Major League IV: Scripting the Sonics Movie

In July 2006, an ownership group led by Starbucks chairman Howard Schultz sold the Seattle SuperSonics and its championship sister squad, the Storm, to an outfit consisting of investment mogul Clayton Bennett, anti–gay marriage activists Aubrey McClendon and Tom Ward, and two dudes whose first names are "G" (G. Edward Evans and G. Jeffrey Records). Like history's other great raiders and plunderers (Attila, Genghis K.), the new ownership group came from the plains—Oklahoma, to be exact. Here, one recalls Steve Martin banging a spoon on a pan and yelling "Oklahoma! Oklahoma!" in a movie whose title, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, leads us back to the aforementioned carpetbaggers.

The common assumption was that as soon as the Oklahomans bought the Sonics, the team was as good as gone. Bennett made all the obligatory statements about committing to Seattle and working with local political leaders on a plan for a new arena. He then set about that task with all the earnestness of a 7-year-old instructed to clean his plate of Brussels sprouts and broccoli.

Watch the trailer forMajor League IV: SuperSonic!

The team's proposal for a Renton arena would have been, for the most part, publicly financed—but all profit from all events would have gone to the team. Unsurprisingly, this legislation went nowhere in Olympia. Meanwhile, word leaked of McClendon and Ward's bankrolling an anti–gay marriage group to the tune of $1.1 million, in addition to McClendon's previous quarter-mil donation to Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. On top of all that, McClendon told an Oklahoma paper that the new owners had secretly planned all along to move the team to Oklahoma City. Despite Bennett's initial half-hearted assurances to the contrary, as soon as the 2007 season started, the Oklahomans filed papers with the league office to relocate ASAP.

Bennett and his cohorts' success at hijacking the team depends on a vote of NBA owners, as well as the franchise's ability to break its KeyArena lease with the city, a contentious matter that is now in civil court. There, the same folks who tried to sell a new arena to the public on the promise of economic benefits have declared that the team's exit will have no impact on the city's economy. With an expected weeklong trial scheduled to begin in June, there's a chance the Sonics could be gone before next season.

You could argue there's no requirement that owners gladly stay put with their investments or share their fan base's political leanings. But none of that changes the fact that Bennett & Co. are a bunch of retrograde interlopers, the uninvited dinner guests who double-dip at the chip bowl, piss on your toilet seat, and ask for the leftover beer on their way out the door.

Seattle's not the first city to suffer from insufferable team owners. In Charlotte, Hornets owner George Shinn traded his stars, got accused of rape, and then demanded the city build him a new arena at no expense to himself. Unsuccessful in his negotiations, he moved the team to New Orleans, where, despite fielding an elite team, attendance is flagging to the point where Shinn is contemplating yet another change of scenery.

In another tale of civic Grinchdom, Colts owner Robert Irsay infamously told the media, "This is my goddamn team," and indicated the team would remain in Baltimore—before accepting a secret deal to move the team to Indianapolis. (The moving vans arrived unannounced on March 29, 1984, and hit the road at 3 a.m.) In exchange for the city dropping a lawsuit against him, Irsay agreed to support Baltimore for the NFL's next expansion franchise. When the NFL decided to expand in 1993, he supported Jacksonville and Charlotte (Baltimore ultimately got the Ravens).

But perhaps the most comforting analogue comes from Hollywood, in the form of the 1989 tour de force Major League. This star-studded slice of celluloid cheese tells the tale of a fictitious Cleveland Indians team inherited by a trophy widow who wants to move them to Miami. A clause in the franchise's contract allows the owner to uproot the team if it draws fewer than 800,000 fans in a season. Thus, she attempts to damn the team to relocation by signing every flotsam, jetsam, and Joe her anti-scouts can turn up. Playing these misfits are, among others, Charlie Sheen, Wesley Snipes, Tom Berenger, and future 24 president Dennis Haysbert. While the season begins disastrously, as planned, in time the rejects prove to have heart and hidden talent, morphing into lovable underdog winners and eventually beating the Yankees to make the playoffs and cement the team's future in Cleveland.

The parallels to the current plight of the Sonics are obvious. The new Sonics management jettisoned stars Ray Allen and Rashard Lewis in favor of a collection of promising but underdeveloped youngsters and washed-up veterans. Predictably, the team's winning percentage has taken a nosedive—as has fan attendance. Scalpers can't give their tickets away, and on many nights, fans' loudest cheers are reserved for the appearance of a 5-year-old break-dancer who does headspins during time-outs. Not a bad situation for an ownership group that wants to leave town. (What this surface examination fails to show is that the new owners were all but forced to start over by the remarkable incompetence of the preceding front office, whose stunning array of bad personnel decisions were highlighted by their propensity to draft 7-foot teenage stiffs and unwillingness to properly compensate standout coach Nate McMillan, who moved along to greener pastures working for Paul Allen in Portland.)