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March 23, 2006
Four Freakin' Bucks
This must be why they're talking about moving to Bellevue
Lovely evening at Key Arena last night. I find that I'm probably not writing about the Sonics nearly enough, given that I've actually attended a solid 60 percent of the team's home games this year to date. If we were to summarize the team's performance to date, we would have to say that they were pretty disappointing. After winning more than 50 games last season, they're going to be lucky to win 30 this year. Many theories have been floated, mostly regarding the defection of 2004-05 coach Nate McMillan to rival I-5ers the Blazers. Me, I'm more about last year being a contract year for Ray Allen and this year being a coasting and vesting year for #34. My exec sum of all of this tends to fall somewhere along the lines of "Like I needed another crappy NBA team to root for."
Still, despite the overall crapulence of this season, the future doesn't look so terrible. The Sonics' trade deadline deals seem to have worked out. Chris Wilcox and Earl Watson have played very well, and the team can boast a nucleus of young bigs who should serve the franchise well for years to come. So that's all quite lovely for them.
But that's not what I'm writing about.
What I'm writing about is one of the goofy interstitial promotions during last night's game. At this point in the season, I'm pretty familiar with the nonsense they run during the TV timeouts to keep the peoples in the stands interested. Beyond the on-court entertainments (the Boom Squad, the Dance Team, the Dunking Ushers), they also have the sponsored entertainments and promotions. There's the Jeep thingie on the scoreboard with Ray Allen, the Southwest shooting thing, the La-Z Boy promotion where you get to sit in a recliner behind the basket, and, of course, the Starbucks promo where an entire row wins free Starbucks cards. Again, I've been going to games all year and haven't been involved in any of these promos. I know the odds are against me, but still -- I figured I'd get lucky at least once.
I got lucky last night.
Our row -- Section 203, Row 2 -- won the Starbucks promo! Lights were shone upon us. There was much cheering and rejoicing! Life was good! Soon, low-level marketing drones descended upon our to distribute our Starbucks gift cards. Yippee. We gracefully accepted our prizes and politely opened them to reveal...a whopping four dollars in Starbucks value.
Four freakin dollars?!?!?!? Howard Schultz -- the dude who runs Starbucks -- also owns the Sonics. This is his deal, end to end. And all he's got for our punk asses -- as he's talking to the press about moving the team out of C@L -- is four dollars? For the loyal fans that are actually showing up for a meaningless late-season game against the Bucks? Four bucks barely gets me a single fancy coffee (say, a Vanilla Soy Latte) at Starbucks; never mind that four dollars gets you about 2500 calories at McDonald's. It just seemed a bit stingy. For shame, Howard. For shame.
(We also got a free eight-pack of Pepsi because the Sonics scored more than 108 points. This all sounds terribly ungrateful, doesn't it. It's one thing to complain about the uninspired play of the team; it's quite another to whinge about free food.)
Posted by thatkid at March 23, 2006 11:57 PM under
C@L
, Sports
Comments
That's funny. My Dial 7 cabbie when he picked me up at the airport on Sunday night asked where I was coming from. When I said Seattle, he said "Ahhh the home of Fourbucks!" I was like "Huh?" (I was tired - it was a long flight) and he's like "Fourbucks! I call it Fourbucks because everything costs four bucks!" I had never heard that before - apparently, it's commonly called Fourbucks but that's kind of a weird coincedence that they would give out gift cards in four-buck increments. Or maybe it's a marketing strategy. Either way, at least it'll cover the cost of one coffee. Maybe.
Posted by: Why Not Fivebucks? at March 24, 2006 7:30 AM
I remember years back Jerry Seinfeld commenting about Starbucks. "I had enough with the Starbucks. They should call it Four Bucks."
Posted by: KO at March 24, 2006 1:00 PM
crapulence = 1. Sickness caused by excessive eating or drinking. 2. Excessive indulgence; intemperance.
As in "Reunions at Princeton is quite the display of crapulence and uninhibited behavior."
(I picked this word up sophomore year for some reason)
Posted by: Thorles at March 25, 2006 10:08 AM
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