SEATTLE — Howard Schultz faced a full-court press of troubles as 2006 began. That the Seattle SuperSonics were lousy, having their worst season in 20 years, was only the beginning.

Though the Sonics were a storied N.B.A. franchise, with a league championship in 1979, attendance was down at their Seattle arena along with points scored and revenues earned. As the team’s lead owner, Mr. Schultz was facing unrest from fans and partners alike. At the same time, Starbucks, the coffee company he had built into a global giant, was about to hit a bad patch, too, as the first ripples of the Great Recession began to rise into a flood tide.

You don’t have to be a basketball fan to know which problem Mr. Schultz was able to fix.

The Sonics no longer exist — sold by Mr. Schultz’s group that same pivotal year, and later moved to Oklahoma City and renamed, even the memorabilia packed away. Now, as Mr. Schultz mulls running for president as an independent candidate, his path through that moment says a lot about him — how he handles adversity and uncertainty, and how he grasped or did not the nettle of local politics as the Sonics were flailing, according to more than 20 people who have observed him, befriended him or worked with or against him over the years.

His basketball legacy has left many in Seattle outraged to this day, believing Mr. Schultz to be either duplicitous or duped by others. Yet his actions at Starbucks — including a raft of innovations introduced before and during the recession, like health insurance for baristas — became the stuff of adoring Harvard Business School case studies. In Fortune magazine’s ranking, Starbucks is the fifth-most admired company in the world.