August 31, 2008
Sonics suit dropped, at NBA's bidding
There will be no court-ordered return of the Sonics to Seattle: Former owner Howard Schultz has dropped his lawsuit against current owner Clay Bennett, which had charged that Bennett violated his purchase agreement to make a good-faith attempt to work out a deal to stay in town. (Instead, Bennett sent e-mails to his co-owners declaring himself "a man possessed" with hightailing it out of town to Oklahoma City.) Schultz indicated that recent rulings by the judge that would have heard the case led him to believe he couldn't win the suit, but also wrote to the rest of the former ownership group that he'd been told a "continuing adversarial relationship with the NBA" could hurt Seattle's chances of getting a new franchise. As usual, it's better to be a monopoly than right.
