The Bitterman's concession speech

A better man would congratulate Oklahoma City’s Thunder on their championship.

A Bitterman, however, would not.

At this point, there is no doubt which of those two I am.

But don’t worry. I’m not going to question the merits of the Thunder’s title run nor will I wonder what would have happened Sunday night had Indiana’s best player not gone down with a torn Achilles tendon in the first quarter.

I’m not going to talk about the thoroughly unethical style of basketball that Oklahoma City team plays, either, even though Shai Gilgeous-Alexander is a shameless flopper and Alex Caruso and Lu Dort function like a pro-wrestling tag team called “Clutch and Grab.”

I wasn’t thinking about them in the second half of Sunday’s Game 7, when the Pacers’ offense consisted of little more than T.J. McConnell.

I was thinking back to the day in the summer of 2006 that Howard Schultz stood behind a table in the Sonics’ practice facility and announced that the franchise had been sold to a group of out-of-town investors. That fuddrucker had the temerity to have balloons there for the announcement. As if it were a celebration.

I’ve always said that I wished I had been more cynical about the whole transaction, couching the Sonics’ ultimate departure as a done deal. As if that would have made any difference at all.

Nineteen years after Schultz elected to sell the team he had referred to as a “civic trust” to a group of out-of-towners, that relocated franchise won an NBA title. Meanwhile, the city where that team was once housed sits hoping—HOPING—that the lack of a firm timeline for NBA expansion isn’t the canary in the coal mine of our hopes for getting a team back.

I am bitter.

I am bitter because it is only the most glaring example of an underlying fact about being a sports fan: We are the pawns in a game that is ultimately decided by the whims of rich and sometimes spineless men.

If we’re lucky, they stay out of the way. If we’re less lucky, they get tripped up on the pennies, worrying about turning an annual profit while ignoring the overall appreciation of the franchise they own and sitting on their hands when a guy like Rafael Devers is available for little more than the cost of his contract.

If we’re truly unfortunate, the first professional sports franchise in the city gets sold to a jock-sniffing dweeb who mouths a bunch of words about community with absolutely no understanding about what that actually means.

Yeah, Oklahoma City’s Clay Bennett is a liar, but that wasn’t really a surprise, was it? He and his cronies did what we thought he and his cronies were planning to do the whole time.

This is about the people who should have known better. It’s about Schultz and David Stern and I’ve got enough anger left over to give our city and state’s politicians a coat or two as well.

It’s about what happens when powerful and rich people get emotional about not getting their way. Schultz felt he was wronged because the politicians wouldn’t give him what they gave the Mariners and the Seahawks in terms of new facilities. Stern felt he was wronged because of the general disinterest and occasional hostility he was shown by state representatives in Olympia.

Schultz, being genetically incapable of doing anything other than whine, decided to quit. Stern decided he was going to teach Seattle’s local leaders a lesson.

Seattle lost what was its first professional sports franchise, and I honestly don’t think there’s anything any of us could do about it.

We’re the people whose interest fuels this whole business, and we tend to get treated like so much collateral damage whenever an owner doesn’t get what he wants or a coach sees a better job.

There is nothing new about any of this. The past 100 years is absolutely littered with teams that moved because the (somewhat) rich guy who owned them saw a chance to get a sweeter deal from some other place with another bunch of palookas who would scream their heads off for the laundry his players wear.

Yeah, I wish I had been more cynical. I’ve made up for it, though. I’m plenty cynical now.

I do not for one second wonder about the priorities of the people who run the teams we cheer for. They are worried about themselves. Thankfully, most of them are smarter than Howard Schultz.

The sale price for the Sonics in 2006 was $350 million. The cost of an expansion franchise for Seattle is likely to be 20 times, and we’re reduced to hoping that the NBA gives the people in Seattle a chance to pay it.

If you’re interested in a little less bitter ending, I debuted a podcast over at the newsletter I’m writing about grudges. I’m smiling at the end. I promise!