Professional Basketball Club LLC is an investment group headed by Clay Bennett that owns the

National Basketball Association The National Basketball Association (NBA) is a professional basketball league in North America. The league is composed of 30 teams (29 in the United States and 1 in Canada) and is one of the major professional sports leagues in the United St ...

(NBA)'s

Oklahoma City Thunder The Oklahoma City Thunder are an American professional basketball team based in Oklahoma City. The Thunder compete in the National Basketball Association (NBA) as a member of the league's Western Conference Northwest Division. The team plays i ...

franchise (formerly the

Seattle SuperSonics The Seattle SuperSonics (commonly known as the Seattle Sonics) were an American professional basketball team based in Seattle. The SuperSonics competed in the National Basketball Association (NBA) as a member club of the league's Western Confe ...

) and the Thunder's

NBA G League The NBA G League, or simply the G League, is the National Basketball Association's (NBA) official minor league basketball organization. The league was known as the National Basketball Development League (NBDL) from 2001 to 2005, and the NBA De ...

affiliate

Oklahoma City Blue The Oklahoma City Blue are an American professional basketball team in the NBA G League based in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, and are affiliated with the Oklahoma City Thunder. The Blue play their home games at Paycom Center. The franchise began as ...

. The group also owned the

Women's National Basketball Association The Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA) is an American professional basketball league. It is composed of twelve teams, all based in the United States. The league was founded on April 22, 1996, as the women's counterpart to the Natio ...

(WNBA)'s Seattle Storm franchise from 2006 to 2008. The PBC then sold the Storm to local

Seattle Seattle ( ) is a seaport city on the West Coast of the United States. It is the seat of King County, Washington. With a 2020 population of 737,015, it is the largest city in both the state of Washington and the Pacific Northwest regio ...

owners, before moving the SuperSonics to

Oklahoma City Oklahoma City (), officially the City of Oklahoma City, and often shortened to OKC, is the capital and largest city of the U.S. state of Oklahoma. The county seat of Oklahoma County, it ranks 20th among United States cities in population, a ...

History

On July 18, 2006, Basketball Club of Seattle, led by

Howard Schultz Howard D. Schultz (born July 19, 1953) is an American businessman and author who served as both chairman and CEO of Starbucks from 1986 to 2000, from 2008 to 2017, and as interim CEO since 2022. Schultz also owned the Seattle SuperSonics baske ...

, sold the

and Seattle Storm to Professional Basketball Club after failing to reach an agreement with the city of

over a publicly funded $220 million expansion of

KeyArena Climate Pledge Arena is a multi-purpose indoor arena in Seattle, Washington, United States. It is located north of Downtown Seattle in the entertainment complex known as Seattle Center, the site of the 1962 World's Fair, for which it was ori ...

. The team relocated to Oklahoma City and began play as the

in the 2008–09 basketball season, becoming the third NBA franchise to relocate in the 2000s. The Professional Basketball Club on January 8, 2008, sold the Storm to an ownership group consisting of four Seattle businesswomen. On July 31, 2008, the

Tulsa 66ers Tulsa () is the second-largest city in the state of Oklahoma and 47th-most populous city in the United States. The population was 413,066 as of the 2020 census. It is the principal municipality of the Tulsa Metropolitan Area, a region with ...

, now

, announced that Professional Basketball Club had purchased the team, marking the third NBA Development League team to be owned by an NBA team ( Los Angeles Lakers and

San Antonio Spurs The San Antonio Spurs are an American professional basketball team based in San Antonio. The Spurs compete in the National Basketball Association (NBA) as a member of the league's Western Conference Southwest Division. The team plays its home ...

). In September 2013 the OKC Thunder added station KAKC, the 66ers' radio broadcasting partner, to its Thunder Radio Network. In April 2014, George Kaiser bought Tom L. Ward's interest in Professional Basketball Club, while Jeffrey Records Jr. sold part of his stake to Bennett while two other changed their stakes.

Former members

* Tom L. Ward * Aubrey McClendon (died on March 2, 2016) * G. Edward Evans

References

Companies based in Oklahoma City Oklahoma City Thunder owners Sports holding companies of the United States {{Oklahoma-basketball-team-stub