SEATTLE – In basketball terms, the future of the SuperSonics in Seattle this morning could be likened to a jump ball.
And unfortunately for Sonics fans, the guy on the other team stands taller and leaps higher.
Maybe, somehow, the city of Seattle and the state of Washington can still steal the tip, meaning the National Basketball Association team will remain in the Puget Sound area for many years to come. But that scenario is anything but certain this morning, one day after Sonics majority owner Howard Schultz announced the sale of the team to a group of out-of-state investors.
The sale is for approximately $350 million, or about $150 million more than the current ownership group, led by Starbucks founder and chairman Schultz, paid when it purchased the team from Barry Ackerley in 2001.
Because the principal member of the new ownership group, Clayton Bennett, hails from Oklahoma City, a city that is in the market for a permanent NBA franchise of its own, there is a great sense the Sonics will soon be tipping off their final Seattle season. Oklahoma City is baby-sitting the New Orleans Hornets this coming season as New Orleans continues to recover from Hurricane Katrina
During a Tuesday afternoon press conference, Bennett indicated that he will begin “a 12-month process” to either get a new arena or a reconstructed KeyArena that will allow the Sonics to compete financially with other NBA teams. It was the failure of the Schultz-led ownership group to procure a new or rebuilt arena after two years of trying that led to Tuesday’s announcement of a sale, which includes the WNBA’s Seattle Storm.
Addressing a large gathering of media, Bennett said, “It is our desire to have the Sonics and Storm remain in Seattle. It is not our intention to move or relocate the teams. As long, of course, as we are able to negotiate a successor venue to the current basketball arena.
“We are committed to a constructive and cooperative process, and to use our good-faith best efforts over the coming year to achieve the goal of keeping a viable and vibrant NBA and WNBA presence in the greater Seattle area,” said Bennett, who spoke Tuesday with Gov. Chris Gregoire and Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels.
The Sonics have played the past 11 seasons at KeyArena, which opened in 1995 on the same site as its predecessor, the Seattle Center Coliseum. KeyArena seats 17,072 for NBA basketball, which makes it one of the league’s smaller venues. The Sonics also have to share more money with their landlord, the city of Seattle, and get less money from suite sales than other NBA cities.
Strange as it sounds, Schultz said the new group of outside owners – known formally as the Professional Basketball Club, LLC – may have “a better chance to achieve this objective” of a new or rebuilt arena than the current local owners. The reason, no doubt, is the threat of losing the team to another city, which is decidedly more likely when the new owners do not live in the Pacific Northwest.
“Perhaps the local and state officials did not take us seriously enough to give us the kind of respect along the way to get a deal that we felt was viable,” Schultz said.
The new owners “do have better leverage,” confirmed team president, CEO and minority owner Wally Walker. “Let’s not sugarcoat it. They have a better chance.”
Walker said he also believes local and state political officials never grasped the sense of urgency conveyed by the team’s current owners, who were wearying of a steady flow of red ink.
“People would say to us, ‘Well, you’ve got four years, five years left on your lease (at KeyArena, which runs through 2010), so let’s worry about it in a couple of years,’ ” Walker said.
The Sonics, Walker said, lost between $60 million and $70 million in the five years since Schultz and his fellow owners bought the team. He estimates the current owners will realize a profit of about 6 percent to 7 percent on a compounded annual basis over the past five years.
“You can’t say it’s not an investment because it is,” said Walker, a onetime Sonics player who was a member of the 1978-79 NBA championship team. “You can’t say it’s not a business because it is. But at the same time, it’s wrenching for us even at a price that made some sense to go through this (sale).”
Schultz, who acknowledged the sale to be “a very hard personal and emotional decision,” said the team tried first to find local owners and then entertained offers from other perspective buyers. Some of the latter bids, he said, were for more money than the one put forth by Bennett’s group.
Those higher offers were rejected, Schultz said, “because at the end of the day we were not trying to seek out the ultimate purchase price. (We were trying) to do everything we could to ensure long-term stability in the Northwest for the Sonics and the Storm. … I honestly believe that this group led by Clay wants to stay in Seattle.”
Bennett, who was once part of an ownership group with the San Antonio Spurs and served for a time on the NBA’s Board of Governors, said that “it is more coincidental than anything” that he is buying a franchise at the same time his hometown is seeking one. It is, he added, “unrelated to this transaction.”
Seattle, he went on to say, “is one of the great American cities. It’s outstanding in every way and it certainly deserves an NBA franchise. My sense is that we’ll be able to be successful. We’re going to come in in good faith and we’re going to conduct a very professional and above-board and positive process to understand the issues and work through the issues. I personally would be surprised if we were not successful.”
G. Edward Evans, another member of the new ownership group, said that he and his colleagues think of the Sonics as “a storied franchise,” and one that “has a great future in front of it.”
“We’ve made a commitment to the NBA and we’ve made a commitment to Seattle and the Washington area to do everything in our power to keep this franchise in the city,” Evans said.
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