All other sports factors aside, WHO would want to leave cool, beautiful Seattle and move to hot, humid, ugly, horrible roads Oklahoma???

The citizens of the Seattle-Tacoma metro area blew it...they didn't attend games.

The city of Seattle blew it...they didn't find someone in the state to buy the team and prevent the team from Oklahoma City to purchase it.

And to think...30 years ago, they won the NBA title.

This is nothing more than big business driven GREED. Big business(including the players) want the taxpayers to fund their total existence. This needs to happen to more cities that want to put professional sports at the top of the agendas. I'm a citizen and a taxpayer and quite frankly disgusted with the BIG sell pro sports try to shove down our throats. Get a life people there is way too many beautiful things to enjoy out in your worlds to have to have sports rammed at you with all of their financial demands. Just let it go.

This is so sad it makes me want to go outside and pull weeds...

Here is a thought, maybe larry miller can sell the jazz to seattle, they cant seem to win a championship here!

What a shame - I really thought Seattle could get its act together and keep this from happening. At least they will retain the Supersonics name and colors and hopefully they will be able to pull something together - the fans in the Northwest need them.

No Guts No Glory?

The refs did it!

Now, the Salt Lake Seahawks sounds good.

Cities have got to pay for (or upgrade) arenas to have a chance to keep their NBA franchise... the days of owners like LHM building their own arenas are over.

Oklahoma City showed it can support an NBA team when they hosted the Hornets.

Oklahoma.... humm, wonder what the team will be named...

Oklahoma Bison
Oklahoma Twisters
Oklahoma Rustlers
Oklahoma Wranglers
Oklahoma Dusters
Oklahoma Thunder
Oklahama Mustangs
Oklahoma Mullets

LOL... I like the Mullets

The NBA where... 41 years of fan support and history goes down the drain.

Just goes to show how much the NBA really cares about the average fan. This was never about money, it was all about David Stern helping out his longtime buddy Clay Bennett bring an NBA team to his hometown.

The Sonic situation makes me sick. I am a huge Jazz fan and remember all those great games with the Sonics.

The Sonic fans aren't to blame here. They did their best to support the team when the new ownership came in and made the team even worse - got rid of popular players, didn't make players available for media apperances, and made ticket purchasing difficult.

The WA government,Shultz, NBA, and Bennett are the crooks here. No taxpayer should have to pay 100% for arenas and upgrades. That is what Clay Bennett wanted. He wanted to make the situation nearly impossible in Seattle. He didn't pony up ANY OF HIS OWN MONEY FOR AN ARENA. Hope the OKCers support that team if they are still losing in a few years.

This just proves what an amazing owner Larry H. Miller really is. We're lucky to have someone who cares about the team, the city, the fans and WINNING. The money is secondary if it's even a factor. I hope that the Miller family remembers this legacy in the future and we don't have to deal with a similar situation for the Jazz.

Get real we have basketball players who make more than the real heroes, who got them the teachers and coaches , boo hoo, we are headed for a downfall just like other civilizations of the past who started treated other human beings like gods. They play a child's game for a king's ransom.

Official name of the new franchise will be the Oklahoma City Twistas

So when this new Oklahoma City team - which I will call the "Pokes" for the moment, plays in Phoenix, are they going to let the Suns come back in or just get decimated in astounding ways the way the Sooners do every Fiesta Bowl they play in? Or, if they make the playoffs, lay horrible eggs against teams they should beat? Such are Oklahoma sports.
The greatest final result of this, in my mind, would be for a team to move back to Seattle, become great, and then thrash the OKC team again and again. You can't deny you'd love to be in Seattle for that first game between the new Sonics and the OKC Pokes.

So technically if David Stern had a millionaire friend from Cheyenne who somehow managed to purchase the Jazz, this millionaire friend could move his team to Cheyenne. That would be absolutely terrible. However, it could happen someday. I can see David Stern now..."We are happy to have a team here in the wonderful market of Cheyenne, Wyoming. We are excited for the NBA to be here."

It seems to me that free agents would rather go to Utah over OKC. There's at least skiing, golf courses, Sundance, etc here in Utah.

this is a dark day here in Seattle, both litterally and figuratively. The weather turned form beautiful and sunny to dearkened thunderstorm yesterday, as if to hide the tears of increadibly loyal fans as they mourned the loss of their dead loved one with the thunder sounding the dirge.

Take this as a lesson sports fans, your loyalty can be thrown under the bus just as quickly and cruelly.

"NBA Cares...about your money"

"NBA, Where Amazing Costs Taxpayers $350 Million"

"The NBA, where you pay more for an inferior product. We don't care, why should you?"

I attended law school in the Seattle-Tacoma area. Lived there for 7 years. I was there during the great Payton/Kemp years. I was a huge Jazz fan and actually hated the Sonics then, but, I really am sad. The fans there were rabid. The Key Arena was completely renovated around 1994. I attended many a game there in the stands and in the luxury boxes. I really did like the Key Arena. It wasn't the biggest, but it's not the problem. The Sonics did very well when they were good, but the team stinks now. It's hard to attend games when the owners really don't care and the team really bad. Why do you think Nate McMillen a coach who played his entire career in Seattle, left the team to coach rival Portland? It's pretty clear. The current owner lied to the city and previous owner to get what he wanted.

It truly is a sad day. It reminds me when my Rams left Southern California, all of the history and tradition gone.

To Magnus: Aren't you being a bit dramatic with the sky is crying theme?

The Sonics haven't put a decent product on the floor for years. While you may lament their departure, how many games have you attended in person in the last 10 years?

Talk about messing with people's loyalties, what about charging the same, and more, for the awful Sonic teams we've been fed recently?

Now we have only two opportunities (Portland) to see the Jazz in the Northwest.

We're crying about the Seattle Supersonice moving to (ugh) Oklahoma, or the New Orleans Jazz moving to (ugh) Utah.

ya I was a little dramatic, seemed approrpiate though.

I think you're forgetting that a mere three years ago the Sonics were a decent team. Allen and Lewis and Vlad formed a pretty decent core with Mcmillen as the coach they won 52 games. Then Nate left (I think you are right, he saw the writing on the wall) and that was the beggining of the end.

I don't think people are putitng enough blame on the City of Seattle and the State of Washington. It was their unwillingness to work with the previous Sonics ownership that led to him selling the team which led to this whole fiasco.

The City of Seattle and the State of Washington shoulder some of the blame but what about Howard Schultz?

The guy becomes a pariah in the state after selling the team to a group from Oklahoma, who had been earnestly seeking a team since the Hornets played some of their "home" games in Oklahoma following hurricance Katrina, and, low and behold, the new group wants to move their newly acquired franchise to Oklahoma. Who knew?

Apparently not Schultz, who, sensing an opportunity for a badly needed image rehab, piles on late in the game, with a lawsuit claiming the Oklahoma group acted in bad faith when it negotiated the purchase from Schultz.

He was also the one who let Nate McMillan "Mr. Sonic" escape to the arch-rival Trailblazers.

Every city has its beauty but it is hard to touch Seattle for natural setting, restaurants, and nightlife.