NBA Owners Ignore Lawsuits, Approve Sonics Move to OKC

Capping off a week of revelations and threats, the NBA Board of Governors today approved the move of the Sonics to that noted metropolitan area of Oklahoma City despite the continued existence of a lease with the Key Center in Seattle through 2010, and ongoing litigation with the City of Seattle over the terms of that lease. Ignoring legal niceties, Clay Bennett and his merry band of Raiders convinced the Board of Governors to confirm the plan they hatched when they bought the team from Howard Schultz.

This week saw the revelation of internal emails among the Raiders which would lead a reasonable outsider to believe that the group had no intention of keeping the Sonics in Seattle. That will be a very significant point in both the existing litigation in which the Raiders are attempting to terminate the Key Center lease and truck out early and in the proposed suit by Howard Schultz, first announced this week, for a return of the team as a result of a breach of the purchase agreement by the Raiders. The basis of that suit, if filed, is that Clay Bennett and his merry men failed to make good faith efforts to keep the team in Seattle. Nice of Schultz to try to ride to the rescue of the Sonics at the eleventh and a half hour, much as he was recalled to save Starbucks, but let's not forget that had he been more concerned about the city when the Sonics went on the market, he would have called Steve Ballmer and sold the team to him instead of Bennet and the Raiders. Then, none of this would have happened. Sure, he might have made a little less money, but the Sonics would be in Seattle and he still would have made a fortune on the sale.

Why David Stern is hell bent on seeing the team leave Seattle remains a mystery to me. It is especially mystifying as to why he is so intent on moving to OKC, a market that is, what, the 45th largest media market in the country? Sure, they supported the Hornets for two years while in exile from New Orleans and maybe the Hornets should have stayed there, but to leave Seattle, which has supported the team for 41 years and is the 13th largest media market in the US and will be by far the largest without a NBA team. It doesn't make sense despite the sweetheart lease deal. It doesn't make sense from the standpoint of the league as whole and if allowed to stand should be rectified by putting a team in Seattle in a Cleveland Browns style expansion/relocation (the Hornets come to mind) as quickly as possible.