Oklahoma City stakes claim for Sonics

OKLAHOMA CITY — Oklahoma City officials want Starbucks chairman Howard Schultz to know they expect the Seattle SuperSonics to relocate, regardless of who owns the team.

An assistant municipal counselor sent a letter on behalf of Mayor Mick Cornett and other city officials informing Schultz, the team's former owner, that Oklahoma City's lease with the SuperSonics will be enforced no matter how pending lawsuits in Seattle are resolved.

"We expect that any subsequent owner or owners would join hands with the city, and its citizens, and honor the OKC NBA agreements, made in good faith, and perform as good corporate neighbors to make NBA basketball a success in Oklahoma City," Assistant Municipal Counselor Wiley Williams wrote in the letter, dated Thursday, that was released to reporters on Friday.

Schultz has filed a lawsuit seeking to reverse his 2006 sale of the SuperSonics to Clay Bennett, claiming that Bennett failed to make a good-faith effort as promised to keep the team in Seattle. Bennett has defended his attempts to negotiate for a new arena in Seattle and claimed that Seattle officials are trying to force him to sell the team.

Schultz's lawsuit and one filed by the city in an attempt to keep the Sonics in Seattle through the end of their lease in 2010 are pending in federal court in Seattle.

Oklahoma City officials believe that their own lease with Bennett requires the SuperSonics to relocate at the end of that lease, or earlier if Bennett is able to buy his way out.

"We are unaware of a legal theory that would render the OKC NBA agreements voidable, regardless of the outcome" of the Seattle litigation, Williams wrote in the nine-page letter addressed to Schultz attorney Richard Yarmuth.

Williams' letter lays out the process by which Oklahoma City became involved with the Sonics, dating back to the building of the Ford Center arena and leading up to formal discussions following Bennett's decision to file for relocation in November.

It also references the SuperSonics' lease with Oklahoma City that requires the team to play home games at the Ford Center and prohibits it from extending its lease in Seattle.

"The team is coming," Cornett said after NBA owners approved the Sonics' relocation request on April 18. "The lease kicked in at the moment the Board of Governors made it official. That was the last stumbling block."