As a resident of Washington, but not Pugetopolis, I’m still confused by the desire to put a new team at Key Arena. The traffic would be a nightmare. Then again I still don’t understand what’s so important about a damn roof either.

Oh it’s a cost I (and most other real fans) wouldn’t be whiling to pay if I was a Sonics fan. That’s the thing most of these studies/think pieces don’t take into account...a lot of these people think the taxes are worth it

Even if they get one back, there was a cost to saving the money — a decade-plus without a (very good) team. That might be a reasonable cost, but it’s a real one.

Interesting thoughts on the Seattle arena issue.

Yes, the victory conditions defined here are a bit odd. The Oak View deal, if I’m getting the numbers right here, costs ~$40 million in public money instead of $220 million that Clay Bennett wanted, so you save $$180 million (not chump change) and it costs you a team for at least a decade and maybe indefinitely.…

Oklahoma City hedge fund mogul Clay Bennett

Counter-counter-point: nobody derives any value from ever moving to Boise.

Nick Lacata? Really? He was the only quote you could get for this post? Nothing from Hansen’s camp? Nothing from AEG or Oak View?

Yeah, Hansen’s plan was predicated on getting an NBA team, but what’s the point of a private company renovating the Key just because?

If you spend time in Seattle in South Lake Union and Queen Anne, and ever have to drive on Mercer, you will know that that part of town has changed night and day since 2008. Traffic in that area was bad before then, and since Amazon and the other tech companies have blown up out there it has become downright awful.…

This comment seems to miss a certain key aspect of the Seattle deals. The new arena proposed in downtown by Chris Hansen will happen only if Seattle gets a team. If there’s no team, there’s no stadium (in the meantime they would play in the existing Key Arena).

Oklahoma City has had 3 of the best 20 players in the NBA over the last 5 years. Yes, 2 of them left for more money or to win championships.

I’ll just sit here and wait for the rest of Seattle to show up and complain about CenturyLink and SafeCo Fields...

Picture taking a hockey puck full speed in the nether regions with zero protection and you get some idea of the utter disregard for ones health that is required. Twenty years later, 5 broken fingers, countless stitches, broken wrist, broken ankle, 2 concussions (that i know of) and a week in hospital on I.V and I…

I was in Dublin many years ago (15?), and the four of us in the group decided to go catch a hurling match at Croke Park on the Sunday we arrived. Not having tickets, or a clue as to what we were doing, we jumped in a cab and asked the cabby to take us to the box office. “Box office?!”, he said incredulously, but…

Dammit, Jakob. I shoulda. Here’s one I found quickly, but feel free to post others in the comments if you find them! Thanks again for writing in.

So next year’s Tiger’s tax return will list at donation of “$10 million to Houston on Aug 31”. How convenient.  

+ 1 HBP

Just need to finally make the switch to blernsball.

Look, they said they had juiced balls. I went to talk to them, but we ended up talking about Russian orphans. That’s it. I swear.