Portland Blazers Decide to Skip Exhibition Game in Seattle

You can go back to sucking your thumb in the fetal position, Sonics fans. It was all just a bad dream.

The Blazers announced that the October 14 exhibition game against the Suns at Key Arena—the NBA’s first scheduled return to Seattle—has been scrapped and moved to Portland.

The game, which Vulcan/Blazers CEO Tod Leiweke said “makes good business sense” would have served two major purposes, neither of which would have really assuaged the Sonics faithful.

First, it would have marked Portland’s first salvo in their campaign into the deceased Sonics’ territory, a land still torn and tattered from David Stern, Greg Nickels, and Clay Bennett’s private little game of Risk.

Second, Stern could have sat back as the scab was ripped clean off, leaving a wound nearly as fresh as the day Bennett stormed out of town with the city’s only pro sports franchise to host a victory parade.

From the early rumors of fan boycotts, to the Save Our Sonics picket line, to the scathing media jabs, to the three-quarters empty Key Arena, the game would have made an easier target than Spencer Pratt.

And it would have all come together to form a perfect little mass of discontent; a mass that would fester and growl and allow Stern to further wash his hands of the city whose lawmakers left a taste in his mouth that would never be confused for a cherry popsicle.

Now, I understand what the Blazers are/were trying to do. They need look no further than their MLB neighbors to the north, the Mariners, to visualize the benefits of having multiple markets from which to draw fans.

Despite Seattle’s relatively pedestrian size compared to other MLB cities, the Mariners are able to generate enough revenue (in a stable economy) to join the likes of the Yankees, Dodgers, and Red Sox with a nine figure player payroll.

This is, by-in-large, because of their vast geographic reach (they have radio affiliates in Washington, Idaho, B.C., Alaska, Montana, and Oregon).

Unfortunately for the Blazers, their road to similar geographic greatness is uphill. Hard to believe that a young team on the upswing with a coach (Nate McMillan) and a superstar (Brandon Roy) with illustrious Seattle history will have trouble growing their fanbase north of Chehalis.

Why? Because, in the Seattle-Tacoma market, the Blazers are in a rare pro sports purgatory where they don’t appeal to the either casual fan OR the passionate fan (also see: Detroit Lions, The).

The NBA product is not as attractive to casual fans as the MLB product, especially the MLB product in Seattle. Major League Baseball has Little League, kids on summer vacation, outdoor ballparks, and the guy that goes by one name is Ichiro and not Nene.

The casual fan just wasn’t there in the Sonics final two years. Nobody wanted to fight for a team that had been stripped for parts. Other than a strong showing from rally groups like Save Our Sonics and the local media (some of whose jobs were directly tied to the Sonics), a good percentage of town reacted with an indifferent whimper when the team left.

They just weren’t going to be held at gunpoint by another pro sports team’s financial ultimatums.  So why would they suddenly feel the urge to venture into an NBA arena to see the Blazers?

If I may oversimplify, that leaves the passionate sports/NBA fan. This one is much more simple. Anyone who follows sports or the Sonics wouldn’t be caught dead trading their green and gold for black and red.

In Seattle, the line to hand hard-earned money to the NBA isn’t much longer than the one for Poseidon.

So, the Blazers dipped their toe in the water and learned that even in 103 degree heat the waters are still too cold to even think about wading in.