Sonics Coda

I went down to the Sonics team store to buy some of the history Clay Bennett so graciously declined to take to Oklahoma. A guy was walking out with a box as tall as he was. It held a nearly-life-size Kevin Durant bobblehead. Inside, a line of about 25 waited to buy dwindling supplies of Sonics stuff at 75% off. Behind me in line, a female Sonics employee talked on the phone about her future with the team and whether she would move to Oklahoma City.

"I've had better days." That was the response of the cashier to the rhetorical question of how he was doing. I bought a Sonics hat, a long-sleeved Durant t-shirt and a nylon Sonics wallet. Price: $15.25, down from $55.97. I pocketed a Sonics keychain flashlight. It was my symbolic pound of flesh for the theft of the team from Seattle. Outside, the KeyArena message board flashed information about an upcoming Neil Diamond concert.

A few hours after the Sonics settlement came down, I saw an exceedingly strange movie called "My Winnipeg." In it, director Guy Maddin narrates a phantasmagoric analysis of why he has been unable to leave his lifelong home, which comes across as the Buffalo of Canada.

One of the things Maddin laments is the departure of his beloved NHL team, the Winnipeg Jets; they bolted for hockey-mad Phoenix in 1996. For Maddin, this was a personal insult. His mother gave birth to him in a locker room of the old Winnipeg Arena while his dad was coaching a game. So Maddin perceived a small victory when it came time to implode the old barn. The first round of dynamite only destroyed the sections of the arena added on when the Jets joined the NHL. That the main frame withstood the initial explosion convinced Maddin it was a sign -- of what, who knows?

So what small victory can Sonics fans take from their team's departure? Bland bromides from city leaders about the possibility of a new team at an unspecified later date? Really, we're just left with a settlement larded with more dependent clauses than a nursing home full of Santas. Seattle, meet Winnipeg. Maybe you can go to the Neil Diamond show together.