If I were the owner....and had to stay in Seattle...then I'd dump the entire group of players...and hire twelve Italian basketball players. I'd proceed to make the entire 2009 season into a massive joke for Seattle. The hotels that would receive visitors for games...empty. The restaurants that would have had game guests after the game...empty. The local airport...no one would fly in from Boston or LA to watch their team play in Seattle. By spring of 2009...the city would be begging me to leave and not torment them any longer. The city deserves this kind of mess.
actually with the Ray Allen trade and letting Lewis go they started that already. The fans might want to have the team leave by 2009, but the ownership already killed off the fan base this year.
But the problem is, nobody travels to see a basketball team.
And sports teams in general don’t really create entertainment dollars, the take it from existing entertainment options. And when a team leaves, the entertainment dollars don’t disappear, they just go into other activities - movies, concerts, plays, restaurants, bars, nightclubs, zoos, etc...