Portland Trailblazers will not call Seattle's KeyArena home for preseason game

I guess Steve Kelley will have to catch a ride with Mighty Mouse and Resheed Wallace in that yellow Hummer going down south to Portland to watch his favorite NBA team play their scrubs against the Phoenix scrubs on October 14th.
Get a clue Steve, this was all about marketing the Blazers in the 13th largest media market, the largest media market in America without an NBA team.
This was not some pathetic chance for the good fans of Seattle to show anything to anybody. This was about marketng, as was your "story" about Brandon Roy asking if there would be a fan boycott, as are your stories from the summer league in Las Vegas. You are a tool for the NBA, knowngly, or unknowingly.

This had nothing to do with resolving the arena issue in Seattle, and bringing a team to Seattle to be the real home team.

In an interview last month, Tod Leiweke, CEO of Vulcan Sports & Entertainment, which oversees the Blazers, Seahawks and Sounders FC, said the Blazers want to play in Seattle because it made good business sense.

"This isn't designed to be some major statement," he said. "Those who are reading into that, they're just not reading it properly. I think relative to Portland, ownership has fought hard to make Portland work.

"There are lots of people in Seattle who still love the NBA and want to follow a team. It's only logical."

Reaction to the game was mixed when the news broke last month, but Miller said it didn't affect the team's decision.

"We didn't think that it was too soon to play there," he said. "We got a lot of positive feedback as well as some negative feedback and we just felt like the timing would have been OK and the situation would have been good."

Leiweke said the fiscal constraints of operating in a small market forced the Blazers to expand marketing in the Northwest. According to consulting firm ProAdvance, Portland is the 23rd largest media market in the nation and Seattle ranks 13th.

After the Sonics left for Oklahoma City, the Blazers received permission from the NBA to broadcast in the Seattle area and began televising games on Comcast Sports Net last season.

Read the Seattle Times Newspaper story: Blazers won't play exhibition here after all, by Percy Allen.

Don't insult us, thanks,
Mike Baker

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Visit me here:
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Seattle Times' Steve Kelley, "David Stern says he expects Seattle to get another NBA team"

Let's recap David Stern's position, and observation of the two meaningful facts, arena+Steve Ballmer=Sonics 2.0
The fans will show up in Seattle to watch THEIR team, they did, they will again, or at lease some of the 1.2 million people expected to move into the Seattle metropolitan area over the next ten years will (isn't that roughly the size of the Oklahoma City media market?). Showing up, or not, to a meaningless preseason game between the hated Portland Trailblazers (you miss being hated, don't ya) and the Phoenix Suns (the home and away, back to back games with GP facing Jason Kidd were epic contests set in the dead of Winter).
Show up, don't, it does not matter to the Sonics chances. The Blazers would get more respect if they just showed up at Green Lake and played there for an hour, a preseason grab for fans - not so much.

From Steve Kelley's Seattle Times column are three things everybody should hold in their heads when when others around you are imagineering a different picture of the Sonics rising again.

"The next step is really the right putative owner, who really wants to have a team and is prepared to do what it takes, working together with the city, the state to get an arena and get the job done," he said. "I think ultimately there will be [another team in Seattle]. I really do."
. . .
"I don't want to put the whammy on him [Steve Ballmer]," Stern said, "but he'd be a hell of an owner."
. . .
I asked Stern if this could be considered a hopeful sign for those of us who want the league in our town.

"I think it's just an attempt by Portland to do the right thing and show fans a good time," Stern said.

He was asked if he was concerned about a possible boycott of that game.

"I think the fans are entitled to do whatever they want to do," he said, beginning to move away. "It is an independent city. It always has been and I hope it always will be."
Steve Kelley gets the point here!

Here was my email that I fired of AT Steve Kelley when he whined about a possible boycott of a possible meaningless Blazer game:
Mr. Kelley,
When you end your column with, 
"And look at it as a very small, but necessary, first step to welcoming back the NBA.", it capped so much that is wrong with your story.

The only first, and necessary first stem is to secure funding to remodel KeyArena. No matter how many fans attended games, protests, courtrooms, it will always and only come back to the arena.

You can call the Blazers your home team all you want, but the NBA will never call that arena a home in its current condition.

This game is no help to Seattle, just to Paul Allen's Portland Trailblazers, and sports writers.

Good luck putting lipstick on that pig.

Mike Baker
Seattle, Wa
Sonics fan

So, I will not expect Steve Balmer to Facebook Friend me anytime soon to lobby for that Blazer game.

Have a great day,
Mike Baker

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Visit me here:
http://ManyWordsForRain.blogspot.com

Mr. Blazer, Steve Kelley, "Hatred for the NBA runs deep, but don't take it out on the players"

Steve Kelley, Mr. Blazer:
It isn't an insult. It's a gift. It shouldn't be boycotted. It should be celebrated.

Celebrated? The completion of the theft? The sent marking of Paul Allen's Portland Trailblazers on KeyArena?
If Steve Kelley is too cheap to go to Portland, then I guess we celebrate Steve Kelley saving a train ticket.

It's a night to put aside your anger at the NBA and acknowledge that, underneath that anger, a love of the game still smolders.

it is a night for you to open mouth kiss your sweetheart, pro sports, butter your bread Steve.

I'll always love this game, even as I detest many of the people who run it and ran it out of this town.

As a newspaper writer you will not give them any of your hard earned cash, so, maybe you are writing this column to other media peope?
I do not plan to give Paul Allen's Portland Trailblazers, an NBA franchise, a dime while SEATTLE does not have a SONICS home team.

As far as the anger is concerned, I'm with you.

In words but not deeds.

Read all about Mr. Blazer, here!

Have a great day,
Mike Baker

Sent from my iPhone
Visit me here:
http://ManyWordsForRain.blogspot.com

Seattle Times' Steve Kelley: Clock is ticking for city's NBA hopes

Way to kick out the jams Steve Kelley.
Today Kelley beat the trash can lids to the rhythm of truth and sang the song of the KeyArena blues.
It's beat, it's aging, and mostly empty.

Where are the business leaders Kelley wants to know. And, "Where is the civic pride?"

Great questions, unanswered for the most part, ignored by too many that insist on calling themselves business, or civic leaders.
I have wondered this as well. As much as Seattle is similar to other towns, in that we have our share of bandwagon fans, and general gloryhounds, there are more then our fair share of good and well-to-do citizens that prize themselves as leaders. Somebody has to step up to show public leadership, we have enough back room power brokers in this, but that is rarely enough to make something this big and complex happen.

At some point I was expecting the major sports writers to kick off the conversation with the general public. I thought it would have happened sooner, but those thoughts were rolling around in my head, and some comments here, back before the economy flipped on its head. We are, like it or not, bound to the schedule of the Washington State Legislature.

Thank you Steve Kelley for attending college basketball games in what was a pro basketball arena, and should be again.
Read Steve Kelley's column in the Seattle Times, here:
Clock is Ticking!
Have a great day,
Mr Baker
Sent from my iPhone