Sonics win possible Seattle farewell (cont.)

Ian Thomsen's Mailbag

Ian Thomsen will periodically answer questions from SI.com users in his mailbag.

The new administration has pursued a disciplined strategy to accrue draft picks and salary-cap space while rebuilding around Durant, though the benefits are set to be harvested elsewhere. I don't believe that Bennett ordered the offseason departures of Ray Allen and Rashard Lewis as sabotage to ease his departure; new general manager Sam Presti is trying to grow a champion from the ground up, as he learned to do from his years in San Antonio. It's just that the timing happens to be awful.

Seattle's building is the smallest and its lease is the worst in the NBA, according to Forbes magazine. Bennett has wanted nothing to do with proposals to remodel KeyArena, preferring a $500 million suburban arena instead. But that was a non-starter politically after Seattle had built new stadiums for the Seahawks and Mariners.

A few important politicians have killed every proposal, while the leverage Bennett thought he held was used against him politically. The original premise was that Bennett -- rather than the previous owner, Howard Schultz -- would have a better chance of negotiating for a new arena because legislators would believe his threat to move the team. I have talked to several league people involved in the process -- including some no longer associated with the Sonics -- who are convinced that Bennett's original intention when he bought the team in July 2006 was to keep it in Seattle. For that he deserves little credit. The most generous thing that can be said of Bennett is that he inherited a difficult situation not of his making, and that he responded by negotiating poorly and giving up prematurely. Either that or else he was acting in bad faith all along.

In either case, the NBA had to back him after his Oklahoma group paid an exorbitant $350 million to buy the Sonics, because that's how the league measures its growth, rather than by annual profits and losses. It would be a bad precedent for future owners if Bennett was held accountable for cleaning up a mess in Seattle that he quickly realized was not agreeable to him or his partners. The league wants new owners to buy in, after all. And so 41 years of goodwill has been trashed.

The naïve hope that another team will move into Seattle is absurd. Local government and taxpayers are going to suddenly turn about and invest hundreds of millions of dollars in an arena project on behalf of the NBA? The people in Seattle who loved the NBA for 41 years are going to hate the NBA when it leaves. They are going to feel betrayed by Bennett and commissioner David Stern, and what had been a point of foundation for the NBA will become a radioactive wasteland. Other leagues may prosper in Seattle, but for the NBA it will be Chernobyl.

So this is how it ended. The Mavericks were winning by six points with three minutes to go when something happened. A three-point play by Collison, a jump shot by French center Johan Petro and then, with the crowd on its feet roaring, a dribble into space followed by a fully extended Durant jumper to give Seattle a 96-95 lead with 41.6 seconds remaining.

Jason Terry, born in Seattle, missed one of the eight shots Dallas failed to make in the last three minutes, and Durant leaked out for a triumphant dunk. It will never be louder in Oklahoma City, and never so loud again in Seattle, where it was the saddest of all the happy nights this team has known.