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44 | Not So Super

G

ed osonRt Av BAseBALL foR seAttLe but couldn’t come up with a

buzzer-beater for basketball. By the end of a bruising game, in

fact, he was charged with a technical foul that complicated the

city’s case and called into question his ethics.

Three decades after their stirring championship season of 1979, the

SuperSonics were less than super. The arena where Lenny Wilkens, Den-

nis Johnson, Jack Sikma, Shawn Kemp and Gary Payton once packed

them in was now the smallest in the National Basketball Association.

Despite a $100 million remodel in 1995, it also lacked the requisite luxury

boxes, plasma screens and sushi bars. It was soon clear, as many feared

from the outset, that when Clay Bennett’s Oklahoma-based group pur-

chased the team from Howard Schultz in 2006 it had one goal in mind:

Moving it to Oklahoma City. Absent a new arena, Seattle was a money pit,

Bennett said, asserting that the team stood to lose $60 million if it was

forced to stay until its KeyArena lease expired in 2010.

See you in court, said Mayor Greg Nickels. A lease is a lease. The city

retained K&L Gates, Gorton’s law firm, and filed suit in U.S. District

Court. Hoping to duplicate his success with the Mariners, Gorton was

already working his Rolodex to find a local buyer. McGavick, a basketball

fan now between jobs, volunteered to help.^1

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer soon emerged as the leader of a local

investment group that committed half of the $300 million it would take

to renovate KeyArena, as well as the money to purchase an NBA fran-

chise. Bennett insisted the Sonics weren’t for sale. The city said it would

contribute $75 million, and lobbied the Legislature to authorize the re-

mainder by extending the King County car-rental and restaurant taxes

paying for the Mariners’ Safeco Field.^2

At the beginning of 2008, Bennett offered the city $26.5 million to drop

its lawsuit. The mayor stood his ground, but it was liquefying. Ballmer

withdrew his group’s offer after the Legislature balked. With the NBA’s

Board of Governors poised to approve the move, Seattle had lost its leverage