A New Way to Think About Rain:

Oklahoma City is one of those places where the wind comes whistlin’ down the plains. They get thunder, twisters, lightning, and torrential downpours. The weather comes in from the west and sometimes has people running to the storm cellars. Now the Seattle Sonics are on the way in from the west.

Clay Bennett has managed to secure a settlement with the city to move the team immediately; so there! In exchange the city gets $45 million out of the $75 million in rent the Sonics would have paid over the next two years. And the city gets to keeps the rights to the team name and colors.

That means Oklahoma City has to come up with a new name and color scheme right away or else the NBA won’t let them play. In a gesture of good will the Seattle basketball fans have submitted hundreds of suggestions. We don’t need to review them here because blogspot might remove my blog. Let’s just say some of them are pretty creative, imaginative, and anatomically impossible, if you get my drift.

The NBA promises that Seattle can buy a new team at some point if they really want to have a team. But to do that Seattle has to build a new arena for them to play in, because after all, that old 1962 World’s Fair venue is just not enough space.

And that brings us back to thinking about rain. The agreement essentially says that if taxpayers are somehow tricked into buying a new arena that holds tens of thousands more fans the city will get the other $30 million rent. In other words we would have to seed the clouds with $500 million before they will rain down the $30 million. And in doing so make some filthy rich basketball team owner richer by selling a gazillion luxury box seats. At least there’s a plan.

Al