Seattle Can Only Go Up From Here

Milwaukee may have a bit to go to get their arena done, but their current owner, Herb Kohl, did the right thing today in selling to someone who would keep the Milwaukee Bucks in the very city in which they belong.

We had our heroes in Chris Hansen and Steve Ballmer make their pitch to the Bucks, but they were told no because they were only interested in moving the team to Seattle.  Eventually Kohl found two hedge fund billionaires who would buy the Bucks and even use their own cash to put into their new arena.

You have to smile for Milwaukee.

Some of the profits ($100M-remember he's not getting all $550M) that Kohl is taking from the sale he is putting toward the new arena as well.  That is just commendable.  The steadfastness and resolve that Kohl has shown in keeping the Bucks in Milwaukee is definitely something to be admired and emulated by future professional sports owners.

It would have been amazing if eight years ago Howard Schultz had the constitution to be so unyielding, to hold out until the right buyer was found locally.  Instead he took his cash, tucked his tail and went home.

Seattle should be gearing up for a potential championship run with Kevin Durant, Nick Collison and the rest of the Seattle Supersonics.  Instead we are settled on the sidelines for another postseason that promises to be one of the most entertaining in recent memory.  At least on the Western Conference side of the bracket.

It was almost worth getting excited about the "what-if" possibility of the Bucks.  There were even rumors out there that they could be ours and then the Bill Simmons tweets came out. Simmons was the only one to report the potential sale; no one else had even heard about this.  It was just him and him alone.

I could understand the heartbeat getting a little faster at that thought.  It's okay, I understand.  Even I was thinking there might have been a shot.  Turns out there really wasn't, as Hansen and Ballmer had been told no long ago, and those reports had never surfaced until this last week.  I wish someone would have leaked those, but that just goes to show how tight the Hansen/Ballmer camp keep their business.

Expansion is coming and I have been saying that forever. The Bucks were just a minor hiccup that  we should not think about going forward.  They are off the table.  It is time to put our efforts in a positive form and figure out the best way we can market ourselves to the NBA to get our Sonics back.

We've had six years to be relentlessly negative; it's time to push that energy into something positive. Who's with me?