Sonics Owner Admits It: We Always Wanted to Move to OKC

Sonics minority owner Aubrey McClendon confirms what we all suspected from the start. In an interview with the Oklahoma City Journal Record, he says:

We didn’t buy the team to keep it in Seattle; we hoped to come here.

McClendon, who previously got bad publicity in Seattle for being anti gay rights, lauds Clay Bennett for "artfully and skillfully" (translation: underhandedly) getting the team. Here's the full quote:

We started to look around, and at that time the Sonics were going through some ownership challenges in Seattle. So Clay, very artfully and skillfully, put himself in the middle of those discussions and to the great amazement and surprise to everyone in Seattle, some rednecks from Oklahoma, which we’ve been called, made off with the team.

As we've been saying from the start, these guys never had any intention of keeping the Sonics in Seattle.

We saw this at SonicsCentral first, and they aren't happy. They also have strong words for Howard Schultz: "It’s time to start casting stones at the people in our own community that have allowed this."

Maybe "casting stones" is a little strong--I assume they mean metaphorically. But if there are some busted out Starbucks windows this morning...

What does this mean? Let the national basketball blog TrueHoop explain:

What I think this does is give all kinds of leverage to anyone in Seattle trying to appeal to the powers that be -- like the judge who will inevitably be deciding whether or not the Sonics and Storm can get out of their lease at Key Arena, which runs into 2010, and the NBA's commissioner and relocation committee.

To all of those people the fans of the Sonics can now say: We have not had a good faith effort to keep the team in Seattle.