Next week, NBA owners will gather in Manhattan and tell one of their own — Seattle’s Clayton Bennett — that he has their approval to move his Seattle Super-Sonics to Oklahoma City in time for the 2008–09 season. This will allow Bennett to start selling tickets, and obtain marketing partners and television and radio deals. NBA owners have not stopped a potential franchise shift since 1994, when a group that included boxing promoter Bob Arum tried to purchase the financially strapped Minnesota Timberwolves and uproot the franchise to New Orleans. Even if the NBA tried to block Bennett from moving, he might not pay attention to his league brothers anyway — particularly to the owner of the Los Angeles Clippers, Donald Sterling, who moved his team to Los Angeles from San Diego without permission in 1984. Sterling eventually won a lawsuit that allowed him to operate the Clippers at the L.A. Sports Arena.

If the owners say yes to Bennett (only the Dallas Mavericks Mark Cuban has publicly said he will vote against the proposed move), it won’t mean Seattle will lose the franchise immediately. Bennett has two years left on a lease that was signed by a different owner, Barry Ackerley, that assured the city that the Sonics would play at the renovated Seattle Center Coliseum between 1995 and 2010 — and the city of Seattle is suing Bennett to make sure he lives up to Ackerley’s agreement. The case will be heard in mid-June, so there is a strong possibility that Bennett will be stuck in Seattle because of an agreement that he inherited.

The Bennett vs. Seattle lawsuit came about after former Sonics owner Howard Schultz and Bennett both failed in their attempts to get public money to build a “state-of-the-art” facility for the basketball team. Sonics ownership and the commissioner of the NBA, David Stern, have felt that the franchise deserves a publicly funded facility, just like those for the Mariners and the Seahawks. The failure to secure an arena has left an open wound and very hard feelings among Stern, Bennett, and Seattle-area public officials, so much so that a member of the 1979 Sonics championship team, Fred Brown, has decided that Seattle will never get publicly funded and that he and other Seattle area business leaders need to find an entertainment complex that would not only house an NBA team, but an NHL franchise as well.

Downtown Freddie Brown, whose No. 32 jersey was retired by the Sonics in 1986, is convinced that Bennett will leave town with the Sonics. But he is not quite sold on the idea that Stern will blackball the city and that the NBA will never return. To that end, Brown’s company, B2, is proposing the construction of a privately funded, billion-dollar, retractable-roof basketball-hockey arena that would also serve as a year-round tourist attraction. It could end up on Pier 46 in the city, on any one of three sites near the city’s baseball-football complex, or at the Seattle Center. On Tuesday, a public-private partnership package which would have required Seattle to kick in money to help rebuild the city arena fell apart leaving Brown’s company the only option left for the NBA at the moment.

Stern has said once the Sonics franchise is gone, that will be it for the city and the NBA. But in 2002, after George Shinn left Charlotte for New Orleans, Stern and NBA owners quickly moved to get Charlotte to commit to a new arena and replaced the Hornets franchise almost immediately. Charlotte was without basketball for just two years. The NBA has gone back to numerous cities that lost franchises including Chicago, Cleveland, Denver, Minneapolis, New Orleans, Philadelphia, Toronto, and Washington. Baltimore and San Diego have each had two cracks at the NBA. Only Buffalo, Cincinnati, and Kansas City have been out-and-out NBA washouts. So, whatever Stern said needs to be taken with a grain of salt. Politicians come and go, but Stern cannot alienate the Seattle corporate community: He has blamed the situation in Seattle on the politicos, not the business community or the fans.

The corporate community is pivotal in Seattle’s future (Seattle business leaders are in love with the Mariners, the 1977 expansion team that replaced the bankrupt 1969 Pilots, which moved to Milwaukee in March 1970 when Bud Selig and his associates bought the team). If Bennett loses his court case and is forced to spend the next two years in Seattle, he faces an uphill battle in getting his high-price tickets sold. But, Brown could show that Seattle really wants the NBA by buying tickets to a lame-duck operation. Selig can tell him all about a lame-duck situation, as he was involved in trying to save the Milwaukee Braves from moving to Atlanta in 1965. Braves ownership asked the National League for permission to move to Atlanta for the 1965 season soon after the 1964 All-Star Game. The National League said yes, but for 1966, because the baseball team had one year left on their stadium lease. Braves ownership made no effort to sell season tickets — then the lifeblood of a baseball franchise — for 1965, selling just 36 for the season. Selig joined “Teams Inc.,” a group dedicated to keep baseball in Milwaukee and tried selling tickets to Braves games. The year ended with just 555,584 buying tickets to see games in County Stadium. The season was a financial disaster and it took five years to find a replacement franchise.

Brown also thinks the commissioner of the NHL, Gary Bettman, and his owners should take a close look at Seattle. The city has an NHL history, as the Seattle Metropolitans became the first American team ever to win a Stanley Cup in 1917. But more importantly, Brown did a comparison between Seattle and other American NHL cities, and pointed out that the Seattle television market is bigger than nine of the NHL markets. He also claims that Seattle has a better corporate marketing base than 50% of NHL cities. For Bennett and Stern, next week’s approval is just a small step that allows Bennett to at least call up van companies and get a price for moving costs. The real battle is more than two months away, when Bennett gets his day in court to plead his case — but that won’t be the last gasp in Seattle’s bid to keep the NBA. It may be many years before Seattle knows whether it is really an NBA, and even an NHL, city. The city needs an arena and how it gets a new building may be far more interesting to watch than a lame-duck basketball team for the next two years.

evanjweiner@yahoo.com