I have to admit I was caught off guard a couple of weeks ago when offered the chance to interview Tim Leiweke. Emotionally burnt out from a 6 month fight to get the building approved, focused on politics and with just a day of preparation I was not really ready to start thinking about the next phase of things just 1 hour after an MOU was signed and my interview reflected that state of mind.
Since that day we have seen OVG begin the process of building their organization with the hiring of Steve Mattson and Mayor Jenny Durkan held her first meeting with lead investor David Bonderman. The NHL also made a little announcement about expansion that seems to have gotten attention of hockey fans throughout the region.
On this site we've seen an explosion of new interest and to a lesser extent new participation. Thousands of new users are viewing our pages each day and a portion of those are actually logging in to participate in the conversation. Over the last 2 weeks SonicsRising.com has actually been in the upper half of SB Nation NBA sites, setting a pace that would rival the best years of Sonicscentral.com.
Not bad for a blog without a team.
On behalf of all of our site moderators I would like to welcome all of these new readers and encourage all of you to go through the admittedly annoying SB Nation two step verification process so that you can participate in the conversation going forward.
After a decade of advocating for the Sonics return some of the folks on the site are tired and your new voices will be welcome. Although there have been some challenging times we do our best to remain a fun and pragmatic forum focused on our hopes and aspirations to bring the Sonics back rather than the relentless negativity that tends to overwhelm social media and other forums. A copy of SB Nations community guidelines is available here and our own code of conduct is in the comments below.
At some point in the future we anticipate opening an NHL focused site but until then we expect SonicsRising.com to cover both the return of the Sonics and the NHL expansion process and arrival of Seattle's newest sports franchise.
One of my favorite observations over the last 2 weeks has been the relative disinterest in articles relating to the politics, process and conflict when compared to enthusiasm around the NHL’s arrival. While my hard hitting interview with Tim Leiweke has been slow to generated comments we are seeing substantially more volume, as well as tremendous social media interaction around our contest to determine the NHL team name. Perhaps, Tim Leiweke is right that the fun part is about to start because people clearly care whether it will be Kraken, Metropolitans, Steelhead or Sasquatch.
"The fun part is about to start now. We get to design the building, we get to talk about the building, we will talk about different features in the building, we get to talk about the two scoreboards and is this a big idea or is this a stupid idea because we got a scoreboard over each basket or each goal. Let's debate that. Instead of this crazy ass sh!t you guys debate on this site…" - Tim Leiweke, OVG
With that in mind I want to talk about other questions and subjects that would be fun to cover in the months to come.
My "Fun Question" for future debate or OVG to answer are in the comments below. As you'll notice there isn't much rhyme or reason to them but I'd love to know yours.
What questions should we be asking OVG?
What debates are we looking forward to as fans?
Again thanks to new and old readers for your support. We really appreciate all of you and look forward to hearing what you have to say.