HUGE NEWS! Clay Bennett & Co. buy Supersonics!

[betts]

Isn't the suit an attempt to make the Sonics fulfill the terms of their lease and stay in Seattle for two more years? I'm not sure how you could name OKC as a co-defendent in the suit. I always thought it would be smarter to see what happened with the BOG and try and negotiate with Seattle if the BOG voted for relocation. But, the wheels are in motion now.

Of course Seattle isn't making any friends in the NBA either. They may effectively reuin their chances of getting another team if the Sonics move. I guess we will see......

[bornhere]

Isn't the suit an attempt to make the Sonics fulfill the terms of their lease and stay in Seattle for two more years? I'm not sure how you could name OKC as a co-defendent in the suit.

That makes sense. I was thinking that if you thought party A had assisted or abetted party B in violating the terms of a contract, you might have some legal recourse against party A.

[jbrown84]

Although the e-mails were stupid, especially the one to David Stern, they don't change the fact that the city of Seattle and state of Washington never made any attempt to come up with an arena plan, and they could probably still do so tomorrow and the team would stay. What Bennett et al wanted is immaterial.

I agree. Bad PR, but hopefully the fallout is minimal.

[solitude]

Have members of PBC given sworn depositions or anything at all that could come back to bite them criminally?

[windowphobe]

If they can accuse the city, they could just as easily accuse David Stern - which would insure a new team in Seattle would arrive about half an hour after Lucifer starts banging on the pipes for more heat.

[Kerry]

It appears Seattle is just going straight into scorched Earth mode. If they lose the Sonics they have no interest in having another NBA team. If I owned the Sonics I would drop the effort to move before 2010 and just let the current lease expire. That gives the city 2 years to get the Ford Center ready and will leave Seattle with $25 million in debt. Two can play the scorched Earth game.

[andy157]

I've been sifting through the 92 page document today, not even half way there yet, but it doesn't look good for us. We're probably definitely looking at 2010 or beyond now. I was optimistic until I got to page 37



Man these guys were buffons for thinking Seattle wasn't smart enough to ask for email records. One of Bennett's consultants from OKC even warned him early on in these email documents. Geez. I'm honestly surprised it's taken so long to make them public.

metro, tell me if I am correct, or incorrect, in my understanding. Which is. It's now your opinion that, Bennett and Co., have been reduced from a bunch of fine, intelligent, savvy, honest, and upstanding businessmen, to a bunch of buffons?

[betts]

metro, tell me if I am correct, or incorrect, in my understanding. Which is. It's now your opinion that, Bennett and Co., have been reduced from a bunch of fine, intelligent, savvy, honest, and upstanding businessmen, to a bunch of buffons?

I've been saying since I got to see George Shinn up close and personal, that you don't get to pick your owners, nor do you get to pick whether they're admirable or not. Of course, I also say, "Let s/he that has no sin cast the first stone." If there are those among us who have never told a lie to a superior, a constituent, a customer, etc, let s/he go ahead and cast away at the Sonics' owners. Personally, I am slightly embarrassed to admit that I've probably told a few when I felt caught or cornered.

Also, I would hope I wouldn't be dumb enough to put something in an e-mail where it could be used against me, but I'm not even sure I can guarantee that I would have thought about it either.

Lastly, if I were them, I probably would have done precisely what they did. David Stern knew they wanted to move the team. Obviously Bennett came to him asking to buy a team to move to OKC. I would have followed the letter of the law strictly while in Seattle, but I'm sure in private I would have discussed contingency plans, especially since that contingency was what I really wanted to happen. I have yet to see any evidence they obstructed any potential arena plans in Seattle, and as late as last June Bennett was talking to Sabey, per e-mails available from Seattle, and even mentioned the Muckleshoot offer, simply saying he thought the land was too far away, and he didn't think they had an offer anyway (something to that effect). So again, I'm not throwing any stones.

Doesn't anyone remember all the George Shinn ridiculousness? He got caught tellling people from OKC that he wanted to keep the team in OKC when he forgot there was a guest from New Orleans invited to the dinner. He made multiple comments about New Orleans being dirty, having bad schools, that his employees didn't want to move back there. Then there was the Beekeeper e-mail fiasco (which should have been a lesson to Bennett et al). Obviously, being rich and lacking common sense are not mutually exclusive.

[bornhere]

Well, again, I'm not a lawyer, but...

Nothing that happened last week was directed at OKC, as I see it, although there may be some local reverberations. But as I mentioned previously, I think there's a lot more to Seattle's filing than what is evident on the surface.

It becomes evident from the emails that Bennett not only misled Stern, but probably also misled the Board of Governors last October when they approved the sale of the Sonics and Storm to PBC.

Now, it may be that Stern and the Board knew the PBC was blowing smoke when it said it wanted to keep the Sonics in Seattle, and everybody was just posturing for the sake of contractual leverage. But if that's the case, it was a secret and, of course, meant to stay that way.

If the Board approves the move at the April 18 meeting, it will be saying, 'we don't care that the PBC misrepresented its intentions when we approved the sale.' That will be the message it sends to every city in the league and every city that might want to bid on a move or expansion club in the future.

I assume the City of Seattle legal team took this into account when it made last week's filing.

In addition, the NBA is now under the threat of having to reveal massive amounts of data regarding its somewhat murky business model. This is information that the NBA would probably prefer to keep hidden from other major league organizations – and the general public as well. A judge may rule that those documents are not discoverable. But the Board of Governors may be able to render the issue moot by simply ruling the Sonics stay in Seattle - basically pulling the rug out from under 'the new guys' to protect the interests of owners with some tenure. I think the City of Seattle legal team probably thought of this as well.

I wouldn't say Seattle is pursuing a 'scorched earth' strategy so much as playing the same kind of hardball major league owners play with every city. We've all been programmed to believe the major league sports organizations are some sort pantheon of deities whom we must all worship and obey, and Seattle is treating this group as if it's just another tenant trying to get out of a lease.

[dalelakin]

I mentioned this a few posts back, but isn't this "classic thread" due for a padlock? There's over one thousand posts in this thread. It makes it very hard to find specific things.

Really convenient scrolling the page to the right to see all the pages as well...

As for the emails so much is lost in just the typed word. The body language, infliction of the voice, facial expressions, sarcasm and so much more are not conveyed through the typed word. Taking that into consideration I see this as no more than some sports nuts thumping their chests on the impending win.

[betts]

And I'm not a lawyer either, but I fail to see how arguing the definition of specific performance in a courtroom would demand viewing all NBA records. It's not a Seattle judge making that determination. I also suspect that should it come to that, Clay Bennett's suit to move early would be dropped in short order and he would be sitting in Seattle the next two years unless he could negotiate an early exit.

As far as what the Board of Governors thinks, we will know in short order. Bennett's not the first owner to say one thing and mean another, however. Michael Heisley insisted he wanted to keep the Grizzlies in Vancouver when he purchased them, and during the time he was negotiating to move them. They had four years left on their lease as well, and he was able to buy it out.

[metro]

"What's being done to the Sonics is criminal, and each of these is to blame," says Peter White, at right, who with Lance Thompson, Chris Erickson and Karl Erickson, all of Seattle, wear jail stripes Sunday at the Sonics' last home game of the season. Their signs refer to owner Clay Bennett; Oklahoma City, where he wants to move the team; former owner Howard Schultz; and NBA Commissioner David Stern.

[Kerry]

No one to blame but Seattle. They let it happen.

[solitude]

No one to blame but Seattle. They let it happen.

"They" is a pretty broad term. People who voted "yes" in support of Seattle didn't "let it happen." The 12 year old kid who can recite Sonics statistics up one side and down the other didn't "let it happen."

This, again, isn't a black & white issue. There's a lot of gray and I think it's perfectly okay for Sonics fans to register disapproval. It has been a Seattle institution and if you can't appreciate that, and how fans might react, you've gotten too close and become nothing but a hometown fanboy - at whatever cost.

[Kerry]

I meant Seattle as a collective whole. Since I don't know every person in Seattle I can't very well go door to door and say Jimmy, Diane, little Bobby, and Steve let it happen, but Wayne and Martha are off the hook.

[betts]

"They" is a pretty broad term. People who voted "yes" in support of Seattle didn't "let it happen." The 12 year old kid who can recite Sonics statistics up one side and down the other didn't "let it happen."

This, again, isn't a black & white issue. There's a lot of gray and I think it's perfectly okay for Sonics fans to register disapproval. It has been a Seattle institution and if you can't appreciate that, and how fans might react, you've gotten too close and become nothing but a hometown fanboy - at whatever cost.

I too am fine with the Seattle fans registering disapproval. I wish they would register it on their own forums rather than ours, but I also wish people from Oklahoma would stay off their forums. I'd be sad/angry, etc. too if I were a Sonics fan who lobbied my congressperson to vote for an arena proposal, or to let my city vote.

I don't really know who you blame, outside of the politicians. I can't really blame Schultz for selling the team, since he was losing money. Sounds like, according to Stern, he tried to find local owners. I don't blame Bennett for buying the team, because it was for sale. I don't blame him for wanting to move it to OKC either, and to be fair to him, if Seattle had come up with an arena proposal, the Sonics would have stayed in Seattle, e-mails or no e-mails. I don't blame Margarita Prentice, who gave it her all. The closest you can come to assigning blame to individuals from Seattle, is if you blame those who promoted, and those who voted for I-91. The overwhelming response to that election probably gave the mayor and city council the idea that the majority of people in Seattle didn't want to spend any more money on sports venues, which made them reluctant to be too enthusiastic about promoting it.

I see a problem in their process for assigning money if the state government has to vote on assignation of funds for city construction. Of the three major sports, the NBA is the one that has the least appeal to an entire state, because of the fact that it's played in the winter and it's played on many weeknights, making driving long distances to go to the games a bigger problem than MLB, which is primarily a summer sport and the NFL which is primarily a weekend game. So, legislators from the outlying cities and towns would probably be less interested in promoting construction of a basketball arena, than an NFL or MLB stadium.