OKC V. Seattle

Oklahoma City V.
Seattle

The way our city and the city of Seattle look at the Sonic situation interests me. The latest twist in this "Sports Opera" is that Howard Shultz, the former owner of the Sonics and founder of Starbuck Coffee (sic), has followed through on his promised lawsuit to void the sale of the team to the Professional Basketball Corporation headed by Clay Bennett. The headline in The Oklahoman, the newspaper in OKC, reads "Ex-Sonics owners follow through on lawsuit threat".

In The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, the headline is "Bennett knew he could "flip" team. The story discusses how e-mails discovered through Shultz lawsuit allegedly indicate that Bennett was not interested in owning a team in Seattle, and that had the move to OKC not worked out, his group would have sold the team to another group of owners and used the proceeds to buy a team he could have moved.

Both articles carry the same facts, but from the outset, our paper emphasizes the "ex-owner" who is making a threat while the Seattle paper focus on Bennett personally and his motives for owning the Sonics.

It's a well known ploy in politics that if you can make your opponent the issue, you have gained a major upper hand in your fight. Looks as though both papers are doing their part in the battle.