The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
The Spokesman-Review Newspaper The Spokesman-Review
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883
Current Temperature
39°F
Current Conditions
Clear sky
View complete weather report

Color Scheme

Subscribe now

Sonics: from courtside to court room

Clay Bennett, second left, visits Bill Russell at Thursday's game. Associated Press (Associated Press / The Spokesman-Review)
Gregg Bell Associated Press
Clay Bennett, second left, visits Bill Russell at Thursday's game. Associated Press (Associated Press / The Spokesman-Review)

SEATTLE – The fate of Seattle’s oldest professional sports team is now being determined on two mutually exclusive, simultaneously running tracks.

Friday’s filing by Sonics owner Clay Bennett to the NBA for relocation of the SuperSonics to his hometown begins a league process that could take six months or more.

Bennett said he was disappointed this day came.

“Now, that said, we’re realists and business people and have to understand our situation and develop new strategies to move forward. There is a new path that we have to work on and that begins today,” Bennett said in a telephone interview from Oklahoma City, the terminus of that path.

A separate process is the ongoing legal dispute over whether the Sonics can buy their way out of the final two seasons of their lease at KeyArena. The city of Seattle argued while suing the team that the lease requires “specific performance,” and the team must play in the arena through the end of the agreement’s term in 2010.

Last week, a federal judge in Seattle ruled the Sonics cannot take that issue through arbitration as they had hoped, effectively stopping the team’s legal pick-and-roll around the courts. So a court will decide in the coming months what the Sonics, who have been in Seattle for all of their 41 years, must do with the last two seasons of the lease after this season.

That court decision will determine whether the Sonics are applying to play in Oklahoma City beginning with the 2008-09 season, or for 2010-11. Barring an unforeseen, white-knight local investor or group willing to buy Bennett a new arena in the Puget Sound area – an option Bennett said Friday he is not pursuing – a Seattle fan’s best-case scenario is a court forcing the Sonics to play two more seasons here before they move.

Despite a former Sonics minority shareholder saying Friday he is forming a group that intends to buy the SuperSonics, Bennett reiterated that he is not selling the team – though he might sell its WNBA sister team, the Storm.

“It’s a different business model. … The Storm can be economically viable in KeyArena,” Bennett said.

As for Bennett’s filing with the league, NBA spokesman Tim Frank confirmed the league received the Sonics’ application for relocation and is referring the matter to the owners’ relocation committee.

The relocation committee will review the application for approximately four months and then make a formal recommendation to the board of governors. It will also set a relocation fee that Bennett must pay.