SEATTLE (AP) _ If David Stern has his way inside his own league, the SuperSonics will remain in Seattle.

The NBA commissioner, an associate of Sonics owner Clay Bennett for more than a decade since Bennett was the San Antonio Spurs' representative on the league's board of governors, said he thinks Bennett will find a way to get a new arena built in the Seattle area to keep the Sonics in their home for the past 40 years.

If Bennett doesn't find that way by Oct. 31, he has promised to begin the process of relocating the team, most likely to his hometown of Oklahoma City or to Kansas City, which is looking for an anchor tenant for its new arena.

``I think it's just going to work itself out and I hope it does,'' Stern said Thursday at the NBA final in San Antonio. ``It's been a good city for the NBA and we'd love to stay there.''

Stern acknowledged that Bennett ``has more than exhausted the traditional means'' to getting a new arena built in the Seattle area. Before it adjourned in April, the state legislature rejected a plan to use King County tax revenues to cover US