Seattle SuperSonics relocation to Oklahoma City

Common card · No. 363682

On July 2, 2008, the Seattle SuperSonics, an American professional basketball team that competed in the National Basketball Association (NBA), moved from its original city of Seattle to Oklahoma City. The team began to play as the Oklahoma City Thunder in the 2008–09 NBA season. The SuperSonics were the third NBA team to move from one metropolitan area to another in the 2000s. After the SuperSonics' ownership group, led by Howard Schultz, failed to persuade Washington state government officials to provide $220 million in public funding to update KeyArena, Schultz sold the team to the Professional Basketball Club LLC (PBC), an investment group headed by Oklahoma City businessman Clay Bennett. A condition of the sale was that PBC execute a "good-faith effort" to secure a suitable arena in the Seattle area for the team. The new owners failed to persuade local governments to pay for a new $500 million arena complex, and consequently announced that they intended to move the team to Oklahoma...

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