I'm a bit late into this, but I'm going to toss in my opinions on this...

First, I'm no attorney, either, but I think there's a difference between "breach of good faith" and "fraud." Fraud is an intentional misrepresentation of a material fact. Good faith is, essentially, "I was crossing my fingers behind my back when I signed the deal."

Contracts for the sale of property go down the tubes when you have matters that arise to the level of fraud. Breaches of good-faith negotiations normally don't get contracts derailed unless you can prove some material relationship between the negotations and the contract, eg were there provisions reflective of the "good faith" written into the terms of the sales contract.

The prior owners, to my knowledge, didn't integrate any requirement about staying in Seattle into their agreement. You either sell something, and the rights to it, or you don't. You just can't go back and yell "Kings X" and make it all go away. You can't sell a car provided the new owners promise not to repaint it purple. Ultimately, the positions in a contract are put into writing, it gets signed, money gets exchanged, and title transfers. That's it.

Even if the prior owners could prove a breach of good faith, or even fraud, what is his measure of damages? He's the seller, not the buyer, so it isn't like he bought a great looking car and found out there was no engine under the hood. Considering his price of $350 million, its going to be awfully hard to prove he was the injured party.

Let's pretend, for a second, that the old owners want to prove a lack of good faith. All Bennett's lawyers have to do is roll out ol' Stern himself, and have him testify to his own public words about how he felt there was no such breach. If anyone might be materially damaged about any such breach of good faith, it would be the NBA in moving a franchise from a larger to a smaller market.

Keep in mind, too, that ESPN legal analysis isn't very interesting if all the lawyers say "its a bad case, game over." You get a LOT more air time when you can spin "hey, he might win the thing," certainly in Seattle, and certainly among newspaper editors.

I think, in reality, there's no material demonstration that proves a lack of good faith or fraud, because no one in Seattle ever ponied up a legitimate proposal for a new arena. Had they done so, and Bennett turned it down, that might have been a bigger problem - and it would have resulted in a flip, not a reversal of the sale back to the original owners. Beyond everything else, the mere fact that Bennet et al didn't apply for relocation immediately mitigates against bad-faith. Even if it didn't, it would indicate shocking naivete on the part of those previous owners not to think an Oklahoma City-based ownership group wouldn't entertain the idea of moving the franchise at some point.

Bottom line, this creates some embarassing emails for Bennett to overcome, more bad PR, but in the bottom line it still ends up being a legal effort to remedy what amounts to "seller's remorse" - or much ado about nothing.

In practical terms, Seattle would be much better served if they realized they didn't take the leave threat seriously, and opted to pursue a future wherein they opt not to alienate the commissioner of the league who held open the door while the franchise they didn't want walked out with barely a notice until it was way, way too late to stop it. And *none* of that can be tossed at the feet of anyone in Oklahoma City.

-sd