Seattle never had a chance.

The way they tried to spin it, it was insulting.

There's no way the team's going to leave, and because it's impossible, it'll never happen.

We don't need to worry about it.

There are so many villains in the whole story of losing the Sonics.

But you just always kind of think of maybe a white knight will show up. We're like, oh my God, we got to rent!

This might save the franchise!

You know, I think a lot of people just thought like, oh, you know, someone's going to step up, they're going to save them.

The perfect storm of circumstances came together.

It ended up being a terrible, terrible, perfect storm.

Seattle was gone. And it's just, even saying it now, it, perfect storm. Seattle was gone.

And it's just, even saying it now, it makes me empty.

From Luminary Media and the Ringer, this is Sonic Boom.

The story of how Seattle lost its NBA team.

I'm your host, Jordan Ritter-Con. You probably remember this

story. I thought I did too. But as I dug into it, I found truth so much more complicated than I

imagined. So many things had to go wrong for the Sonics to move to Oklahoma City. So why did they?

Business partners clashed, politicians waffled, and all of it led to a heartbreak Seattle still

hasn't gotten over. This is a story of a heist. For the past year, I've been searching for the people who took Seattle's team and the people

who let it go.

We'll hear from NBA legends and diehard fans, from politicians and executives, from

anyone we could find who had a stake in what Seattle lost, and we'll meet a ghost, a man who laid the groundwork for the Sonics to leave,

...