After Another NBA Hoodwink, Hansen Group Should Fight For Team By Any Means Necessary

"Ya been had. Ya been took. Ya been hoodwinked. Bamboozled. Led astray. Run amock."

When the Twitter volcano erupted Monday with word of an NBA relocation committee's recommendation against the Sacramento Kings' pending move to Seattle, I spent a few minutes thinking of a movie line to describe the region's collective mindset.

And while Denzel Washington's portrayal of African-American civil rights leader Malcolm X in the 1992 movie of the same name spoke to something that's worlds more important than sports, I couldn't shake it from my inner monologue.

I guess those of us who want the NBA back in Seattle - for some that desire evaporated with Monday's news - had been hoodwinked. We were bamboozled. We were foolish enough to follow the NBA's Easy Bake instructions to capture a team.

We naively adherred to the logic that a billionaire ownership group, a re-energized fan base and a fortified arena plan - one that is virtually a thumbs up away from breaking ground - were enough.

We mistakenly assumed the rules apply equally for both sides. We thought it was a game of one-on-one, first to 21 points wins. We didn't realize the other side was spotted the first 20 points and our shots didn't count toward the end.

We let our guard down. We believed that the stars were aligned to right the wrongs that Howard Schultz, Clay Bennett and David Stern so gleefully brought to our corner of the country with the Seattle Supersonics' departure five years ago.

For some reason, we thought a silly notion known as common sense would prevail.

Oh, how Stern, Bennett and the league's lack of empathy for the Northwest proved us wrong. When money should have easily talked, the NBA balked, right in our faces. Again.

News of the committee's recommendation against relocation of the Kings by potential power owners Chris Hansen, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and Eric and Peter Nordstrom is a death knell to the effort to bring the NBA back to Seattle this year. Maybe longer.

The recommendation practically guarantees the Kings will stay in Sacramento, despite a potential ownership group in California whose parts are still in flux, an arena deal in which the land hasn't been purchased and, most importantly and head-shakingly, Hansen's binding agreement that must be scrapped. Don't forget the millions of dollars that his group has invested in the team's sale and move.

None of that matters because, according to a television interview Stern gave during a playoff game hours after the recommendation Monday, special consideration should be given to the incumbent side if it shows glimpses of funding an arena plan. The NBA doesn't like to move teams and respects tradition - something he apparently forgot five years ago.

Had. Hoodwinked. Bamboozled.

I'm angry. I'm frustrated. I'm disgusted. I've lost the appetite to watch this year's playoffs. Seattle played the NBA's game of getting an arena and finding strong ownership, and it lost again.

Hansen posted a message on his webpage assuring that he and his team would continue to fight up to and quite possibly beyond the NBA's Board of Governors vote on the relocation and sale later this month. He wrote that the potential owners have "numerous options at our disposal and have absolutely no plans to give up."

I wish him luck. He has traveled far down this road, and he should go down swinging. What's to fear? It's clear the NBA is more interested in maintaining and extorting its smaller market teams - no matter how much money they hemorrhage - for publicly funded arenas instead of returning to one of the country's top-tier cities.

If that's the case, then go for the gusto, Chris.

Sue them. Force expansion. Hit them in their checkbooks, where it hurts the most. This is not about Sacramento. It's about the need to remind the NBA and its long-standing commissioner that the way they do business is wrong and unethical. Give fans some glimmer that we control a piece of our destiny.

Get nasty. Turn the fight ugly. To quote another line from Malcom X, fight for this team, "by any means necessary."