Uggggghhhhhhh

What the hell?

I mean really. What was Nickels thinking?

a. I watched that trial, and you know what, Oklahoma deserves a basketball team.
b. Eh, it'll be fine, we'll just get the Celtics in here no problem, and everything will be just fine.
c. I'm really tired of being mayor. I wish I would do something really stupid and pointless so I could lose my job.

Of all the horrible low points with the Sonics:


This is much worse. And it makes it worse that it was self-caused. The city sure looked to me like it was going to win the lawsuit. The city certainly should have anyway. They showed what they had to show to win the case.

But, instead of fighting, they just took $45M. After Nickels said it wasn't about money, just pathetic. Sounds kind of like A Rod to me. Except far less understandable.

$45M over the 10 or so years the city is without a team is 4.5M per year. Regardless of what you think the Sonics bring to the local economy, it probably at least exceeds that amount. So why do this?

There should have been plenty of time to think out the eventualities of what to do if the city receives whatever offer. There is no reason and no excuse for a time crunch caused horrible decision. Even a complete loss at trial with the Sonics paying zero is preferable to giving up. At least then the city could appeal and force the team to stay here for 2 more years while the Schultz lawsuit could play out and possibly (probably) Bennett's friend David Stern would step in and work out a settlement so that OKC gets an expansion team right away. Instead, Nickels gave all the options up for essentially nothing. Great job.

Here's the mayor with Ernest Borgnine:


Oh, I guess it is councilwoman Jan Drago (who actually bought into Bennett's lie that he'd move the Sonics to Vegas if it turned out OKC wouldn't work out---please, his plan all along was (quite obviously) to move the team to OKC).

Just disgusting!