board of Governors could go against the recommendation and still approve the sale. That is extremely unlikely. EXTREMELY UNLIKELY.
So the Sonics', the city of Seattle and the fans in the Emerald City have to wait for the next team to consider moving. It will happen again and Seattle apears to be first in line if they can get the arena situation resolved first.
The waiting is just the worst for a starving fan base.
