Professional Basketball Club

• 1. Introduction

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  Professional Basketball Club LLC is an investment group that sits at the center of one of the most contentious franchise relocations in American sports history. On the 18th of July 2006, a sale was signed that would eventually strip Seattle of its beloved SuperSonics and plant a new team in Oklahoma City. The questions that linger are as much about money and arena politics as they are about basketball. Who put this group together? What did they pay for? And what did they leave behind?

• 2. The Sale from Schultz

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  Howard Schultz led the Basketball Club of Seattle, the prior ownership group, into a negotiation that ultimately collapsed. The city of Seattle could not reach an agreement over a publicly funded expansion of KeyArena projected at $220 million. With no deal in place, Schultz sold both the Seattle SuperSonics and the Seattle Storm to Professional Basketball Club, headed by Clay Bennett. The sale closed on the 18th of July 2006. Bennett and his partners had secured not one franchise but two in a single transaction.

• 3. Seattle Storm's Separate Path

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  Clay Bennett's group held the Storm for less than two years. On the 8th of January 2008, Professional Basketball Club sold the Women's National Basketball Association franchise to a new ownership group made up of four Seattle businesswomen. That sale kept the Storm in Seattle, separating the two franchises that had arrived together. The SuperSonics, by contrast, were headed in a different direction entirely, one that would make the relocation a defining chapter in NBA history.

• 4. Oklahoma City Thunder

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  Beginning play in the 2008-09 season, the franchise that had been the Seattle SuperSonics became the Oklahoma City Thunder. It was the third NBA franchise to relocate during the 2000s. The move ended decades of NBA basketball in Seattle and established a new market in Oklahoma. Clay Bennett's investment group had transformed from the buyers of an existing Seattle institution into the founders of a new Oklahoma City one.

• 5. The G League Connection

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  On the 31st of July 2008, Professional Basketball Club purchased the Tulsa 66ers, a team that would eventually be renamed the Oklahoma City Blue. The acquisition made the Thunder only the third NBA team at that time to directly own its NBA Development League affiliate, alongside the Los Angeles Lakers and San Antonio Spurs. Adding the radio station KAKC to the Thunder Radio Network in September 2013 extended that local media infrastructure further.

• 6. Ownership Changes

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  The composition of Professional Basketball Club shifted over time. In April 2014, George Kaiser purchased the stake previously held by Tom L. Ward, while Jeffrey Records Jr. sold part of his interest to Bennett and two other members adjusted their holdings. Former members of the group included Tom L. Ward, G. Edward Evans, and Aubrey McClendon. McClendon died on the 2nd of March 2016. The evolving ownership structure reflected the long-term nature of the investment, years after the Thunder had established itself in Oklahoma City.