It’s gloom and doom in Seattle

SEATTLE -- Kevin Durant refutes the desperate talk here that he is the SuperSonics’ savior as deftly as he launches his smooth jump shot.

“I’m not the only one on the floor playing, you know. I can’t do everything,” the second overall choice in June’s draft said. “So I don’t think it’s all on me. I don’t know why people are saying, ‘Save the organization.’ ”

Excuse Durant for being naive. He’s 19 and only been in town a month.

SuperSonics fans are clinging to any form of hope for an NBA franchise in Seattle on the eve of a season that will be unlike any in the team’s 40-year history.

The day of the opener, Oct. 31, is also the deadline owner Clay Bennett has set to either secure a new arena deal or begin relocating Seattle’s oldest professional team to the tycoon’s hometown of Oklahoma City for the 2008-09 season.

Instead of trumpeting a new era featuring Durant, the team’s most anticipated rookie ever and last season’s national college player of the year at Texas, the Sonics are in federal court with city government.

The team is trying to get permission to have an arbitration panel rule on whether it can buy its way out of the final three years of its KeyArena lease, which NBA commissioner David Stern has called the worst in the league for a team’s revenues. In response, the city has sued the Sonics.

A resolution is expected before year’s end. Bennett has until March 1 to meet a league deadline to file for relocation for the following season.

Seattle appears likely to become the third city to lose its NBA team this decade. Vancouver lost the Grizzlies to Memphis in 2001, a year before the Hornets went from Charlotte to New Orleans. Before that, the league hadn’t had a relocation since the Kings fled Kansas City for Sacramento in 1985.

None of those jilted cities had its team even half as long as Seattle has had the Sonics.

Stern had said this summer he believed that Seattle would find a way to keep the team, which claims the city’s only major pro championship. Gus Williams, Dennis Johnson and Jack Sikma won it all in 1979.

But this month, Stern sounded far more pessimistic about the Sonics’ future in Seattle.

“There doesn’t seem to be a lot of movement on a new building,” he said. “We always hope that there will be, (but) the team has started litigation.

“Welcome, again, to NBA 101, which is about lawyers. I don’t want to knock lawyers having been one myself, but it’s not at all pleasant. But hopefully, good things will happen once we throw the ball up in the regular season and it will take people’s minds off of some other sidebars.”

Not likely in Seattle.

“Never in a million years did I envision this would go this long or be this uphill,” said Brian Robinson, a real-estate investor and Sonics season-ticket holder who co-founded Save Our Sonics, a fan organization of about 6,000.

“I want this to be around for my kids to enjoy,” said Robinson, who grew up going to Sonics games with his father. “I have a 7-year-old son that should be all into the team right now, and we have to worry about this.”