Ah yes, the power of money. The NBA is all up in arms over the fact that Key Arena doesn't have enough luxury boxes and is threatening to pull the Sonics out of Seattle. The NBA is such a joke right now, especially Stern. Key Arena is one of the last actually cool NBA arena's where the fans are actually close to the court and the NBA does not have to import sound to make it sound loud. If you recall, the league got caught doing this a few years back.....the story went away, and now they are doing it again.
I hope Seattle keeps the soops, but do we really need to pay more taxes on another stadium, when Key Arena is perfectly fine?
http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/news/story?id=2407965&POLL242=40000000000000000000000000000000000
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Comments:
Key Arena is a joke! I work there and I have worked in over half the NBA arenas. Key Arena is hands down the worst basketball facility I have worked in. There is no loading dock?! How can you have no loading dock in an NBA arena/ concert venue? They aren't only being shunned by the NBA, most concert promoters are opting to book in other venues, check the shows that have skipped Seattle and gone to the Everett Events Center. http://wwww.everetteventscenter.com. That's in Everett for God's sake!!! Everett!!! Not to mention the Tacoma Dome, which has always taken shows from Seattle. The City of Seattle should be shamed from that alone, but you want to jump on the NBA and Howard Shultz? The Seattle Center is in ruins, they have not been maintaining their buildings or their monorail, which by the way hasn't been running since the two hit eachother around Thanksgiving.
Sure it might be cool for the fans, the sightlines are alright and you can get close to the court. Close to the court is one thing, but if you get anything like the Detroit brawl, there is no way for security (or the lack ther of) to do anything. And don't tell me they aren't pumping crowd noise in there. I have worked over 80% of the games in the last 3 years and they are definitely piping noise into the building.
My final statement is that Key Arena is horrible and no renovation will be able to make it workable. The team will either find local financing. My best case scenario is that Paul Allen sells the JailBlazers and buys the Sonics from Shultz, then builds an arena in his South Lake Union overhaul. Another option that has been discussed is building an arena in Bellevue, not a bad idea, but horrible for the City of Seattle. The most likely scenario is that you will be able to drive south an hour and watch the San Jose Sonics.