Supersonicsoultoon: Behind the Scenes at the NBA Owners Meeting

(click picture to enlarge)

Sorry, no color this time.

-chunk

Press Conference Televised

According to Eric Williams at TNT, the league will be holding a press conference in NYC between 1 and 2 pm East Coast Time (10 to 11 here), although Percy Allen at the Times expects the conference to be later than that.

Of note, the press conference will be broadcast on both NBA TV as well as nba.com. Stay tuned; if we find a link we'll throw it up on the site.

However, being that Clay Bennett and David Stern will be giving the conference, it might be considered NSFW.

UPDATE: Press conference has been delayed until no earlier than 12 pm Seattle time. Apparently, Clay and David still had some things to do.

Decision Day

It is now just after noon in New York City, and while the owners of 30 NBA teams lunch on whatever millionaires and billionaires lunch on (caviar? $100 bills?), the fate of the Seattle SuperSonics, somewhat, hangs in the balance.

I say somewhat because, as we all know, that fate will be more concretely decided in mid-June during the court case between the team and the city.
But today’s vote will be interesting nonetheless. A number of possibilities await, among them:

-A unanimous or near-unanimous vote of YES to relocation (most likely)
-A vote of YES, with a condition attached related to the outcome of the trial (equally likely)
-A postponement of the vote (less likely)
-A NO vote (as likely as the three of us attending Karl Malone’s Hall of Fame induction)

Somewhere in between all of those options is the reality. In a numbers game, how many votes will Seattle get? Mark Cuban seems to be likely to say no, Paul Allen has been reported as leaning towards abstaining (way to take a stand, big fella), and the rest are seemingly on side with David Stern and Clay Bennett.

I’m putting the over/under on NO votes at 3. Feel free to chime in with your expectations.

UPDATE: Eric Williams at the TNT notes in his blog that the owners will be giving a press conference shortly, indicating the vote has already been held.