It'd definitely be a weird situation, one it seems
is going to happen:
New Orleans Hornets owner George Shinn has agreed to sell the club to the NBA and the transaction could be completed within a couple days, according to a person familiar with the decision.
The league has lined up New Orleans-born sports attorney Jac Sperling, vice chairman of the NHL’s Minnesota Wild, to be the NBA’s administrator of the team and oversee its sale to a more permanent owner, the person told The Associated Press Sunday on condition of anonymity because the move has not been publicly announced.
Current Hornets President Hugh Weber will continue overseeing day-to-day operations of what will be the first NBA team to be owned by the league, the person said.
So the NBA won't be running the club per se, they'll just assume responsibility for Shinn's majority ownership until such time as that percentage of the team can be sold to a permanent owner, be it Gary Chouest or some other group or individual. One still wonders exactly how fines will be handled though.
Thinking about it a little more, it is a different situation to the one in Seattle, where you had new ownership that had bought the team fair and square (though not with the best of intentions towards its fanbase) and resolved to relocate due to their roots and issues regarding the arena. I think the league let Clay Bennett and his ownership group get away with some degree of shadiness/a half-hearted effort to keep the Sonics in Seattle, but there was no grounds for the league to step in and buy the team (and no reason for Bennett and co to sell, outside moral and emotional obligations).
With the Hornets, you've got the majority owner desperate to sell and no one committed to buying that controlling interest, so the league is stepping in until the situation can be resolved. Don't get me wrong, I'm not say Sonics fans aren't entitled to their outrage or that comparisons can't be made and questions can't be asked, but it's not quite the same situation. As far as finding a buyer who will keep the team in New Orleans, I'm pretty sure there's always a preference to avoid relocation when a team is sold and that was the case in Seattle too, but at the same time there's nothing to prevent the new owners from trying to relocate the team once it's theirs, if they can make a case for it.
Unfortunately for Seattle, the new owners were able to make a case with the arena dispute and the NBA for their part arguably looked the other way when those emails surfaced, bringing into question just how hard Bennett and co. had tried to make it work in Seattle.
