I'm not being entirely fair here about Basketball Club of Seattle's profits. Because of inflation, the teams' appreciation in value from the 2001 sale to this week's was more like 58 percent than 75. The $200 million Schultz's group paid in 2001 is worth something like $222 million today, according to a consensus of online inflation calculators, which I'll admit isn't terribly scientific but gives a rough idea.
So, counting the reported $70 million in operational losses, debt financing and interest payments that the team claims -- and don't think that number can't be inflated when it serves a team's purpose, such as when crying poverty in arena talks with the city -- Basketball Club of Seattle's profit isn't $80 million, or $16 million a year, but somewhere between that and $58 million, or $11.6 million a year.
Poor Howard Schultz. The man has been bled dry by the basketball business! The least you can do is go buy an extra-double venti whatever thing.
King County and Washington state residents have already coughed up $350 million to build Safeco Field for the Mariners and $300 million to build Qwest Field for the Seahawks. A poll in early June found an overwhelming majority of Seattle residents saying they'd rather let the Sonics leave town than use tax money on an improved arena.
We'll know in a year if the taxpayers' idea of where their money should go means anything in Seattle.
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Whom do you root for after a move? [PERMALINK]
"I don't want to sound like a child," writes reader Dave Bagley of Seattle, who heard the news Tuesday and began fearing the worst, "but what am I going to do if/when the Sonics move to Oklahoma City?
They're the one and only team I root for in any sport. I could care less about the Seahawks or the damn Mariners or even the Huskies. Am I a Sonics fan no matter where they go or do I give up on the whole concept of rooting for a team?"
I'm always pleased to be asked a question to which I know the answer. The answer is I don't know.
The only team I've ever rooted for that moved away was the Los Angeles Rams, who left the City of Angels in 1995. But I'd done the same in 1981, and in the meantime the Rams had fallen on hard times -- I wasn't always feeling so well myself -- and I'd soured on the NFL for a while. So it didn't exactly sting. In fact I barely noticed.
I'd been gone from L.A. for so long that the Raiders had come and gone since my emigration.
But let's see if there's wisdom out there in the crowd. What did you do? If you've ever had your one-true-love of a team move away from the town where you live, did you keep rooting from a distance? Adopt another team? Give up on the whole enterprise?
I'm looking for you, Brooklyn Dodgers and New York Giants fans. I want to know what you Baltimore Colts and Cleveland Browns did before there was talk of a replacement franchise. I know there are hockey fans in Winnipeg and Hartford and Quebec with tales to tell.
I don't need to hear from hardcore Canadiens fans who occasionally took in an Expos games, but if you lost the one team you'd given your heart to, post your story in this column's letters section or, if you must, e-mail it to me. Keep it brief, please.
I'll collect the best responses and publish them in a future column.
Previous column: Tour de France, T.O.
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About the writer
King Kaufman is a senior writer for Salon. Visit his column archive. You can e-mail him at king at salon dot com.
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