The Oklahoma City Thunder has been the best NBA team throughout the season. The Thunder now have the opportunity to write the perfect ending for their season against the Indiana Pacers in the NBA finals of 2025.
And in the northwest of the Pacific, a fan base can very well putting what the leg could have.
With the finals here, it is a good time to take a look and visit how the Seattle Supersonics found their way to Oklahoma City, where Thunder are now in the hive of a NBA title.
As or does, it starts with a sand.
In 2001, the CEO of Starbucks, Howard Schultz, became the new owner of Los Sonics, after buying the Barry Ackerley team, the owner and CEO of Ackerley Group, a media company.
Ackerley, before selling the team to Schultz, had been pressing Key Arena for a renovation, which time had become the smallest place in the NBA, just after a previous remodeling in 1995. Hello, you have to lie to the groups of Son, finally, ultimately, by Schultz, which had Risen to prominence as CEO of Starbucks. The agreement was announced on January 11, 2001. Optimism is high.
Two months later, the bubble explosions “Dot Com”, and the recession hits the United States. Many of the co -owners buying the Sonics together with Schultz suddenly felt a little money.
Even so, the first years of Schultz’s mandate were solid. The Sonics arrived at the playoffs in the first year of Schultz’s mandate, the 2001-2002 season. They advanced to the semifinals of the West Conference in the 2004-2005 season. They were not the George Karl/Shawn Kemp/Gary Payton teams that were on the cusp of a title, but they were in a trend.
But there were slow tensions under the surface.
We can start with the trade that Payton sent possible to the Milwaukee Bucks. The star guard was in the last year of his contract and expected an extension so he could stay in Seattle. In his words, however, Schultz “made it seem ‘I don’t care anymore, you are nothing.”
In April or 2003, Payton was heading to the Bucks, part of an agreement of five players that sent Payton and Desmond Mason to the Bucks in exchange for Ray Allen, Kevin Ollie and Ronald Murray, as well as a first round conditional team.
“[Schultz] I just ruined our whole [franchise] And people left Seattle when I owned the team, “Payton said.” That’s why he had to sell it again, because he was fighting. He made many silly movements and the first silly movement was to get rid of me. “
Payton’s appointment highlights the other tension that was over low heat in Seattle. The team was losing money, and Schultz hoped to secure the public of the Washington state legislature for a new sand. But with the state government doubting to offer such funds, Schultz begins in a different path. In July 2006, he sold the storm of Seattle, the city’s WNBA franchise, when he could not obtain public funds from the city of Seattle for a new sand.
Schultz was also looking for local groups to buy the Sonics, but it is possible to accept selling the team to a group of business leaders from Oklahoma City led by Clay Bennett, a former owner of the San Antonio Spurs. The purchase of the team included an “effort in good faith” to keep the team in Seattle, provided, there would be public funds behind a new sand.
Even so, Calvos local leaders.
“This is the greatest waste of money I can imagine,” said Adam Glickman, spokesman for the powerful International Union of Service Employees, when the Bennett leadership group presented legislators plans for a new sand. “The legislature should stop wasting time and money with this problem and move on to the things that matter.”
The money never arrived, and the Bennett group declared its next intentions.
Moving the team to Oklahoma City.
Two demands followed, hoping to stop the transfer to Oklahoma City, even temporarily. There was a lease that required the Sonics to play in Keyarena until 2010, but when Bennett’s group sought to break that agreement, the city demanded to enforce the lease. Another demand came from Schultz himself, seeking to terminate the sale of the team. This lawsuit claimed that Bennett’s group was dedicated to fraud and poor retention when they declared that an “effort in good faith” would be made to keep the team in Seattle.
“The damages that are sought is to rescind, relax the transaction,” said lawyer Richard Yarmuth, who represented Schultz in the dispute.
“It’s not money Damage. It’s to have the team return. Theory of the suit is that when the team was sold, The Basketball Club of Seattle, Our Team Here, relied on promises made by Clay Bennett and His Ownership That is a Deste Effect To Keepe To Kee To keepe to keepe to keepe to keepe to keepe to keepe to keepe to keepe to keepe to keepe to keepe to keepe to keepe to keepe to keepe to keepe’s keepe and keepe to keepe’s Hidehithyhithhithithhithidhidhithithithithhithhithhithhithyhyhithyhithyhithyhithyhithyhithyhithyhithyhithyhyhithyhyhyhyhyhyhyhyhyhyhyhyhythyhyhyhyhyhyth’s can Hithyithyith that. “
According to that demand, the emails between the group owned by Oklahoma City described their intention to transfer the team to Oklahoma City after the sale. One of those emails included the question “[i]S there are some way to move here [Oklahoma City] For the next season or are we condemned to have another season of lame duck in Seattle? “
Another email had this statement: “[w]He did not buy the equipment to keep it in Seattle; We hope to come here [Oklahoma City]. “
The two demands had different degrees of success. The lawsuit filed by the city of Seattle ended in an agreement, under what the new group of owners had to pay $ 45 million to break the lease, plus additional $ 30 million if Seattle did not have a replacement equipment after five years.
Schultz’s demand retired after the League was described by the League that the owner of Starbucks had signed a binding contract not to choose the new property group, as well as the fact that Schultz’s proposal to transfer the ownership of the equipment to a cutting cut.
Always read the small print, friends.
Finally, the movement passed. The Sonics moved to Oklahoma City before the 2008-2009 season of the NBA, and after missing the playoffs that year, the franchise returned to the postseason the following season. The Thunder advanced to the NBA finals at the end of the 2011-2012 season, where they lost to the Miami Heat and are now back in the final.
But feelings are still raw in Seattle, since a fans base remains aggravated by the departure of a loved organization.
“You can see people walking along the sidewalks and streets of Seattle, and even the suburbs,” said Supersonics Fan Eric Phan in a recent interview. “People wear Sonic team as if they really had never left.”
That feeling includes former players.
“I’m not rooting,” said former Sonic Nate McMillan TMZ. “But I think they have the best team … what we have to do is recover the Sonics in Seattle. I’m praying, crossing your fingers, all that.”
“We look at our team team,” Payton said recently. “In addition, if you look at the 90s, look what we have done. We were one of the NBA Prime Minister’s teams. Why would you not want your team to return?”
“Many Sonic fans who know that I have never overcome the wounds of what happened here 17 years ago with them going [for] Oklahoma City, “added Phan.” All Sonic fans [is] Rooting the Indiana Pacers. “