Clay Bennett's lawyers, after watching their client get belted in the court of public opinion for two weeks, have finally struck back, filing a paranoid legal brief [pdf] that accuses the city government of conspiring with local businesspeople to "force a sale of the team." Or, as any Sonics fan would see it, to "save the team."
To analogize it, this is like the Unabomber accusing his brother and the FBI of conspiring to get him arrested.
Mr. Bennett: You are trying to do a bad thing. The city is trying to stop you.
The hastily-compiled, heavily-redacted brief reads like it was dictated at 3am, as it likely was. It refers to "the media frenzy that was the subject of a recent Court conference," a media frenzy that has been overwhelmingly anti-Bennett, while Bennett's own, Seattle-based legal team has stood mute.
They are demanding that potential owner Matt Griffin's emails and Powerpoint presentations be released, to prove their point.
Which is pretty comical, because the only point it will prove is that the city is doing everything it can to save this team--which is exactly what everyone should expect.
Just to get this straight again--Bennett's lawyers think that proving how intent Seattle is on keeping the team is going to HELP Bennett's cause? Perhaps in court--but with the public and the media? I'm thinking no.
From a legal point of view, Bennett's team hopes to prove that the city is enforcing the lease as a punitive measure, hoping to bleed Bennett and his group dry. They hope to prove this with the release of said documents. We shall see.
Law stuff! Wheeeee!
Oh, and a note to Bennett's attorneys at ByrnesKeller--you may want to take your direct email addresses off of your site for the foreseeable future--this is going to just get uglier.
Thursday, April 17, 2008
Bennett Lawyers: Seattle Hatched "A Machiavellian Plan"
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7 comments:
Let's hope that every other Seattle-based company drops Byrneskeller as soon as possible.
They're losing. I love it. I don't think David Stern, Clayton Bennett, et all, expected us to fight this hard and for it to make national headlines as much as it had (not to mention with most of the national coverage in Seattle's favor).
I think we're aways away from Clayton's breaking point. The question is, what's Stern's?
Interesting point, Stallz, and that's where you get into trouble. Because even if Stern (and all 29 NBA owners, for that matter) turn against Bennett, there isn't a whole lot they can do.
Bennett owns the team, and courts have held again and again that owners of professional sports franchises have every right to move them, if they so choose.
If the NBA chose to deny Bennett's application--Bennett might just end up suing the NBA...whether David Stern is the greatest inspiration in his life (or whatever) or not.
Good point, gets back to the whole antitrust thing, but I still think Stern holds the cards in this deal. As previous emails show, Clay holds Stern in pretty high regard and respects him greatly. I think Stern could easily talk him into some type of deal where he sells the Sonics back to a local ownership group of some sort (potentially at a premium to what he paid, especially if a KeyArena upgrade was in the works) and takes another struggling team from another city.
Probably a long shot, but I'm still holding out hope. What are your thoughts on such an outcome?
I think Stallz has got the right idea.
Get this thing to the point where it's ridiculously clear to all involved that it should be a DIFFERENT team that Stern and Bennett move to OKC.
With all apologies to New Orleans or more likely Memphis, I think this is the best for all involved.
Bill Simmons had a way to make this work in his column a while back:
http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=simmons/080229
You might see something like what happened in baseball, where Jeff Loria, who'd made himself a pariah in Montreal, got the Marlins.
Or you might see Stern stay the course with Bennett and fight the various lawsuits tooth and nail.
I think Stern completely underestimated the amount of fight in the Seattle political scene--he kept saying "oh, they don't care, they don't want basketball, etc, etc"...maybe he believed it. He should've realized that the fans still had the passion, and no politician will be dumb enough to cross the fans.
Also--he didn't consider the X factor, Slade Gorton.
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