I’m not trying to write this much about Macklemore, stories just keep happening. The guy is set to headline the Preakness with Pitbull this weekend and hung out onstage with the Oregon Duck LAST weekend. In two weekends he’ll be dating Kate Upton and winning a Most Beautiful Surfing Dog contest or whatever and we’ll never be rid of him.

Anyway, the reason we’re talking about him today is because he’s a loyal resident of Seattle, Washington, and as such, that makes him disdainful of the fine men and women of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Something about a pro basketball team being torn away moments before they became championship contenders, who can say for sure? So what happens when the NEW Sonics try to use the hit song of a guy who loves the OLD Sonics as their pre-game hype music?

TWITTER WARZ.

Read the rest of this entry »

My dislike for everything about how the Oklahoma City Thunder came to be is documented pretty well, so I’m just going to skip ahead to the part about how the “enthusiastic” and “deserving” Okie fans are dealing with a team that doesn’t have Chris Paul:

With 2:50 remaining in the third quarter Wednesday night, Thunder fans no longer could contain their frustration.

So they did the unthinkable.

They booed.

For two full seasons while hosting the displaced Hornets, local NBA fans never booed the home team.

That came while the Clippers were in the middle of a 42-12 run — the Clippers! — that sent the Thunder to their ninth straight loss.  They’re now 1-11.  Congratulations, Clay Bennett.  You took a successful NBA franchise and turned it into the Grizzlies.  **dances jig**  **waves genitals around**

[The Sporting Blog]

While I’ve been directing most of my ire about the Sonics’ move to Oklahoma at David Stern and Clay Bennett, Aubrey McClendon (pictured) was the Chesapeake Energy (CHK) CEO/billionaire who was bankrolling the criminal collusion to steal the team from Seattle.  So, what’s he been up to?

[A]s gas and oil prices rose this spring and summer, McClendon wasn’t happy with just making boatloads of cash on hyper-inflated gas prices. No, he doubled-down, and took out sizable loans from his broker and bought huge chunks of CHK stock in his own company as the share price roared from $37 to almost $70 this summer.

Then, when oil prices began to unravel and soon after, the stock market got all black-hole-ish, those banks who loaned him the money came knocking, wanting it back, because they were, uh, going out of business…

The stock reached an all-time high of $69.40 on July 2, the very same day the Sonics settled the lawsuit with the City of Seattle, essentially marking the end of the Seattle Supersonics franchise. [Seattlest]

McClendon’s net loss from selling all those shares he owed was a delicious $1.86 BILLION.  And yet, somehow, I still don’t think that’s enough pain and embarrassment.  Rich assholes always just lose shitloads of money, then gamble their remaining millions to get it all back.  Once — just once — I want a guy and all his male heirs tortured to death on their yacht by Somali pirates. I think I’ve earned that much.

[via Deadspin]

Former Sonic great and noted unprotected-sex advocate Shawn Kemp may have one more comeback left in the tank.  The 40-year-old, who has slimmed down again (here's a recent-ish picture), was reportedly offered a deal from Italian team Premiata Montegranaro.  Metro News says:

SHAWN KEMP ALLA PREMIATA. Ai cittadini di Seattle però la cosa non va giù, e per difendere il basket nella città della pioggia è sceso in campo anche uno degli ex più amati della storia dei Sonics: Shawn Kemp ha infatti esibito un cartello con scritto “Noklahoma” di fronte al municipio della città. Udite udite: a quasi 40 anni, “The Reignman”, dopo le brutte storie di cocaina e la folle evasione da un ospedale psichiatrico di 4 anni fa, ha ricevuto un’offerta dalla Premiata Montegranaro.

I don't speak Italian fluently, but I've stared at Monica Bellucci's rack enough to pick up a little bit of it, and I think that says Kemp opposed dickface Clay Bennett moving the Sonics to Oklahoma, and was offered a contract by Premiata.  All I have to say is, DON'T DO IT SHAWN!!!  Things aren't what they seem!  They don't really want you to play, it's just an elaborate plot by the Italian government to populate the country with a generation of very tall Italians.  They're trying to steal America's basketball dominance!  It's a trick to get you to go to Italy and sleep with all their women!

While we're on the subject, I'd like to take this moment to volunteer for Italy's next evil plot.

[The Sport Count via Ball Don't Lie] 

While some folks think Oklahoma City's ill-gotten basketball team is going to be renamed the Thundercats, I doubt it will be something so cool.  Keep in mind that Oklahomans are retarded.

A possible example of such retardery: the URL okcmarshalls.com redirects to NBA.com, while similar domains with other proposed team names (Bandits, Thunder, Thundercats) do not.  So the Seattle Sonics may very well now be the Oklahoma City Marshalls.  Yes, Marshalls.  With two L's. 

Now, I've never had the responsibility of naming a major professional sports franchise, but I'd like to think that if I did, I would run my proposed name THROUGH A GODDAM SPELL CHECK to make sure I had named the team after Wild West sheriffs and not a department store.  But that's just me.  I've got a weird habit of trying not to look like a complete dipshit.

Welp, that's all for the Seattle Sonics.  The city of Seattle caved and settled with Clay Bennett's ownership group to the tune of $75 million, so the team will play its games in Oklahoma City next season.  While the city keeps the rights to the "Sonics" name, there are no real prospects or promises to bring an NBA team back to the Emerald City.

I grew up a huge fan of Xavier McDaniel, and I died a little when the Bulls beat the Payton-Kemp Sonics in '96, so I'll try to keep this brief while hitting all the wickets:

Fuck that lying piece of shit Clay Bennett.  Fuck David Stern, that collusive cocksucker.  Fuck Howard Schultz for selling the team to Bennett, and fuck Starbucks, too.  Fuck Seattle's limp-dick government.  Fuck Hurricane Katrina.  And fuck Oklahoma fans who get indignant and say that they're more deserving of an NBA team than Seattle, the victim of uncaring ownership and a city whose only crime was not shelling out more tax dollars so a carpetbagging son of a bitch could make more fistfuls money. 

Get fucked, NBA.