Jean Godden - Not Complicated: Howard has left the Building
Howard Schultz once apologized to Seattle. Sort of. The former Starbucks CEO confessed he made his “biggest mistake” in 2006 when he sold the SuperSonics to a non-Seattle businessman out of Oklahoma City. Although the new owners made half-hearted promises to keep the basketball team in Seattle, they realized their original intent and moved the team to Oklahoma two years later.
Writing in “From the Ground Up,” the book he authored in 2019, Schultz conceded, “I created a wound I cannot heal and for which I will always be deeply sorry.” He added that in retrospect he wishes he’d “held on to the team until someone local wanted to buy it.”
After talking about what he called “the biggest regret of my professional life,” Schultz insisted that he continued to value “the spirit of Seattle, this magnificent city and its pioneering spirit.” He explained he’d fallen in love with the city in 1981 when strolling through the Pike Place Market and visiting “a small coffee roaster called Starbucks” and came here to realize his dreams.” He claimed that he had helped others build a better life heading the “first company in America to give part-time employees health-care coverage and stock ownership, as well as pioneering a program allowing employees to get a college degree, tuition free.”
His self-serving apology about the loss of the city’s basketball team was issued during his presidential bid, running as a “centrist independent.” He argued that his aim was to remove Trump (then serving his first term) from office and “helping to fix our broken two-party system.” But Schultz’s presidential bid didn’t fare well and he eventually dropped out. Nor did his apology to the city work out. Unforgiving cynics said his mea culpa was undertaken simply because Schultz recognized selling a beloved sports franchise remained a sore topic in Seattle.
https://www.postalley.org/2026/05/19/not-complicated-howard-has-left-the-building/