It’s official. The Seattle Times is reporting that the amount is $75 million ($45 million if the city gets another team). Rumor has it Schultz won’t drop his suit, so perhaps there’s a glimmer of hope.

Update:

The city gets $45 million up front, rights to the Sonics name, etc., and a “written guarantee” from the NBA that Key Arena, with the improvements proposed last year, is an NBA caliber arena. Also, as Nickles pointed out repeatedly, the city “will be notified” when an NBA team is for sale or the league is considering expansion. Otherwise, we might totally miss it.

If the legislature approves the extension of the Safeco Field taxing authority for NBA purposes and the city doesn’t have a team in five years, Bennett and his cronies will fork over another $30 million. According to Nickels, at that point, he and the City Council will discuss what to do with the money. Subtext: I’m going to be mayor forever.

Finally, when asked if there was a discussion about any NBA teams looking to move or sell, Nickels hemmed and hawed, and said he wasn’t involved in any such talks. Let the Memphis Grizzlies speculation begin!*

*Apologies to Memphis fans, but that ownership hasn’t been looking too committed these days.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 2nd, 2008 at 7:02 pm and is filed under Taxes, Seattle, Supersonics, Roundball. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.