When KeyArena opened in 1995, I thought of it as an astutely conceived compromise between the NBA's answer to the Taj Mahal and the broken-down Seattle Center Coliseum.
KeyArena wasn't drop-dead impressive, but it combined two elements rare in modern arena architecture: It was comfortable, and yet it was cozy. That it went two-for-two on those counts mitigated the traffic problems and parking headaches associated with staging pro basketball games in a neighborhood whose infrastructure is barely equipped to entertain 16 diners at a Thai restaurant.
But I didn't look at KeyArena as a Seattle treasure until the next spring, when I went to Chicago to cover the conclusion of the Sonics' NBA Finals series against the Bulls. I bought three Chicago-area papers at the airport newsstand, and expecting the usual provincial silliness belittling coffee-sipping Sonics fans, found the reportage steeped in nostalgia and envy.
KeyArena, I was told, presents basketball as it oughta be. Fans scream. Rafters shake. The place totally rocks.
Sometimes you don't know what you've got till it's gone. And sometimes, you don't know what you've got until you walk off a plane and read about it in another town's newspapers.
Time marches on, of course, and in the six years since Chicago favorably compared KeyArena with its own, antiseptic United Center, the notion of a comfortable, cozy neighborhood arena is as archaic as the swimsuit-sized basketball shorts Larry Bird used to wear.
Posh, three-tier arenas catering to the corporate-suite set is the way to go because, well, everybody else is going that way. It doesn't matter that nobody likes posh, three-tier arenas. It doesn't matter that each extra tray of trimmings compromises the spice.
It doesn't matter ... unless, perhaps, you consult all those millions of Chicagoans who remember when the Bulls and their hockey co-tenants, the Blackhawks, called the Chicago Stadium home. The concourses were cramped, and the water faucets in the restrooms didn't always work, but the "Big Barn" packed a mystique bordering on magic.
This was where Joe Louis and Sugar Ray Robinson and Rocky Marciano fought; where Franklin D. Roosevelt accepted his first nomination to run for the presidency; where a blizzard forced a football game indoors for the first time. Dirt from a traveling circus was spread on the floor for the 1932 NFL championship game, and the Bears - displaying the sort of offensive whimsy their present-day counterparts can't grasp - won on a Bronko Nagurski touchdown pass thrown to Red Grange.
Balcony fans were positioned over the floor almost vertically, and when they cheered, the screaming voices bounced off the ceiling and reverberated, creating an atmosphere on the edge of chaos.
Then it was gone. The Palace at Auburn Hills had opened outside Detroit, and the skybox revenue the Pistons were commanding made the Stadium's 70-year history worthless. The United Center was built across the street; it is three times the size of the Big Barn, and on a good night, it packs one-third the noise.
Yes, the value of the Bulls franchise was fattened, but it came at the expense of the fan. An awful team now plays in an awful place.
But that didn't stop Dallas, and it didn't stop Miami, and it didn't stop Atlanta, and it probably won't stop Seattle.
While Sonics president Wally Walker insists the team intends to fulfill the eight years remaining on its lease, he won't rule out the possibility of a new arena on the horizon.
Yuck.
Look, I'm not necessarily against progress. I advocated a new ballpark for the Mariners because the Kingdome was to a baseball game what a bus-station vending-machine sandwich is to Thanksgiving dinner.
I was not convinced the Seahawks needed a new home; nevertheless, a campaign was waged, a vote was passed, and when it was all said and done, I slept OK.
But on the KeyArena issue, this build-it-and-they-will-come hawk for a new ballpark turns into a dove. Or maybe it's the other way around. Maybe I'm a dove who has become a hawk.
Put it this way: I want some talons.
Sonics majority owner Howard Schultz talks often about restoring a fan atmosphere of "passion" to his team's games, and he uses 1996 as a point of reference. It was a thrill ride, Schultz emphasizes, that can be re-created.
It all sounds good, until a quiet and shy work in progress like Rashard Lewis announces that it'll take $100 million to keep him in Seattle. What do you do?
If I'm Howard Schultz, I remember the passion of the thrill ride. And then I decide it's easier to replace Rashard Lewis than the sound of KeyArena on a spring night.