BY ERIC D. WILLIAMS
Eric.williams@thenewstribune.com

Here’s a revelation: The Seattle SuperSonics likely will continue to lose millions of dollars if the team is forced to stay in Seattle for two more seasons and honor terms of the KeyArena lease.

Danny Barth, CEO of the Sonics, presented that gloomy financial picture for the future while on the witness stand Wednesday.

Barth’s testimony was the focus of the afternoon session in the third day of the trial involving the Sonics and the City of Seattle. The city is suing the Sonics to force the team to honor a clause in the KeyArena contract that states the team must play all of its home games at the Seattle Center facility until the end of the contract, which runs until September 2010.

Sonics chairman Clay Bennett (shown above being questioned by the city's lead attorney, Paul Lawrence. Listen to an interview with Lawrence here and here.) also returned to the witness stand in the morning session, and again reiterated that he had hoped to get an arena deal done in Seattle. However, once efforts for his proposal for a $500 million facility in Renton failed to gain support among state lawmakers in Olympia, Bennett said he turned his effort toward plans to move the team Oklahoma City.

=> Read more!

Aaron Wolff, a criminal attorney in the Seattle area who does work for Save Our Sonics, has been in court following the case and was kind enough to take a few minutes with me to share his perspective.

Although several media reports have been critical of attorneys for the city's performance at this point, Wolff believes overall the city is doing well in arguing that the team should be required to honor the final two years of the lease.

"Maybe it didn't go as well as we would have liked on Monday," Wolff said. "But I think (city lead attorney Paul) Lawrence today on is cross examination did an excellent job with getting out the key points."

Wolff said even though attorneys have put forth a strong effort in defending the team's right to buy its way out of the lease, that ultimately the city needs to continue focusing on the specific clause stipulation in the lease, and the fact the ownership group agreed to honor that clause when they purchased the team.

"It's my belief that Keller is trying to bring in so many different point here," Wolff said. "But the key point here is whether or not the Sonics are obligated to stay based on the provisions in the lease."

Listen to the full interview here.

Here’s a wrap up of an eventful morning in court so far in the third day of the trial between the City of Seattle and the Sonics over terms of the KeyArena lease.

Sonics chairman Clay Bennett was back on the stand for all of the morning session, and began with Brad Keller, lead attorney for the team, continuing his questioning.

Keller again pointed out in the sales agreement between Bennett's ownership group and the former ownership group headed by Howard Schultz that it included a clause that the team would pursue a successor venue, and a plan to consider renovating KeyArena was never considered because the Key is considered a substandard NBA facility and the team could never make a profit there.

=> Read more!