More e-mails, more trouble for Sonics owners

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New e-mails released as part of a federal court filing in New York by the city of Seattle on Thursday suggest the NBA may have suspected the Oklahoma City-based Sonics ownership group violated a "good faith best effort" stipulation in its sales agreement when the group purchased the team in July 2006. According to an e-mail last Aug. 13, Sonics chairman Clay Bennett told partner Aubrey McClendon that NBA president Joel Litvin was "looking into certain documents we signed at closing that may have been breached."The e-mail response was a follow-up after McClendon's comments in a weekly Oklahoma business journal in August, in which he stated, "we didn't buy the team to keep it in Seattle; we hoped to come here."McClendon was fined $250,000 by the league for his remarks. Bennett also addressed McClendon in another e-mail on Aug. 13: "Yes sir we get killed in this one," Bennett wrote. "I don't mind the PR ugliness (pretty used to it), but I am concerned from a legal standpoint that your statement could perhaps undermine our basic premise of 'good faith best efforts' when you infer that it was basically never the plan to stay in Seattle."The August e-mails are among several released by attorneys for the city of Seattle on Thursday as part of the city's federal court filing in New York seeking to depose NBA commissioner David Stern, along with attempting to compel the league to turn over financial reports and other documents the city believes pertain to their case.In response, the NBA tried to block any Stern deposition, stating: "The NBA has already agreed to produce Mr. Litvin, who possesses the same knowledge and has access to the same information as the commissioner on any issue about which the city's counsel may inquire. It is therefore inappropriate to require the additional deposition of Commissioner Stern." Coming up Monday in New York is a hearing that may resolve the dispute. The city of Seattle, which is trying to compel the Sonics to live up to terms of their KeyArena lease requiring them to stay through September 2010, want to use the e-mails to bolster its case, which goes to trial June 16.The e-mails may also help former Sonics owner Howard Schultz in a case he recently filed in federal court to rescind the July 2006 sale on the basis that the Oklahoma City-based owners never intended to keep the team in Seattle, breaching the good faith stipulation to work 12 months to keep the team in the area.In an April 23, 2007, e-mail to Litvin, soon after the Sonics' failed bid to secure funding for a proposed $500 million arena in Renton, Bennett touts the prospects of moving the team to Oklahoma City."While Oklahoma City is certainly a much smaller media market, this ownership group provides a unique relationship with the corporate community, city and state government, the local media and a proven fan base," Bennett wrote in the e-mail. "We can deliver a viable business operation and a commitment to competitive teams."The notion of the NBA being the 'only game in town' and indeed the only professional franchise in the state is compelling." And in an e-mail to fellow partners McClendon, Tom Ward and Jeff Records bemoaning the Seattle-area media, Bennett wrote: "All these guys are against us. Seattle has the most inept and difficult sports media of any major market. This was the view of the league before we arrived and I now completely agree." Meanwhile, the same judge presiding over the KeyArena lease dispute will oversee the lawsuit the Schultz group filed against the new owners.Schultz's lawsuit, filed on Tuesday, was reassigned to federal court judge Marsha Pechman on Wednesday. Judge Robert Lasnik had initially had been assigned the case.Lester Munson, ESPN legal analyst and writer, said in an interview on Seattle's KJR-AM radio Thursday that Schultz had a better than 50 percent chance to win his case."They do have a shot here," Munson said. "This is a better case than I think most people expected. They have some very clever legal procedures and some overwhelming e-mails that I think together could give Schultz a chance to accomplish something here. If I were Clay Bennett right now I would be looking at that, and I would be worried. "What they wish right now is that they had never learned to do e-mails, because they have made some mistakes here and it's going to be difficult to explain them. And I think what they're going to do is they'll come and they'll want a quick dismissal. They're going to try and bring this to a quick end in a hurry and that will not happen." (Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)