NBA owners on Friday approved the Seattle SuperSonics' move to Oklahoma City for the 2008-09 season, provided the team can settle its lawsuit with Seattle.

The Sonics could begin playing in owner Clay Bennett's hometown as early as next season if they can get out of the remaining two years of their lease at KeyArena.

NBA commissioner David Stern said Friday he thinks an NBA franchise could succeed in Oklahoma City.
(Bebeto Matthews/Associated Press)

Owners voted 28-2 in favour of the move, with Dallas and Portland voting against. Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban has previously expressed concerns about the market size, and commissioner David Stern said the Trail Blazers, owned by Paul Allen, didn't say why they voted the way they did.

The Sonics, who have been in Seattle since the start of the 1967-68 season, would be the first NBA team to change cities since the Hornets went from Charlotte to New Orleans for the 2002-03 season.

Stern said the owners "focused on the likelihood of success in Oklahoma City."

Bennett wants to buy out the remainder of the KeyArena lease but Seattle has filed suit to try to force the Sonics to remain in the city until it expires in 2010. The city already has rejected Bennett's offer of $26 million US to settle the lease dispute. A trial is set to begin on June 16.

At a news conference Friday, Bennett would not say how much he was willing to offer the city but said he wants a reasonable settlement.

"Step One, I am hopeful we can re-establish communication and some sort of platform to have a meaningful, principled conversation," Bennett said. "Certainly, we're nowhere near that today."

Stern, who encouraged Bennett to make the offer to the city in February, said the league is prepared to play out the remaining two seasons in Seattle. However, he cautioned that would mean a possible loss of $30 million a year for a team playing in front of reduced attendance.

The city's hope is to keep the Sonics in town for what it seems would be two lame duck seasons, to buy time for a group led by Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to find an arena solution and eventually purchase the team from Bennett to keep them in town.

Ballmer's group already has proposed paying for half of a $300-million expansion of KeyArena, with the other half coming from the city and from county tax revenues.

Seattle mayor hopes to keep team

"We know the longer they are in the Seattle, the better the chance they will stay," Mayor Greg Nickels said Thursday of the Sonics.

"I think if we had a group the calibre of one led by Steve Ballmer and we had an arena pot with $300 million available in it, the NBA would have a hard time abandoning a city that's always had pro basketball — at least for the last 41 years," he said.

"I think the Ballmer group stepping forward was a game-changer for us," Nickels said.

Stern dismissed the idea, saying there was no viable KeyArena plan. He wouldn't speculate on a possible return to Seattle in the future if the league expanded or if another team moved.

Bennett is also facing a class-action lawsuit brought by Sonics season-ticket holders who say they were duped into buying tickets under the premise the team wouldn't leave.

And this week, former owner Howard Schultz announced plans to sue to get the team back, saying Bennett did not make a good-faith effort to secure a new arena deal as he promised when he bought the team in 2006.

E-mails between Bennett and his ownership partners, which were released recently as part of the city's lawsuit, appear to show they planned to move the team to their hometown all along.

Stern said the NBA owners didn't buy that, saying that none "questioned the good faith of Clay Bennett."

Bennett also said Friday he would be willing to leave the Sonics name in Seattle and develop a new name, logo and colours if he moves the NBA franchise to Oklahoma City.