Schultz drops lawsuit seeking return of Sonics

bwahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahah!!! WOO HOO!

Was a terrible idea from the start. Glad he figured out that "mending fences" part.

Reality wins.

I don't know if I ever posted it here (I think I did at one point), but his suit was a steaming pile of crap (legally speaking).

Is that an official legal term???

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Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering. --Master Yoda
Facts can change opinions, opinions cannot change facts.

Yes.

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Doug
http://www.dougloudenback.com/downtownOKC.htm
http://www.dougloudenback.com/oklahomacity.htm
http://dougdawg.blogspot.com/

.oO(it had steam?)Oo.

Those two rulings were not the breaking point for this piece of crap litigation. He got what he wanted: a media circus when filing the litigation, then fairly quiet on that front when he withdrew it. Unfortunately, the jerk saved face.

No he didn't. The Save Our Sonics group in Seattle is very POed at him because they were not notified of his decision until after it happened. I guess that group was still working on several items, like a new arena, that required the Schultz lawsuit to be in place. They feel sold out by him yet again (as they should).

Last I heard SOS was sending an email to everyone on their contact list asking that they boycott Starbucks. That is not exactly the support Starbucks’ Board of Directors need/want when trying to rebuild the company under Schultz' leadership. In other words, Schultz has once again pissed off their primary consumer in their home market while the company is going through its most difficult time, all because of their CEO extra-curricular activities.

Sonics | Howard Schultz drops Sonics suit | Seattle Times Newspaper

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Oklahoma City - The surprise your family has been looking for.

I think that's an overstatement of Save Our Sonics' reach and influence. It's been a pretty impotent organization from the start. My guess is that most rational Starbucks customers in Seattle will still buy there based on it being located there, as that is way more important to its economy than the CEO owning a basketball team there. Obviously, there are probably more coffee choices in Seattle than almost anywhere, but if a coffee drinker is buying even partially based on civic activism, then whether or not an executive can keep a basketball team in town has got to be pretty low on their list of priorities and those loyal to SOS surely make up a very small percentage of Starbucks customers in the Puget Sound and an even smaller percentage of coffee drinkers as a whole.

I don't know. If Schultz doesn't think Sonics fans are a key part of his business, then why did he get involved in the first place? In my mind it was clearly an effort to win back consumers that were boycotting Starbucks in the Seattle area due to the sale of the team in the first place.

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Oklahoma City - The surprise your family has been looking for.

Kerry, SOS is NOT indicative of public opinion of SChultz.

I am not going to argue the SOS is indicitave of anything in Seattle but let me ask you this, why do you think Schultz filed his lawsuit? Was it to save his reputation, a PR stunt, or did he really think he had been wronged?

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Oklahoma City - The surprise your family has been looking for.

A lot of times people get so caught up in their own perspective of a situation that make bad decisions like this.

I think Schultz thought what he was doing was a smart idea, and his own personal bias on the situation prevented him from seeing the situation for what it was.

I think he was doing it for all three, and was spurred on by "free" discovery by virtue of the city's suit, which information implied that PBC always wanted the team in OKC. I think that PBC did everything legally required by their contracts, but that doesn't mean they didn't always want to move the team. The motives are up for debate, anyway, and that's why Schultz and the city was so angry.

I think it was more just playing local politics. He was trying to help as much as look good. He wanted to mitigate any perception that he was indifferent to the situation or that, even worse, he was responsible for it. And he wanted to help the city's case in the public eye. Having the help and support of the local and state politics is a much bigger motivator than appeasing the small group of Sonics fans in Seattle that drink Starbucks coffee. That is to say that he got the PR he wanted out of it. However, any success that SOS has of getting people to boycott the coffee chain will not even be discernible on any of the company's sales reports and I am pretty sure the company is much more focused on recapturing the millions of customers they have lost in recent years than the couple of thousand people in Seattle they may be so upset about the Sonics that they decide to try one of the other 10 coffee shops on their block.