Belmore

The Sonics are coming back? Yes. Well, maybe. Well, maybe not.

The plan sounds great (no new taxes, most of the money coming from the investment group, cost overrun protection, etc.) and I fully support the idea of the new arena being built south of SafeCo (click through the link for the planned site). Plus all signs point to being able to call them the Sonics and pretend like the last four years never happened.

However, that said, a lot of this hinges on whether Chris Hansen (no not that Chris Hansen) and his investment group can actually get their hands on another team. For as much as North Carolina could care less about the Bobcats I really don’t think Jordan is going to sell, the NBA wants to keep the Hornets in New Orleans (at least that’s their public stance), and the Kings seem closer than they have in the past year to getting a deal on a new arena in Sacramento (they have to get an agreement in place by March 1st).

I have complete faith that if they find a team they will make an agreement with Seattle work in some way, shape, or form to build an arena, but finding the team looks like a major hangup to me.

Plus, Seattle is still hurting from having their team stolen. Is it really that great of an idea to steal another team?

ETA: This also involves acquiring an NHL team, which would be pretty neat. SoDo would be busy every night (not including pre- or post-season, that’s 8 football games, 81 baseball games, 41 basketball games, and 41 hockey games, all within a half-mile of each other), and it’s an obvious rivalry with Vancouver. Nice.