Let’s remember when Deadspin published a first-person account of working for Howard Schultz’s Sonics, on this day in 2012 (May 3)
In hindsight, it’s easy to see that Howard Schultz had exactly as much business owning an NBA team as he does running for President. Schultz was the type of rich guy the NBA covets: unimaginable wealth with hometown ties from their identity with a globally-recognized brand, and a corporate demeanor that would never embarrass the league the way Donald Sterling did.
Schultz proved to be a poor fit for owner of the Sonics and he decided to bail on his investment after a few years, and sold the team to an ownership group that was pretty outspoken about moving the team to Oklahoma City in 2006.
Seven years ago today, the (good for the moment) sports website Deadspin published a first-person account from Jeremy Repanich about working for Schultz’s Sonics. It’s an incredible read.
Here’s my favorite (and by which I mean “most infuriating”) anecdote Repanich told:
Schultz had deluded himself with the romantic ideal of the artisan. He preached that his shops were loci of community amid the American sprawl. Go into a Starbucks and you’ll know that’s not true. In the same way, he believed he could bend the economics and efficiencies of the NBA in his favor. For all the talk about caring, community, and investing in the team, things looked different on the inside. He nickel-and-dimed the club. He slashed bonuses to the sales staff. He made the team carry fewer players, paying to fill 12 roster spots instead of 13. He even raised prices in the office soda machine.
One story of Schultz’s cheapness is famous among his former staff. The Sonics’ previous owner, Barry Ackerley, had bought holiday gifts each year for the folks in the front office. When Schultz’s group took over, the custom died. Rightly or wrongly, some of the employees groused that no gesture had been made to them. According to an employee at the time, another of the team’s new owners, Richard Tait, the co-creator of Cranium, heard about the complaints and subsequently gave out copies of his popular board game. Not to be outdone, Schultz followed suit. He gave each employee a Starbucks gift card. One member of the staff — who wasn’t a Starbucks regular — decided to use his card to get some snacks. When he went to pay for his roughly five dollars’ worth of food, he asked how much money remained on the card.
“Well, you owe me money,” the cashier said.
The Sonics employee asked how much had been on the card to begin with.
“$3.50,” the barista replied.
At the time, we would later learn, ordinary customers couldn’t buy a Starbucks card with a value of less than $5. These were custom $3.50 gift cards.
(It would happen again. It became something of franchise lore that when the Storm won the WNBA title in 2004, the players — the first team to win any sort of championship for Seattle since the 1978–79 Sonics — also got cards that could barely cover a Starbucks coffee.)
tl;dr: Howard Schultz sucks.
Read the whole thing:
