OFFICIAL SEATTLE SONICS THREAD

Originally Posted by FRANChISe206

^^^fingers crossed.....


"SAVE-OUR-SO-NICS!" clap. clap. clap clap clap.
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call 1-800-562-6000 (legislative hotline) tell them they need to hear the new stadium proposal out this session and if they can't then they need to hold aspecial session to hear it out. There are no new taxes invlved in the proposal and the 500 million dollar "gift" from the new investment group willgo away april 10th if the legislature doesn't get off their butts and make it happen. This is the opportunity to save the team, and we need the"gubment" to know it. I have called maybe 5 or so times and have had family and friends do the same, I would encourage you all to do so as well orthe Sonics will be gone and that is a fact.
 
Originally Posted by BIG FAME ONE

call 1-800-562-6000 (legislative hotline) tell them they need to hear the new stadium proposal out this session and if they can't then they need to hold a special session to hear it out. There are no new taxes invlved in the proposal and the 500 million dollar "gift" from the new investment group will go away april 10th if the legislature doesn't get off their butts and make it happen. This is the opportunity to save the team, and we need the "gubment" to know it. I have called maybe 5 or so times and have had family and friends do the same, I would encourage you all to do so as well or the Sonics will be gone and that is a fact.
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listen to the man and make the call people. doesn't take long. the legislators want to put this on hold until next year and by then it's' toolate.
 
more fuel to the fire.....

"A Sonics fan says he was ejected from last night's game after shouting a few choice words up at Clay Bennett, who was watching the action fromhis luxury box. Here's the fan's transcript, prefaced with the caveat that he may have been "a few beers deep."

Sam: Clay, you're a thief!

Clay: shrugs, smirks and blows me a kiss (I swear to God this is no lie)

Sam: I've been a season ticket holder since age 10. Don't steal my team!!!

Clay: makes a face of mock pity

Sam: You are overweight and ugly! Sell the Sonics!!!

Clay: walks to the back of the suite, never to reappear
Sonics security was there in 30 seconds, the fan said, kicking him out and telling him that if he didn't "show more respect" he'd be bannedfrom the arena.

The fan is among the contributors to a fund put together by some Sonics Central message board denizens to pay for flying a banner with some "Save theSonics" over the All-Star Game in New Orleans."
 
Originally Posted by FRANChISe206

more fuel to the fire.....

"A Sonics fan says he was ejected from last night's game after shouting a few choice words up at Clay Bennett, who was watching the action from his luxury box. Here's the fan's transcript, prefaced with the caveat that he may have been "a few beers deep."

Sam: Clay, you're a thief!

Clay: shrugs, smirks and blows me a kiss (I swear to God this is no lie)

Sam: I've been a season ticket holder since age 10. Don't steal my team!!!

Clay: makes a face of mock pity

Sam: You are overweight and ugly! Sell the Sonics!!!

Clay: walks to the back of the suite, never to reappear
Sonics security was there in 30 seconds, the fan said, kicking him out and telling him that if he didn't "show more respect" he'd be banned from the arena.

The fan is among the contributors to a fund put together by some Sonics Central message board denizens to pay for flying a banner with some "Save the Sonics" over the All-Star Game in New Orleans."
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SMFH at Clay Bennet @%+@%@% thief
 
"A spokesman for Washington Gov. Christine Gregoire said Bennett last spoke with Gregoire on March 5, and that their conversation left the governorencouraged about the city's chances of landing another NBA franchise and retaining the Sonics' name and identity.

However, Gregoire also came away from that conversation convinced that Bennett would not sell the Sonics to a local buyer.

"He made it very clear to me -- and not in a nasty way at all -- in his words, unequivocally, 'Not for sale.' … At some point, we have to acceptthat," Gregoire told the Times earlier this month."

wow. i just may end up hating the team formerly known as the sonics.

i. hate. clay.
 
I just hope and pray that the ownership group loses the court case and they're forced to stay in Seattle two more seasons. That will be really interesting.A move this off-season is not up to the league. They can vote to approve it, but the team can't move unless that judge says they aren't bound to thelease. Then they have to go through the re-location process all over again, and by then Memphis and NO will make their bids. I hope it all blows up inClay's face. It will if the Sonics leave in two years, and it will if he's forced to sell. I can't wait to watch him lose millions and millions ofdollars over the next two seasons.
 
ohh! kinda breaking news..... not that we'd be surprised, but.....


e-mails were discovered amongst clay and his pals talking about moving the supes to OKC while he was supposedly making a "good faith effort" to keepthem in seattle.


link: http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/news/story?id=3339895&campaign=rss&source=ESPNHeadlines


...hopefully, this will help keep them here throughout the lease (and forever) since he government, the league, and everyone else that cares will see what wealready know: Clay SUCKS.
 
howard shultz needs to step up, or wally walker, or the car toys guy and sue clay clay for leading hem on.
 
best sonics crowd i have ever seen* to end the season (and the era?
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(*in person... i wasn't in seattle in the 90's
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Originally Posted by SnkrbyNature

so if we win the vote, we get a new nba team?
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the vote is for whether or not the board of gov's is gonna let the sonics move to okc. cuban's said he's voting no but there are a few yes votesalready too from the lakers, heat, nets and i can't remember who else. everybody's convinced the vote will pass since the owners will probably belooking out for each other. still have the court case though. if we win that and the mayor doesn't accept a buy out then the sonics are here for at least 2more years and it gives the city a better chance at finding a way to keep them in seattle
 
Originally Posted by BIG FAME ONE

howard shultz needs to step up, or wally walker, or the car toys guy and sue clay clay for leading hem on.
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Good Call
[h1]Howard Schultz plans to sue Clay Bennett to get Sonics back[/h1]
By Percy Allen

Seattle Times staff reporter

Howard Schultz says he wants the Sonics back.

Nearly two years after selling Seattle's NBA franchise to Oklahoma City investors, the Starbucks mogul has hired a lawyer and is preparing to file a lawsuit against Sonics chairman Clay Bennett to rescind the July 2006 sale.

Attorney Richard Yarmuth confirmed Monday that his Seattle-based law firm, Yarmuth Wilsdon Calfo, is representing Schultz and plans to sue Bennett's Professional Basketball Club in the next two weeks.

"The damages that are being sought is to rescind, unwind the transaction," Yarmuth said a day after the team played what could have been its final home game in Seattle.

"It's not money damage. It's to have the team returned. The theory of the suit is that when the team was sold, the Basketball Club of Seattle, our team here, relied on promises made by Clay Bennett and his ownership that they desired to keep the team in Seattle and intended to make a good-faith effort to accomplish that."

When Bennett purchased the Sonics and its sister franchise in the WNBA, the Storm, for $350 million, he agreed to a stipulation that he would make a good-faith effort to keep both teams in Seattle. He has since sold the Storm to four Seattle women who will keep the team here.

E-mails among the Oklahoma City owners, made public last week, paint a different picture of their intentions. In preparation for a June 16 trial in Seattle's lawsuit, which seeks to hold the owners to the remaining two years of the team's KeyArena lease, lawyers for the city obtained several e-mails in which owners expressed an intent to move to Oklahoma City shortly after the sale.

On Aug. 2, 2006, two weeks after the sale, team co-owners Tom Ward and Aubrey McClendon e-mailed about moving the Sonics to Oklahoma City as soon as possible. The communication was after one of the original Oklahoma partners had dropped out of the ownership group.

"I don't think that you and I really want to own a team there [Seattle] either but we are better partners," Ward wrote.

On April 17 last year, Ward wrote McClendon and Bennett: "Is there any way to move here [Oklahoma City] for next season or are we doomed to have another lame duck season in Seattle?"

The exchanges detail a breach of contract, Yarmuth said. He also cites McClendon's comments last August to the (Oklahoma) Business Journal in which the billionaire founder and chief executive of Chesapeake Energy said: "We didn't buy the team to keep it in Seattle; we hoped to come here [Oklahoma City]."

"The issue is did the Oklahoma group fraudulently induce the Seattle owners, Howard Schultz and the other owners, to sell the team on a misrepresentation of their intentions at the time," Yarmuth said.

McClendon's published comments drew a $250,000 fine from the NBA. On Monday, NBA commissioner David Stern said he is aware of the e-mails and is convinced Bennett acted in accordance with the sale agreement.

"I haven't studied them, but my sense of it was that Clay, as the managing partner and the driving force of the group, was operating in good faith under the agreement that had been made with Howard Schultz," Stern said on a conference call. "His straight and narrow path may not have been shared by all of his partners in their views, but Clay was the one that was making policy for the partnership."

Even though Bennett made several trips to the state to drum up support for a proposed $500 million arena in Renton and hired a Seattle-based lobbyist and architectural firm, Yarmuth said, those efforts have no bearing on Schultz's lawsuit.

"We're talking about fraud at the time the contract was signed," Yarmuth said. "It's not merely what activities, good faith or otherwise, were engaged in after the contract was signed so far as lobbying for a new stadium."

Bennett's spokesman Dan Mahoney and NBA spokesman Tim Frank could not be reached for comment Monday night.

Terry Foster, assistant to the dean at Seattle University's Albers School of Business and Economics, said Schultz's case hinges upon the definition of good faith.

"It just allows for so many different interpretations that it may not be much to hang your hat on if that's all there is go on," Foster said. "In other words, if there's not some specific promise in that original agreement that defines what they mean by good faith, then it's open to interpretation from all sides."

At the time of the sale, Schultz said he had included a side letter to the sales agreement that he called a "deal breaker."

"As part of the negotiation, I asked for something that was a deal breaker in negotiation," he said in a KJR (950 AM) interview then. "What I asked for was a side letter to our ownership group and to me ... that said basically he would honor the four-year lease in terms of the 2010 terms, and use his best efforts over the next 12 months ... to get something done."

Last week, when the e-mails become public, former Sonics co-owner Wally Walker said they clashed with the "good faith" pledge Bennett made when he bought the team.

"For the people who voted for the deal, the good-faith, best-efforts promise was a significant factor in supporting the deal," Walker said. "This is not what they signed up for."

NBA owners will gather Friday in New York City to vote on the proposed move. A subcommittee has recommended approval.

Stern has suggested that Oklahoma City - when combined with the presence of Tulsa less than 100 miles away - could be a viable market even though Seattle has a higher population and TV audience. On Monday, he downplayed Seattle's role as a gateway to Asia.

"I would say that we don't ever like to leave a city," Stern said. "We don't like to leave a city as robust as Seattle, but the Asian cities that we're tending to focus more on have names like Shanghai, Beijing, Hong Kong and Guangzhou.

"It's disheartening simply to leave the city, as it would be to leave any city."

Percy Allen: 206-464-2278 or [email protected]. The Associated Press contributed to this story.

Copyright [emoji]169[/emoji] 2008 The Seattle Times Company
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seriously reading that gave me chills. I think Shultz can do a lot to repair his damaged repuation here as well. He can go from the bad guy to the hero thensell the team to Steve Balmer and go back to serving lattes while we watch Durant shine.
 
Originally Posted by G2P0

let's go schultz. goat to hero.
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goat to G.O.A.T. in my eyes.

"As part of the negotiation, I asked for something that was a deal breaker in negotiation," he said in a KJR (950 AM) interview then. "WhatI asked for was a side letter to our ownership group and to me ... that said basically he would honor the four-year lease in terms of the 2010 terms, and usehis best efforts over the next 12 months ... to get something done."

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sounds like a solid base for a lawsuit to me!
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[h1]Legal experts call Schultz suit a long shot[/h1][h2]Battle over Sonics could take years to resolve in court[/h2]
By CLAUDIA ROWE
P-I REPORTER

(Editor's Note: This story has been updated since it was first published. The school at which Marc Edelman teaches was misidentified in the original version.)

It is audacious, almost unheard of and unlikely to succeed, yet sports and legal experts around the country said they will be watching with interest if Howard Schultz sues the new owners of the Sonics in an effort to force them to keep the basketball team in Seattle.

Despite its quixotic overtones, Schultz's expected attempt to prove that Clay Bennett and his partners acted in bad faith when they promised to try to keep the team in the Northwest could set up years of courtroom litigation -- less a legal slam dunk than an exhausting chess match.

"It's a long shot, practically speaking," said Mike Hunsinger, a lawyer with long experience representing Seattle sports interests. "But if I were advising Bennett, I'd be telling him to prepare for trial. I would think that Mr. Schultz will probably take this pretty seriously."

Typically, Hunsinger said, such suits are seen as an attempt to squeeze more dollars from a buyer, but Schultz will be asking for a judge to rescind the agreement itself -- meaning that nothing short of a complete reversal would satisfy his request for damages.

"That's what makes this potentially unique," Hunsinger said. "This is not a shakedown lawsuit."

A series of e-mails discovered last week appears to indicate that Bennett and his partners always intended to move the team out of Seattle, and that disclosure seems to be fueling Schultz's claim.

"There are many definitions of what constitutes good faith and bad faith, and this might be an important enough aspect to the court," said Timothy Davis, author of "Sports Law and Regulation" and a professor at Wake Forest University. "It's not as spurious as you might think."

From New York to the Northwest, attorneys agreed that such a finding might be grounds for breach of contract, though they differed in their opinions of an ultimate outcome.

"This is absolutely bizarre and almost certainly a loser," said Marc Edelman, who teaches sports law at New York Law School. "I would be shocked if any court would rescind a contract where there's been substantial performance -- in this case, payment -- for failing to perform a small condition, which is subject to many interpretations anyway."

Even if a judge entertained the case -- and then made the bold move to void Bennett's contract -- the NBA itself could foil Schultz's plan by refusing to take him back as an owner.

Steve Calandrillo, who teaches contract law at the University of Washington, acknowledged that undoing the contract -- even with a breach-of-contract finding -- is highly unlikely.

And Lester Munson, an attorney and legal analyst for the ESPN sports network, said that in two decades of studying sports and sports law, he had never seen a move quite like Schultz's.

Returning the team to Seattle would be "drastic, melodramatic and rare to the point of being nonexistent," Munson said.

Yet he was reluctant to outright dismiss the coffee entrepreneur and his high-flying legal team. In certain areas, he believes, Bennett may be vulnerable.

"The NBA, obviously, is a monopoly, so antitrust rules apply and that may give Schultz some leverage here," Munson said. "Sports leagues hate antitrust actions because they really are a monopoly, a cartel."

He added that Richard Yarmuth, the attorney representing Schultz, has significant experience litigating antitrust issues. "That gives them kind of a nuclear weapon if they can figure out how to make this into an antitrust case. And he's just the guy to do it."
 
also on ESPN.com:


"What is the best hope for Sonics fans in Seattle?

The best hope is Seattle's effort in a lawsuit to enforce the terms of the Sonics' lease of KeyArena. Although Bennett has offered $26 million to buyout of the lease, city officials insist that the team play the next two seasons in Seattle as required in the lease. The city has taken the team to court toenforce the lease, and a trial is scheduled for June 16. The city likely will win. Bennett could then offer more money to buy his way out. If the city refusesBennett's buyout offer, the team would play two more seasons. During those two seasons, Microsoft's Steve Ballmer or other Seattle business mogulswould have a chance to save the team for Seattle."


it's pretty much what we've been saying all along, and though everyone's calling the lawsuit a "longshot", it's better than him doingnothing. he knows he's hated in seattle and in most supes fan's eyes, there nowhere to go for him but up. besides, anything that can be done to makeclay's life a little more miserable is more than welcome imo.
 
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