OKLAHOMA CITY — Two months after the NBA officially handed over the Seattle franchise to Oklahoma City, the moving trucks arrived at the team’s new headquarters Friday.
The first thing to roll off the truck was a basketball bearing the NBA logo.
“It was a nice touch, wasn’t it?” said Pete Winemiller, a team vice president for guest relations who helped oversee the move.
Winemiller said the 2,000-mile move from Seattle to Oklahoma City will involve about 60 truckloads and be completed by the end of September.
He said 10,000 pounds of equipment and furniture were in the Friday load. The first items off-loaded were five office chairs and a 50-inch flat-screen television.
“This is obviously one of our bigger loads, and so we’re happy to have all of this equipment here so we can really get rolling,” Winemiller said.
The team has set up its offices at the Leadership Square office building in downtown Oklahoma City. Winemiller said the team is working to fill the 25,000 square feet of space.
“It really is taking that area that we had in the Northwest and trying to make sure it fits here in this space, and so far it’s been a pretty good fit,” said Winemiller, who wouldn’t say how much the move will cost. “It’s been a little bit of a puzzle, but it’s all worked out very nicely.”
Clay Bennett’s ownership group finalized a settlement last week that determined what items will stay in Seattle and what will come to Oklahoma City. Many items won’t be shipped until after the WNBA’s Seattle Storm finish their season.
The Storm will continue to play in Seattle. A group of Seattle women are buying the Storm from Bennett for $10 million.
In related news, former Sonics owner Howard Schultz says he’s dropping his lawsuit against Bennett, ending an attempt to regain ownership of the team. The Starbucks Corp. CEO filed a motion for dismissal Friday in federal court in Seattle.
In a letter to former members of his ownership group. Schultz said two recent rulings in his lawsuit have convinced him it’s unlikely to succeed.
Schultz also said the city of Seattle’s settlement with Bennett, allowing the Sonics to move to Oklahoma City in time for the 2008-09 season, hampered his case.
Schultz sold the team to Bennett’s ownership group in 2006 for $350 million.
Last April, Schultz sued to regain ownership, contending Bennett failed to carry through on a promise to negotiate in good faith for a new arena in Seattle for one full year. Bennett has called the suit “baseless.”
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