FanHouse Clay Bennett

Tip-Off Timer counts down the days until the first game of the 2009-10 season. On Wednesday, there are 41 days remaining.

When Clay Bennett trucked his Sonics off to Oklahoma City in the summer of 2008, it was unprecedented. That an NBA team moved wasn't new -- that happens, unfortunately. But no team had ever left behind such a legacy. The Sonics left after 41 years in Seattle.

While George Karl is on the verge of leading the Denver Nuggets to their biggest playoff victory since Dikembe Mutombo was seen clutching the ball on his back chanting "Yes! We win!" in leading Denver to a shocking first-round win over the Sonics in 1994, Karl's former NBA city may be without basketball for good.

When Oklahoma City Thunder chairman Clayton Bennett left Seattle without an NBA time after 41 years in July 2008, he promised to reward the city with $30 million if antiquated KeyArena was approved for refurbishing by the conclusion of 2009 and Seattle did not have a new team by 2013.

Clay Bennett and his cronies officially confirmed the league's worst kept secret today by announcing that his franchise has been dubbed the Oklahoma City Thunder. So does this mean after stealing basketball from Seattle he now has his sights on Golden State's mascot?

After all, Thunder, seen above destroying Harry the Hawk in a dance competition during the 2007 All-Star Weekend, has been the Warriors' mascot for over a decade. From Matt Steinmetz of the Examiner (via GSoM):

It will be interesting to see how the NBA handles this little issue ... if at all. Can it really have a team in one city with the nickname of "Thunder," and an official NBA mascot for another team named "Thunder?"

That just can't be, right? It'd be like the Knicks having a little Irish guy named "the Celtic" perform at halftime. The NBA is usually so savvy when it comes to branding and marketing, but everything else about this whole OKC debacle has been backwards and hamfisted, so I guess this shouldn't be any different.

My guess is that 11 years of tradition will be flushed down the drain and a name change will be forced, although it would be kind of cool (in a trainwreck/professional-wrestling-type of way) to simply let Bennett embrace his role as the league villain and actually kidnap Thunder from Oakland.

Update 9/3: Yes, it's officially the Oklahoma City Thunder. Click through to see the logo.

The word on the street for all of you suckers entrepreneurs who purchased okcitythundercats.com and okctcatslolz.com is that you are probably going to be disappointed with your investment.

That's because, as KOCO-5 in Oklahoma City is reporting, it appears as if the NBA's newest franchise name will be the "Oklahoma City Thunder."

The registrar for all of the NBA's Internet domain names reserved okcthunderbasketball.com and okcthunderbasketball.net on July 10, according to information gleaned from whois.net.

CSC Corporate Domains describes itself as a domain name management company for corporations, law firms and intellectual property professionals. It is the registrar of record for nba.com and all other domains managed by NBA Media Ventures, LLC.

Now, the first thing that came to my mind when I heard "Oklahoma City Thunder" was "Oooooo ... incredibly loud and completely harmless noises created by nature! I'm terrified!" (At least the Sonics were fast.)

As we've mentioned before, there is significant evidence to believe that David Stern and Clay Bennett are good friends (I think actually, it's a fact, if that is a provable statement). This friendship took another convenient twist with the latest news re: hijacking Seattle.

How else can you explain the subsequent timeline of events: Bennett signing a settlement that agrees to return the Sonics if Howard Schultz wins his lawsuit followed immediately by the NBA getting elbow deep in that same court proceeding? That's right, the NBA itself is now filing motions to dismiss Schultz' lawsuit.

The NBA claims in its motion that the transfer of the franchise to a court-appointed receiver and a subsequent transfer back to Schultz would both be prohibited by the league's constitution.

The motion also claims that if a court-appointed receiver were to be appointed, the NBA's constitution allows for the league's owners to put that team "under the management and control" of commissioner David Stern.

"The relief requested by plaintiffs is entirely inconsistent with these reasonable and lawful regulations of the NBA, and the disposition of this action therefore threatens the ability of the League to protect its justifiable interests," attorney Ralph Palumbo wrote in the motion.

And yes, there's a pile of legalese in there. But my understanding here is that the NBA has rules in place to avoid a league owned team (that's a good rule) and they're using it to nullify Schultz' suit (that's a pretty malevolent application). And if you think that the NBA's lawyers just managed to come up with this, well, you're wrong.

America's love affair with Orlando Summer league announcer Dante and Galante has been well chronicled already. They're funny, they're kind of pranksters and they're straight up honest in their opinions. They combined the last two traits recently, to punk a few people. Namely some people on Yahoo! answers, who actually thought that Oklahoma City might name their stolen new franchise the "Thundercats".

the most horrible name that I hear for an NBA team in my entire life.!!

Totally wrong.!!

[...]Why not name them after an Indian tribe from Oklahoma or something else that has significance to Oklahoma?

Yes, clearly. But before you call me ridiculous for even mentioning this (it did after all, get corrected later down the page), bear in mind that someone actually went out and and purchased oklahomacitythundercats.com and okcthundercats.com, which is kind of insane actually.

There is literally zero chance that Clay Bennett allows Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook to become Thundercats, which makes that, well, kind of a poor investment. I'm all for the creativity involved in poaching domain names, and grabbing the new team name could work out pretty well for the greedy sucker that jumped all over it. But that doesn't mean there's anything rational in purchasing anything relating to Thundercats. Much less believing that would be the new name.

From now on, I'm guessing Clay Bennett and the rest of the Sonics ownership group will stick to telegraph and messenger pigeon, or at the very least conference calls. Even more emails have emerged that put the group in bad light, suggesting they never intended to keep the Sonics in Seattle (shocking!), and that the NBA began to suspect as much last year.

After minority owner Aubrey McClendon went on the record last summer saying they always intended to move the team to Oklahoma City, Bennett warned the group that he was worried about the legal ramifications, since the team was contractually obligated to make a "good faith effort" to stay in Seattle. From Jim Brunner of the Seattle Times:

"Yes sir, we get killed on this one. I don't mind the PR ugliness (pretty used to it), but I am concerned from a legal standpoint that your statement could perhaps undermine our basic premise of 'good faith best efforts'... "

Bennett also told his fellow owners that McClendon's comment had prompted the NBA to take a closer look at their "good faith" promise:

In an e-mail last August, Sonics owner Clay Bennett told fellow owner Aubrey McClendon that NBA executive Joel Litvin was "looking into certain documents we signed at closing that may have been breached."

Despite all of the court cases, despite all of the pleading from the fans and despite the possibility of other ownership options stepping in to help keep the Supersonics in Seattle, a majority of National Basketball Association owners voted today to allow the team to relocate to Oklahoma City.

A majority of owners voted to approve the Sonics' move, according to Richard Peddie, president of Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment, which owns the NBA's Toronto Raptors.

Peddie didn't give a vote total as he emerged from the closed-door session in New York.

This is a pretty aggressive move by the NBA owners, but entirely shocking. Allowing Clay Bennett to truck the Sonics out of Seattle gives them ridiculous precedent (of the non-legal variety right now) to demand new facilities and upgrades for other teams in various cities simply by threatening relocation.

I don't think that the city of Seattle is responsible for this of course, but I do not think it's a stretch to say that whoever edited David Stern's Wikipedia page is probably a fan of the Seattle Supersonics. Either that or they really, really hate Oklahoma City. You may click here to enlarge the photo (or the NSFW uncensored version)if you wish, but here's what the (censored, obviously) text said as of 7:25 pm on Thursday evening.

C---sucker Stern's first association with the Ninny Basketball Association was to allow the Seattle Supersonics to be stolen by an in bred hick named Clay "BigC---sInTheA--" Bennett. Stern and Bennett are said to have had sexual relations over a period of twenty years. According to tabloids, Bennett would often yell "Git-R-Done" while Stern was engaged in anal sexual relations with him. General Counsel ...

Okay, I'm not a fan of the Sonics leaving Seattle; I don't know that many people outside of OK City that are. But this seems a little bit over the top, no? Besides that, it most likely borders on some sort of libel, although I would imagine that the Wikipedia people will probably get it down pretty quickly.

Large tip of the cap to Odenized on this one.

Update(s): Or not on the quickly part. Seems it has been up all day long; (7:45 pm) It is now gone.

David Stern usually has no problem embracing the role of "hard ass." (In fact, it seems like he actually enjoys it.) And yet, when Clay Bennett was forced to turn over emails that revealed he and his ownership team flat-out lied to Stern's face about not planning on moving the team to Oklahoma City all along, Stern oddly decided to roll over and let Clay and his buddies escape public humiliation:

"I haven't studied them but my sense of it was that Clay, as the managing partner and the driving force of the group, was operating in good faith under the agreement that had been made with [previous owner] Howard Schultz," Stern said on a conference call Monday. "His straight and narrow path may not have been shared by all of his partners in their views, but Clay was the one that was making policy for the partnership."

He hasn't studied them? I'm calling b.s. You can tell that Stern prides himself on being the smartest man in the room, so why is he willing to feign ignorance on one of the hottest hot button topics to come up in his league? My guess is that since he's already made up his mind to endorse the move he's hoping to keep as much talk about it out of the news cycles as possible, and doing something drastic like fining Bennett's ownership group (again) would distract from the upcoming playoffs.