News came out today that my favorite hometown team the Seattle (Super) Sonics never intended to stay in Seattle under the new ownership group.  I know, I know, this is old news and everyone has already assumed this for months.  However, I always held out some hope that a sane ownership team would be looking to make money (i.e. stay is the large Seattle market) vs bring the team to tiny Oklahoma City.  I mean, the state had to subsidize ticket prices when the New Orleans Hornets played their home games their for 2 seasons - so obviously it wasn’t going to be a profitable environment.  But the new OK City group doesnt care about making money and instead would prefer to a sports icon in their own state.  And for that I cannot blame them, because I would want to do the same thing.  And if you are rich enough to own your own team, then you can probably handle a little red ink.

But I do feel I have to blame someone, and that someone is going to be Starbucks Chairman Howard Shultz.  This guy has $500 million of stock in Starbucks, another $500 million in Starbucks options, interests in eBay, Drugstore.com, DreamWorks, a major Seattle Venture Capital firm and god knows what else.  He owes his existence to Seattle and its love for coffee and the Seattle Starbucks chain he created.  He bought the team from another local multi-millionaire Barry Ackerly, who had taken care to sell the team to someone who would keep it in Seattle.  And then every year after that Schultz whines about how much money he is losing because of the lease agreement, blah, blah, blah.  All I know is he bought the team for $200 million and five years later sold it for $350 million - which seems like a pretty good return.  And on top of the that, you don’t buy a sports franchise to make money, you buy one if you have a lot of money and want to prove to everyone in your community that you are a big swinging dick.  If he wanted to sell, fine, but do not sell to a group out of Oklahoma City who had just gotten their first taste of an NBA franchise on loan and were obviously looking for another.  I have no doubt that Schultz new the team would likely be moved.  He is obviously a smart business man and there is no way he was oblivious to this one.

I am therefore banning Starbucks and make the call for all of you to do the same.  Maybe if we band together we can eat into the value of those stock options.  Go Tully’s…