I read this NY Times article over the weekend and found it rather refreshing:

Empowered by a wave of venture capital, a hiring boom and pride in its homegrown billionaires, this city has decided it no longer needs a mediocre professional basketball team to feel good about itself.
On Election Day, residents rebuffed their once-beloved Seattle SuperSonics, voting overwhelmingly for a ballot measure ending public subsidies for professional sports teams. [. . .]
The vote last week guarantees that the Sonics will leave their current home, KeyArena, in 2010, he said. The team may move to the Seattle suburbs and plans to talk to the State Legislature about that in coming weeks, but most people here think [the Sonics’ owners] will move the team to Oklahoma City.

In short, the cost of subsidizing an NBA team has finally exceeded the benefits that most Seattle residents believe they derive from having an NBA team. The same thing has already occurred in Los Angeles with regard to the NFL. As professional sports franchises test the upper limit of what consumers are willing to pay for their product, several other cities will likely follow LA and Seattle’s lead. That’s not a bad development. Warren Meyer agrees.