Ethiopian Review

“Is anyone in this line getting a drink?” the U-Village barista asked the crowd. Some shook their heads no, while others smirked as 2 p.m. approached. Most were just college students waiting for free Mariners tickets.

Starbucks launched We-Love-You Fridays last week, a campaign geared toward returning the love that Seattle has shown the company since its start in Pike Place Market. From May 21 to June 18, participating Seattle-area Starbucks are giving out free tickets to special events as “acts of love.”

On paper and online, the campaign’s slogan is superimposed on top of an image of the Pike Place Market sign: Starbucks From Here For Here.

While the company pushes to demonstrate love and localism in the coming weeks, Seattle is reminded of a past “act of love” — or lack thereof.

“Starbucks loves the sports fans of Seattle so much they sold the Sonics to some assholes in Oklahoma! Screw you Starbucks!” a comment said on the Starbucks Facebook event page.

Although the response to the campaign may seem out of context or inappropriately extreme, its message does not fall very far from the truth.

Starbucks has chosen sports as its first “act of love,” which is ironic, considering that no more than two years ago, the CEO, Howard Schultz, sold the Sonics to a group of Oklahoma businessmen for $350 million.

Schultz made comments about the Key Arena being inadequate and advocated for a $220 million remodel in 2006, but local government rejected the proposal. He sold the team in 2008, claiming that they were losing money because of a bad arena.

Schultz was not the only one responsible for the move, however. Oklahoma businessman Clay Bennett initially claimed that he wanted to keep the team in Seattle. But shortly after he bought the Sonics, he and NBA commissioner David Stern revealed that they had no problem with the team’s relocation. Both Bennett and Stern blamed Key Arena, which was last renovated in October 1995. Seattle’s lack of a state-of-the-art facility was their excuse to leave.

Bennett fast-tracked the relocation by violating the team’s lease agreement with Key Arena, which was supposed to last until 2010. The City of Seattle filed a lawsuit against Bennett, giving Seattle patrons more time to act.

However, with less than an hour before the verdict announcement, former Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels announced that Bennett and the city had reached a settlement that allowed an early termination of the lease.

This, in short, is why the Lakers played the Oklahoma Thunder instead of the Seattle Supersonics in this year’s playoffs.

During the case against Bennett, the city asked acclaimed author Sherman Alexie — who had attended approximately 300 Sonics games and had been a season-ticket holder for 12 years — to testify on the value of professional basketball.

“First and foremost, it is really about my relationship with my father. My father was a huge professional basketball fan,” Alexie said in the courtroom.

“That was our primary means of communication. Emotionally, physically, athletically, spiritually — everything had to do somewhat with basketball,” Alexie said in an interview with sonicsgate.org. “It was our way of talking about anything. It was also our surrogate. We could say ‘I love you’ because we were talking about Magic Johnson.”

Whether or not Schultz was aware of Bennett’s ill intentions doesn’t change the responsibility he had as the Sonics owner. Obviously he could have done more.

In 2006, he could have easily influenced the nine members on the board of the Basketball Club of Seattle into voting for the Sonics not to be sold. Instead of solely relying on state funds to improve Key Arena, the Starbucks CEO could have invested in the team’s sustainability himself. Or he could have searched harder for local investors, such as Microsoft CEO Steve Balmer and private investment groups, who eventually offered more than $300 million to keep the team in Seattle.

Love in terms of basketball — Schultz initiated the motions of getting that taken away from Seattle. Losing a 41-year legacy and a future of pride and memories, that’s something hard to forget, even over free Mariners tickets and the smell of frappuccinos.

Reach columnist Kevin Wong at opinion@dailyuw.com.