As part of the city of Seattle's suit against the Sonics, they have filed emails with the court proving that Clay Bennett and his ownership team were never intending to keep the Sonics in Seattle and prove that Bennett blatantly lied to David Stern with regards to their plans and their conversations. This is proving more embarassing to Bennett and the League every day. E-mails reveal Sonics owners intended to bolt from Seattle I urge everyone to read the full email trail. It is a disgusting behind the scenes look at the type of people that are trying to ruin the game of NBA basketball.
Here is a link to a PDF of the court filing with the emails http://assets.espn.go.com/media/pdf/080410/espn_seattle.PDF I'm an outsider to all of this, but I'm not sure why anyone thought this ownership group ever wanted to keep the Sonics in Seattle. The entire thing smelled of bull shit from miles away.
<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (psheehy @ Apr 10 2008, 02:34 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}></div><div class='quotemain'>As part of the city of Seattle's suit against the Sonics, they have filed emails with the court proving that Clay Bennett and his ownership team were never intending to keep the Sonics in Seattle and prove that Bennett blatantly lied to David Stern with regards to their plans and their conversations. This is proving more embarassing to Bennett and the League every day. E-mails reveal Sonics owners intended to bolt from Seattle I urge everyone to read the full email trail. It is a disgusting behind the scenes look at the type of people that are trying to ruin the game of NBA basketball.</div> oops...trying to cover too many teams and leagues and stories at the same time CORRECT LINK
<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (cpawfan @ Apr 10 2008, 02:43 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}></div><div class='quotemain'>Here is a link to a PDF of the court filing with the emails http://assets.espn.go.com/media/pdf/080410/espn_seattle.PDF I'm an outsider to all of this, but I'm not sure why anyone thought this ownership group ever wanted to keep the Sonics in Seattle. The entire thing smelled of bull shit from miles away.</div> You are not wrong. Many did not believe the PBC group from day one. Some felt it was best to give them the original benefit of the doubt. In the end, though, this comes down to the "legal" impacts of their lying and whether Stern and the league take the same stance now that lies are proven as they did when it was all merely assumed.
Why are these billionaires discussing these issues over email? If there is pertinent information that I would like to be concealed I would think that I would discuss that information face to face or at worst by phone. There are a number of ways that this could have played out to benefit Clay Bennett. Number one he should have done what he did this season last season in trying to blow up this franchise. I do believe that we could have gotten more for Ray Allen if we would have decided to trade him prior to the 2006-2007 season and I do think that if your intentions are to either get a fully financed arena from the public or relocate to your hometown you have to establish a vision for your program instead of just evaluating people that you already know that you don't want to keep. They shouldn't have resigned Nick Collison or Luke Ridnour and they should have let the market dictate how much they were willing to pay for either of their services. They shouldn't have hired Lenny Wilkins knowing that he would not be trusted enough to be involved with the inner workings of their ultimate relocation plans. They should have never discussed relocation until their deadline had passed. Basically they should have just kept quiet about relocation, hired their own people that they could trust with their deception, and make as many proposals as they could to the Legislature while being seen as people who made a good faith effort to exhaust all possible options to keep the Sonics in the Puget Sound region. Instead they talked openly about relocating as leverage, wasted a season on lame duck employees, hired public relation people from the are that they never trusted, and stayed in Oklahoma city year round in hopes that people would seek them out and supply them with ideas to present to Seattle officials. All in all I don't think that Bennett's group worked hard or smart enough to convince anyone that they made a good faith initiative to keep this team in Seattle - and because they made so many mistakes it may cost them four years of revenue (2006-2010). We all knew that they were lying to an extent when they mentioned that they were willing to do whatever it takes to keep the team in Seattle. What we didn't realize was that they weren't really willing to do anything to keep the Sonics in town - and their blatant arrogance is something that I find extremely disturbing. The law is the law - and the city of Seattle has done nothing to justify the Key Arena lease being broken.
