The best thing I’ve read (so far) today is this article by Brian Phillips in which he, literally, says the most perfect things regarding the almost 5 year old relocation of the Sonics, who have since become my beloved Oklahoma City Thunder team.
We recognize that sports teams are mostly dumb corporations that don’t care about us, which is why our outrage at their corporate-like behavior tends to be inconsistently applied and limited to specific cases. (Otherwise we’d have to be angry all the time.) In a way, it’s weird to be just FURIOUS about the Zombie Sonics and totally at peace with the Zombie Lakers or the Zombie Dodgers or the Zombie Every Other Team That Abandoned Its Original Fan Base for Money. Yes, what happened to you, Seattleite, was somewhat worse, because of how it all went down, than what’s happened to millions of other fans, but it wasn’t a different kind of thing. Just a bigger fish from the same bad pond.What I’m saying here is, it’s disingenuous to live in the world of product and branding and @KingJames six days a week and then get mad about loyalty and community on Sundays. But it’s as if we need the occasional issue on which to vent our subliminal resentment toward the Nike model just to remind ourselves that there is a loyalty-and-community dimension here, even if it mostly exists in memory and fantasy. Because if there isn’t, then what the hell is a sports team?
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