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April 18, 2008
NBA to Sonics: Pack your bags
It's official: The NBA owners voted 28-2 today to approve the relocation of the Seattle Sonics to Oklahoma City. The two dissenters: Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban, who'd previously said he thought it was dumb for the NBA to give up a bigger market for a more lucrative arena deal, and Portland Trailblazers owner Paul Allen, who is also owner of the Seattle Seahawks and would be run out of town on a rail if he voted yes.
The only obstacle now to the move is the pair of lawsuits facing the Sonics, one from the city of Seattle trying to hold them to their lease through 2010 (the case goes to trial beginning in June), and one from former owner Howard Schultz trying to nullify his sale of the team on the grounds that the new owners failed to live up to an agreement to negotiate in good faith to keep the team in town. Given that you can count on one finger the number of teams that have had relocations blocked by court injunction - I'm tempted to say less than one finger, but I might be forgetting somebody - the odds on the Sonics staying put look bleak.
Leaving nothing to chance, meanwhile, the Oklahoma legislature passed a bill on Thursday absolving the relocated Sonics from paying payroll taxes for the nexf 15 years, an estimated value of $60 million. The Oklahoma Legislature sweetened the pot for the NBA on Thursday, approving a payroll-tax rebate for the Sonics worth an estimated $60 million over 15 years. The state House approved the measure 67-32 and sent it to Gov. Brad Henry, who swiftly signed it into law. Add in the $121 million the city is spending on upgrading the Ford Center, and the $89 million cost of originally building the arena just five years ago, and ... well, you can see why the Sonics owners, at least, don't seem to care much about Cuban's arguments about market size.
So congratulations, people of Oklahoma City: You just bought yourself one used NBA franchise. With any luck, it'll be a few years before some other city tries to steal it out from under you in turn.
