Yeah, but that's only because the city agreed to let them leave for a cash payment. They were under no obligation to do so, and if they hadn't reached that settlement with the team, the Sonics/Thunder would have been obligated to play those additional two years in Seattle.

Bring Back Our Sonics!

I don't blame the city for taking the payment; they took what they could get instead of having a lame duck team for 2 more years. The blame, if you want to assign it, lies with the NBA and Howard Schultz. Howard Schultz sold the team to an an Oklahoma City investment group headed by Clay Bennett. The NBA approved that deal. Despite what Bennett may have said publicly, Schultz and the NBA knew he wanted to move that team to Oklahoma City.

GN also has a casino in Lake Charles, where he would love to hold sports-betting related promotions.

If the team wants out, they’ll find a way. The city can’t just refuse that payday out of spite. The second the team says they are leaving ASAP, the revenue stream dries up. Nobody is going to games anymore which means businesses around won’t make any money which means no taxes.

Obviously not good to try to force your way out with 5 years left on your lease and maybe not even financially feasible, but things will look totally different in 2-3 years.

They can sue to enforce the lease. That means every single payment for the term of the lease.

Depending on the value of the lease, the legal cost of enforcing it, and the secondary revenue drop from a "zombie" team (a team that has declared their intention to leave but hasn't yet), it may not make sense to sue.

For example, the Raiders mentally/emotionally checked out a long time before they left. They always wondered why their strategy of threatening to leave every other year and asking for a billion dollar bond measure every other year wasn't working. I as a taxpayer would have been happy to have let them buy out their lease whenever. Nobody was investing around that site - no businesses, no restaurants, no housing - because at any point since 2005ish there's been a 30-50% chance that the Raiders would be gone the following year.

Of course they can. There’s also legal grounds to force the team/league to have them compete in their arena until the lease runs out.

But absolutely nobody would benefit from any of that. Having fans invested in your product is an integral part of the business model. Nobody buys season tickets for a team that just wants out. Nobody travels to your city to watch a team that doesn’t want to be there.

There are reasons why cities spend money on stadiums for pro teams. Those reasons are gone as soon as the general public knows that the team wants to leave.