King Kaufman's Sports Daily
Oklahoma City group buys Sonics, smiles a friendly hello, says the city has 12 months to pony up or say goodbye.
Read more: Sports, Seattle, NBA, Basketball, Oklahoma City, King Kaufman, Sports Daily
July 19, 2006 | The attempted extortion of the citizens of Seattle and environs got a boost Tuesday when the NBA SuperSonics were sold to a group of Oklahoma City investors who pledged to keep the team in Seattle right up until they move it to Oklahoma.
Unless the city ponies up about $70 million more than the $149 million it has already offered to renovate KeyArena, where the Sonics and the WNBA Storm, included in the deal, play.
The city has 12 months, say the new owners, who are led by investment banker Clay Bennett, a leading citizen of Oklahoma City. You can really see the commitment to keep the Sonics in town.
After that year, the NBA is planning to move the New Orleans/Oklahoma City Hornets back to the Bayou, leaving OKC, which has shown in the last year that it can support an NBA franchise for one year anyway, wide open for Bennett and his partners. They're the people who lured the Hornets to town after Hurricane Katrina.
Starbucks mogul Howard Schultz, the majority owner, sold the teams to Bennett's group, the newly formed Professional Basketball Club, for $350 million after fighting to get the taxpayers to pay for a renovation of KeyArena or construction of a new place.
Sonics spokeswoman and Storm chief operating officer Karen Bryant says Schultz's ownership group, Basketball Club of Seattle, has lost $70 million since buying the Sonics and Storm in 2001, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reports. That sounds pretty rough until you consider that Schultz's group paid $200 million.
You can see why a business that has appreciated in value by 75 percent in five years can't afford to build its own headquarters and has to go to the taxpayers for help. The taxpayers, of course, will be told in the ramped-up campaign that a new or renovated arena will be a moneymaker for the city, which will lead to the question, "So if it's such a cash cow, why don't you build it yourself?"
Which will lead to the answer, "Because by threatening to move to Oklahoma City, which now seems like a much more realistic possibility because we're not Seattle people, we're Oklahoma City people who have clearly stated in the past that we want to bring an NBA team to our town permanently, we can really hold your elected officials' feet to the fire, since they do not want to be the elected officials who let the area's first professional franchise get away.
"And by the way, we're planning to keep the money the new building makes anyway. And we'll still cry poor! Is this a great country or what?"
That won't be the out-loud answer. But it'll be the answer, all right.
Next page: Whom do you root for when your one favorite team leaves town?