Is it just me or has this been wayyyy down-played in the media? The Seattle Sonics are LEAVING Seattle! They're going to Oklahoma City, where they'll have a new name and new colors. The SuperSonics name, logo and green, gold and white colors will be left for a potential future franchise in Seattle.
I suggest banning the group who named Oklahoma City's Arena Football team from having any say whatsoever in re-naming the NBA team. Granted they're an expansion team so the name can be a little out there, but the Yard Dawgz!?! The Oklahoma City Yard Dawgz??? Honestly. Who is the person who came up with this name? I would love to talk to them. And better yet, who are the people that sat in the meeting and said, "That's a great name!" And someone else said, "We should spell it all weird too!" Yes, it's really spelled like that.
It must make it seem tougher that way. Real hard core.
I'm all about change but the Sonics have been it Seattle since 1967! It just doesn't seem right. Those people need something to cheer for through all that dreary rain. Well, at least they can still brag about starting Starbucks (never mind, they're closing 600 stores. Bad times for Starbucks too). Well, they have the Mariners and the Seahawks (damn, Wikipedia is fast to update the Seattle page and delete the Sonics - and update Oklahoma City's page with an entire "relocation" section).
Click here to find out why this whole mess happened.
In other news, the L.A. Times is cutting 250 jobs including 150 editorial jobs. I just hope all my friends over there are okay. They're combining a lot of the print positions and online positions, which makes a lot of sense, but 250 jobs! They're also down-sizing the paper by 15%! This is a sad day for the industry and newspapers everywhere.
There seems to be an on-going war between print and online within companies. A sort of disconnected that I've noticed. I hope that when the two merge all goes smooth through this difficult change. Hopefully they continue to recognize the different audiences - online, which likes constant updates, blogs and quick news and the more feature-based, in-depth writing that works for paper.
Well, good luck Sonics and newspapers.
P.S. Do you like my picture choice for the L.A. Times? Fight on! I kept a few L.A. Times sports sections as a keepsake from memorable USC football games that I still have in storage. While I may move to New York, my heart will always be with the L.A. Times.
