Sporting Madness

Things are looking better and better for the Sonics. The array of lawsuits against their ownership are demonstrating that even more evil lurks in Clay Bennett's computer than previously thought . As I wrote a while ago , "Given that the e-mails came out of discovery in the city lawsuit, who knows what other dirty laundry might show up to aid the various cases for keeping the Sonics?" Some more dirty laundry has in fact come tumbling out of the closet, which should push the credibility of Bennett and his group into negative numbers if it wasn't there already. The best of the newly-released e-mails, which came as part of Howard Schultz's lawsuit to unwind the sale, showed that two days before he bought the team, Bennett was already contemplating a "sweet flip" to obtain another team and move them to Oklahoma City if by some chance an arena solution materialized in Seattle. ESPN legal analyst Lester Munson had a great column stating that the new informati...

Photo: Clay Bennett after rustling some Sonics off to Oklahoma City. Yee-haw! I came across some interesting ideas about possible ways to save NBA basketball in Seattle yesterday from columnists Art Thiel of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer (thanks to Neate for the link) and Steve Kelley of the Seattle Times . Both have a similar basic premise of the city, the state and various interests like the Ballmer group sitting down with Bennett and the league to work out a way for the NBA to exist in Seattle in the long run. It's a classic "I'll scratch your back, you scratch mine scenario": in return for a guaranteed expansion franchise within the next couple of years, the city agrees to drop its lawsuit and let the team go, probably convincing Howard Schultz to give up on his suit as well. This is actually a pretty good idea, given the embarrasing e-mails that showed up as part of discovery in the city's case and prompted the Schultz lawsuit: who knows what other evil ...