The SuperSonics, however, only won 30 games and Bianchi was replaced by Wilkens as player/coach during the offseason. Rule, meanwhile, improved on his rookie statistics with 24.0 points per game and 11.5 rebounds per game. Wilkens brought a strong all-around game to the SuperSonics, averaging 22.4 points, 8.2 assists, and 6.2 rebounds per game for Seattle in the 1968–69 season. Hazzard was traded to the Atlanta Hawks before the start of the next season for Lenny Wilkens.
The team got their first win on October 21, their third game of the season in San Diego against the San Diego Rockets in overtime 117–110, and finished the season with a 23–59 record.
The expansion team stumbled out of the gates with a 144–116 loss in their first game in San Francisco against the San Francisco Warriors. īeginning play on October 13, 1967, the SuperSonics were coached by Al Bianchi and featured All-Star guard Walt Hazzard and NBA All-Rookie Team members Bob Rule and Al Tucker. The SuperSonics were Seattle's first major league sports franchise. He named the team "SuperSonics" after Boeing's recently awarded contract for the SST project, which was later canceled. Schulman would serve as the active partner and head of team operations. Klein, who both owned the AFL's San Diego Chargers at the time, and a group of minority partners were awarded an NBA franchise for the city of Seattle. On December 20, 1966, Los Angeles businessmen Sam Schulman and Eugene V.
Tom Meschery and Bob Rule during the SuperSonics expansion season. The SuperSonics' franchise history, however, would be shared with the Thunder. Settlement terms of a lawsuit between the city of Seattle and Clay Bennett's ownership group stipulated the SuperSonics' banners, trophies, and retired jerseys remain in Seattle the nickname, logo, and color scheme are available to any subsequent NBA team that plays at a renovated KeyArena subject to NBA approval. The franchise also won six divisional titles, their last being in 2005, with five in the Pacific Division and one in the Northwest Division. Overall, the franchise won three Western Conference titles: 1978, 1979, and 1996. The SuperSonics won the NBA championship in 1979. They returned to the Coliseum full-time in 1985, moving temporarily to the Tacoma Dome in Tacoma, Washington, for the 1994–95 season while the Coliseum was renovated and rebranded as KeyArena. In 1978, the team moved to the Kingdome, which was shared with the Seattle Mariners of Major League Baseball (MLB) and the Seattle Seahawks of the National Football League (NFL). Home games were played at KeyArena, originally known as Seattle Center Coliseum, for 33 of the franchise's 41 seasons in Seattle. After failing to find public funding to construct a new arena in the Seattle area, the SuperSonics moved to Oklahoma City before the 2008–09 season, following a $45 million settlement with the city of Seattle to pay off the team's existing lease at KeyArena at Seattle Center in advance of its 2010 expiration. The sale was approved by the NBA Board of Governors on October 24, 2006, and finalized on October 31, 2006, at which point the new ownership group took control.
On July 18, 2006, the Basketball Club of Seattle sold the SuperSonics and its Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA) sister franchise Seattle Storm to the Professional Basketball Club LLC, headed by Oklahoma City businessman Clay Bennett. It was then owned by Barry Ackerley (1983–2001), and then Basketball Club of Seattle, headed by Starbucks chairman emeritus, former president and CEO Howard Schultz (2001–2006). Sam Schulman owned the team from its 1967 inception until 1983. After the 2007–08 season ended, the team relocated to Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, and now play as the Oklahoma City Thunder. The SuperSonics played in the National Basketball Association (NBA) as a member club of the league's Western Conference Pacific and Northwest divisions from 1967 until 2008. The Seattle SuperSonics, commonly known as the Sonics, were an American professional basketball team based in Seattle.