Stern: SuperSonics' departure inevitable

[Pistol Pete Vescey]

-= original quote snipped =-



I'm afraid this is probably correct. Stern is sending a signal to all of the owners that this is a long-term issue that trumps the immediate consideration that Seattle is a bigger, better market than Oklahoma City. Stern has been driving the NBA's gravy train and extorting cities for over two decades now. His message: "We are the NBA and we will not be negotiated with. You will accede to our demands or we will leave." He's telling the owners that even if Seattle is a great city and OKC is a **** hole, this is still in their interest because it keeps the league's extortion racket alive. For this reason, I fear the Board of Governors will approve this move easily.

You nailed it.

[Dick Tate]

i think it is clear now, painfully clear, that the team was moving from the jump. at least that was their plan. all they did was try and do the same thing schultz did. nothing new. if the answer to schultz was no, why would bennett expect a different answer? he didn't. he knew the answer would be no.
this was planned from the beggining and stern was in on it.

i call foul.

Schultz was in on it too then. He claimed that selling to out of state owners with the threat of a move was the best bet for getting a new arena that was needed to keep the team here. He also knew the answer would still be no.

[Speedcat2000]

Hey Jenn,

RE: coverage of the banner. I have not found pictures or video yet, but there are 14000 views on the dedicated sonicscentral thread, over 1300 views on the NO Hornets dedicated thread on their board, a dedicated thread from Spain, over 300 emails in my inbox on the issue, one television interview on KIRO7, one live radio interview on KJR, two interviews with local newspapers, national articles with TrueHoop, HoopsAddict and others, and thousands of hits on a google search. In fact, the latter is how I found this thread. Nice work wiff!

Where I am pissed as hell that no media outlet filmed this despite 2 major national affliates offering to do so, I think we've had an impact out there with the banner effort overall.

Keep the fight on Supersonics fans!! If anyone wants to contribute to our ongoing efforts, send a PayPal donation to sonicsfansunited@yahoo.com.

Cheers,
Speedcat

[CatchNShoot]

It remains to be seen if Shultz was prophetic enough to know that it would take an unstoppable force (Bennett) to get the immovable object (Seattle) to budge.

For comparison, I'm trying to imagine a world where Shultz sold to local owners and they had the same financial demands on the government. Would it be any different or worse? Would the local owners have less leverage because they're local, and thus would they have to pay more for the same kind of treatment? It stands to reason that any local owner would have to pay for the whole enchillada in this political climate.