Sonics would be profitable in OKC, Bennett Says

Seattle SuperSonics owners told the NBA they expect to lose $60.9 million to $64.9 million during the next two years if forced to stay in Seattle, but believe they can turn an $18.8 million profit if allowed to relocate to Oklahoma City.

Sonics Chairman Clay Bennett confirmed the projections in a sworn deposition — most of which was made public for the first time Friday after previously having been withheld as confidential.

Bennett testified he has the financial ability to withstand the projected losses, but added "it's certainly no fun losing a lot of money."

Bennett's testimony was taken in connection with a federal lawsuit filed by the city of Seattle in an effort to force the team to play out the remaining two years on a 15-year lease at Seattle's KeyArena.

The Sonics' Oklahoma owners have asked the judge to allow them to buy their way out of the lease so they can move to Oklahoma City immediately.

"This is a losing proposition on all sides," Bennett stated.

The trial is scheduled to begin June 16 in Seattle.

Much of Bennett's testimony centered on whether the Sonics' Oklahoma owners fulfilled a written promise to spend at least a year making a good faith effort to keep the team in the Seattle area, before turning their attention elsewhere.

Bennett repeatedly insisted they did.

He was quizzed about some e-mails and news articles where various owners mentioned a potential move to Oklahoma City.

One of the most controversial remarks was made by fellow owner Aubrey McClendon, who was fined $250,000 by the NBA in August after telling an Oklahoma City business newspaper, "We didn't buy the team to keep it in Seattle; we hoped to come here."

"I was shocked, absolutely shocked," Bennett testified. "I was upset by it and it was difficult for me because it did not represent what I had spent a great amount of time working on and focused on, and I felt undermined my efforts and being a good friend, it was even worse, affecting another close associate, the commissioner, was even worse.... It was a very difficult experience for me."

Bennett wrote a subsequent e-mail to NBA Commissioner David Stern in which he said, "As absolutely remarkable as it may seem, Aubrey and I have NEVER discussed moving the Sonics to Oklahoma City nor have I discussed it with ANY other member of our ownership group."

Seattle's attorney questioned the truth of the statement, in light of e-mails in which Oklahoma City was mentioned.

"Well, I think what I'm referring to here is never in terms of a bona fide, full-blown process to move or even a decision to move," Bennett said. "Of course we've talked about options, as we did from the beginning."

Some Seattle residents have questioned whether the Bennett group's failure to bring Seattle investors into their group was a sign they never intended to keep the team in Seattle.

Bennett testified the possibility of bringing in Seattle investors was discussed, but it was decided that might actually hinder the owners' effort to obtain public funding for an arena in the Seattle area because the previous ownership group of 58 local people had failed in two previous attempts.

Bennett said the Oklahoma owners believed they "could bring new focus, new energy, new perspective to the process and that for the time being, it makes sense to keep our group put together and keep it small. We knew this would be a dynamic process with a lot of decisions to be made and so ... the tighter the better."

If successful, the Oklahoma owners felt they could bring in Seattle investors later, he said.

Coming from Oklahoma City, which strongly supported the temporary hosting of the New Orleans Hornets after Hurricane Katrina, Bennett expressed surprise at the lack of similar support for the Sonics by Seattle residents, politicians and news media.

"What I will naively admit to was our shocked reaction to the media response to the announcement," Bennett said of the reaction to the announcement that Oklahoma investors would be purchasing the team and pursuing a world-class multipurpose facility in the Seattle area. "And so we immediately began to think... this is not being met with the excitement and pleasure that we might have thought it would be."

Bennett said he thought people would view the Sonics as a valuable asset to the state of Washington.

"I just assumed they were," he said. "I guess as a fan of professional sports and especially the NBA, I assumed they would be highly valued and important to the broad community and I now understand that there's a very diverse population that has very varied interests and it may not be as broadly powerful as I suspected at that time."

"This deal sucks," Bennett wrote in an e-mail to a Sonics lobbyist, after efforts to obtain public funding to support a new arena became bogged down in the Washington Legislature.

Bennett described the blunt comment as "an emotional response to getting bogged down in the process."

He said Washington's governor told him that most of the legislative leadership had little interest in his project, except for the Washington House speaker "who is against it."

Seattle's attorney questioned Bennett about whether the Sonics' efforts to obtain public funding for a $500 million multipurpose facility failed because of the owners' unwillingness to commit personal money to the project.

"We committed to $100 million," Bennett said, indicating that part of that private money would have come from the sale of "founding sponsorships" and part from the owners' personal cash.

Seattle's attorney also questioned Bennett about why Ed Evans, former president of Oklahoma City-based Dobson Communications, dropped out of the ownership group after helping negotiate the purchase of the team.

The attorney asked if it wasn't true that Evans dropped out after being told during a private jet ride to a news conference to announce the purchase of the team that Evans would not be the operating manager of the Sonics and that Bennett would be the spokesman.

"I can't recall that it was at that time," Bennett said. "I can't recall when it was. It was in this time frame but I don't recall specifically being on the flight."

Bennett summed up the owners' reasons for wanting to move from Seattle to Oklahoma City as follows:

"It's become ugly.... It's become a very negative element in the lives of many people.... We have met our obligations to attempt to have a successor venue developed. We've failed in our efforts....We have a binding obligation now with the city of Oklahoma City. So there are two years left to be together in Seattle and my hope is that we can find a way to come to some mutually beneficial position that brings certainty and stability to the many that are involved in this."

The Sonics owners are willing to pay Seattle enough money to improve KeyArena for other purposes in exchange for terminating the lease two years early, he said.

"That's the notion and that's the proposition," he said. "It's nothing more than that."