A Team Worth Fighting For

"Baseline jumper by Olajuwon... good! And the Rockets lead!"

"Pass out to Maxwell, three pointer on the way... good!"

"Francis dribbling left, looking, now driving baseline-SLAM DUNK!"

"How sweet it is! Rockets win!"

The timing is no coincidence. Just days after Gene Peterson broadcast his 2,000th game, the arena referendum comes to a vote. Below ballot choices for President, Congressman, and City Councilman, Houstonians have a chance to ensure the Rockets stay in their home city for good.

I don't think it will be an opportunity wasted.

Unlike Peterson's beloved and unabashedly pro-Rocket broadcasts, the issue of the arena referendum has been thoroughly explored from all sides over the past year. Vote for it, vote against it, stay away from the ballot box altogether-- everyone's had their say. It's as though Peterson had temporarily allowed for the possibility that every viewpoint, pro-Rocket and otherwise, mattered -- as though he'd allowed the political version of Utah Jazz fans to share the mike with him.

To those of us who bleed Rocket red-and-gold-and-now-clown-pinstripe, however, it's the pro-Rocket vituperations that resonate.

The arena, financed by existing taxes and franchise contributions that are wholly unusual in today's NBA, makes perfect sense. It builds a new home for the Rockets, a home which will allow the team to remain competitive in the post-Olajuwon NBA. It places Houston again at the forefront of American professional sports, with world-class stadiums for its baseball, football, and basketball franchises.

The alternative, of course, is to embrace the naïve belief that the ills of society are in any way alleviated by abolishing professional sports. Believing that the financial benefits of a professional basketball team are limited to the billionaire who owns it and the millionaires who play for it, in other words.

Broadening an issue is a classic parry for those on the losing end of an argument. The arena referendum, they will tell you, cannot be simply dealt with as a yes-or-no consideration; rather, it is symptomatic of wildly profligate spending slanted towards the wrong end of the socioeconomic spectrum.

Well, if twelve months of debate haven't convinced you, I doubt I can change your minds in the few paragraphs of this column. But the simple fact is that in the narrow consideration of political reality, the arena referendum IS a yes-or-no question. It is a question of spending pre-allocated tax revenues on the intended target: professional sports in Houston. Do we want the Rockets to stay?

Do we want to watch them regain their strength, again climb to the top of the NBA, again dunk in David Stern's face by winning a championship he'd so love to see belong to the Lakers or Knicks?

Do we want to once again hear Gene Peterson shouting his lungs out, describing another Rocket World Championship?

Yes. Yes, we do.

How sweet it is!