Why We Should All Root for the Miami Heat

by Dave Zirin

The Nation.com Blog

June 11, 2012

http://www.thenation.com/blog/168311/why-we-should-all-root-miami-heat

The 2012 NBA finals presents more than a match-up of
two young, exciting, athletic teams. They present a
rooting litmus test. In one corner, we have the Miami
Heat, a team scorned for being built around a hastily
assembled group of free-agent all-stars Dwyane Wade,
Chris Bosh and the great LeBron James. No player in NBA
history has been scrutinized, picked apart and even
despised quite like James. The three- time MVP's
unforgivable crime, now two years old, was neither a
felony nor misdemeanor nor even a bad attitude. It was
his awkwardly managed departure from the Cleveland
Cavaliers and "taking [his] talents to South Beach." He
also earns arrows of anger for his alleged inability to
step up his game when the game is on the line. In
addition, his patchwork Miami team in the eyes of many
is as plastic, superficial and empty as the city they
call home.

In the other corner, we have the Oklahoma City Thunder,
a small market franchise beloved by the sports media
and fans for "doing it the right way." They drafted
beautifully and evolved organically toward greatness.
They are also led by Kevin Durant, the NBA's most
endearing superstar. The "Durantula" is only 23 but
already has three scoring titles, and he absolutely
lusts for the big moment. He also, unlike LeBron,
signed a long-term contract to stay in a small market
because he wanted to take the team that drafted him to
a title.

With such seemingly opposite teams and stars, the media
are already writing the 2012 finals script of "good vs.
evil." It's an easy, by-the-numbers narrative. It's
also bizarro world bullshit. This is one case where
good is evil and the evil in question resides in
shadows where fans choose not to look.

I would argue that how we choose to see the Heat and
Thunder is a litmus test. It's a litmus test that
reveals how the sports radio obsession with
villainizing twenty-first- century athletes blinds us
to the swelling number of villains who inhabit the
owner's box. And in Oklahoma City, we have the kinds of
sports owners whose villainy should never be forgotten.

Strip away the drama and the Heat are called "evil"
because their star players exercised free agency and -
agree or disagree with their decision - took control of
their own careers. The Thunder are praised for doing it
the "right way," but no franchise is more caked in
original sin than the team from Oklahoma City. Their
owners, Clay Bennett and Aubrey McClendon, with an
assist from NBA Commissioner David Stern, stole their
team with the naked audacity of Frank and Jesse James
from the people of Seattle.

For non-NBA fans, as recently as 2008 the OKC Thunder
were the Seattle Supersonics, a team of great
tradition, flare and fan support. They were Slick
Watts's headband, Jack Sikma's perm and Gary Payton's
scowl. They were a beloved team in a basketball town.
Then the people of Seattle committed an unpardonable
offense in the eyes of David Stern. They loved their
team but refused to pay for a new taxpayer funded $300
million arena. Seattle's citizens voted down
referendums, organized meetings and held rallies with
the goal of keeping the team housed in a perfectly good
building called the KeyArena. Despite a whirlwind of
threats, the people of Seattle wouldn't budge, so Stern
made an example of them. Along with Supersonics team
owner and Starbucks founder Howard Schultz - who could
have paid for his own new arena with latte profits
alone - Stern recruited two Oklahoma City - based
billionaires, Clay Bennett and Aubrey McClendon, to buy
the team and manipulate their forcible extraction from
Seattle to OKC.

Stern is a political liberal who has sat on the board
of the NAACP. Bennett and McLendon are big Republican
moneymen whose hobby is funding anti-gay referendums.
Yet these three men are united in their addiction to
our tax dollars. In Oklahoma City, where rivers of
corporate welfare awaited an NBA franchise, Stern,
Bennett and McClendon had found their Shangri-La.

Bennett, Stern and McClendon lied repeatedly that they
would make every effort to keep the team in Seattle,
McClendon however gave the game away in 2007, when he
said to the Oklahoma City Journal Record, "We didn't
buy the team to keep it in Seattle, we hoped to come
here.... We started to look around and at that time the
Sonics were going through some ownership challenges in
Seattle. So Clay, very artfully and skillfully, put
himself in the middle of those discussions and to the
great amazement and surprise to everyone in Seattle,
some rednecks from Oklahoma, which we've been called,
made off with the team."

While Bennett said all the right things about keeping
the Sonics in Seattle, a team executive dinner on
September 9, 2006, tells you all you need to know about
the man and his motives. On that fine evening, the
Sonics management, all held over from the previous
ownership regime, all Pacific Northwesters, gathered in
Oklahoma to meet the new boss. Bennett made sure they
were sent to a top restaurant, and picked up the bill.
As the Seattle execs sat down, four plates of a deep
fried appetizer were put on the table. After filling
their mouths with the crispy goodness, one asked the
waitress what this curious dish with a nutty flavor
actually was. It was lamb testicles. Bennett laughed at
their discomfort and the message was clear: the Sonics
could eat his balls. (See Sonicsgate.com for a full
accounting of this theft.)

If the Thunder win the 2012 title, the Clay
Bennett/David Stern approach will be lionized
throughout pro sports. The theft of the Sonics will be
justified and cities involved in stadium negotiations
will be threatened with being "the next Seattle" if
they don't acquiesce to the whims of the sporting 1
percent. A championship for the Thunder would be a
victory for holding up cities for public money. It
would be a victory for ripping out the hearts of loyal
sports towns. It would be a victory for greed,
collusion and a corporate crime that remains
unprosecuted.

Clay Bennett and Aubrey McClendon don't deserve
anyone's cheers. I don't just want the Thunder to lose.
I want LeBron James to make them wish they'd never left
the Emerald City. That is why no matter how much you
dislike the ill-fitting "Dream Team" in South Beach, or
swoon at the sight of Kevin Durant, anyone who cares
about the relationship of teams to their cities and
decries the way pro sports is used as an instrument of
corporate looting should know who to root for and whom
to root against. Without equivocation, all true NBA
fans, in the name of Slick Watts, should sound three
words this championship season: "Let's go Heat."

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