"Today is the one-year anniversary of the settlement that brought the then-Seattle SuperSonics to Oklahoma City.

What many don't realize is just how difficult it was to move an entire pro sports organization 2,000 miles in roughly four months."We started planning for the 2009-10 season in January," said Brian Byrnes, vice president of ticket sales and services. "Most professional teams are about seven to eight months in front of the upcoming season. That gives you an idea how much time you need. We had roughly 60 days."Byrnes was referring to the skeleton crew those first two months - team chairman Clay Bennett, public relations director Dan Mahoney, chief operating officer Danny Barth, business coordinator John Croley and a couple dozen people answering phones.It wasn't until late August that the organization leased office space in Leadership Square. Eventually, 38 Sonics employees arrived from Seattle. Most were hired on a contract basis, but 30 stayed."The response from the community and the connection with people was transforming to them," Bennett said. "The experience became so exciting, so successful."Exciting... successful... stressful... and hectic.In less than four months the organization:?Hired nearly 100 new employees.?Reworked contracts with Ford Center advertisers and suite holders.?Converted a former roller skating rink into an NBA-caliber practice facility.?Sold so many season tickets they had to cap sales.?Devised a new nickname and logo.?Selected a dance team.?Relocated players.?Helped the league squeeze a new city into the 2008-09 NBA schedule.?Finalized legal and business issues in Seattle and made hundreds of decisions that go with a virtual start-up company from opening a bank account, to finding insurance to purchasing office equipment.And, oh by the way, the organization needed 61 truck loads to carry 786,000 pounds of freight halfway across the country from Seattle."Everything we did was for the first time," Bennett said. "Every day we did as much as we could, as well as we could, as fast as we could. Hundreds of people made the difference. Vendors, suppliers, consultants, the city."I don't recall a time when we requested something that wasn't supplied with enthusiasm and the highest quality possible."Since the New Orleans Hornets moved to Oklahoma City in an even shorter time frame, OKC Mayor Mick Cornett originally underestimated the difficulty of the Seattle move.This was different."The Hornets were primarily contractual," Cornett said. "The jobs were temporary. The housing was temporary. Office space was temporary. Because this was permanent, every decision was more significant. They were basically starting from scratch.""