What a mess!

[KB21]

Well, it's obvious that I was completely wrong about what was going on. I leave home for the 9 hour drive back to medical school, nothing is being said on the radio about this, and this is the situation I find when I finally get back online.

Holy [censored]!

Hopefully, the Joe Johnson thing can be salvaged by Tuesday, when the team can get Belkin off the board of governors.

Bruce Levenson, Ed Peskowitz, Michael Gearon Jr, and Rutherford Seydel have a lot of work to do once they get Belkin out of the mix. They are going to have to convince the rest of the NBA that Belkin was the bad apple and that they are on the same page.

I hope there is something Gearon and the rest can do to get the Johnson deal done by the weekend. Surely there is some legal action that can overturn the restraining order by tomorrow. Any lawyers out there?

[chillzatl]

hard for them to convince anyone in the NBA about who the bad guy in all this was. Belkin has pretty much hung a sign around his neck and wrong "JERK" on it.

I honestly don't think this makes the organization look nearly as bad as I first thought it did. As long as they can get Belkin off the board, they will be free to do what they want and everyone will know it. They come out of it smelling like roses, we still get JJ and Belkin becomes a pariah in teh city of Atlanta.

[KB21]

Belkin has also killed any chance he would have of owning a team down the road. I'm positive that the others in the group will buy him out, and they may use legal action just so they don't have to buy Belkin out on his terms.

[Plainview1981]

It makes them look bad if the deal falls through.

[clrumph]

Legally I don't think they can remove him because, like Belkin says in the article, he has not broken those two points in their agreement.

This is probably going to cost us Joe Johnson unless they can somehow compromise. If this thing gets dragged out in the courts then I don't see this deal staying in place for as long as it would take to get the court cases resolved.

Of course if Belkin wins the case on Tuesday it would be up to the Suns to determine if they would trade him to us for less than what our original offer was. I don't see that happening either.

[chillzatl]

well, we all know that htey had an agreement in their ownership contract that says all deals had to pass with two of three votes. Belkin clearly broke that be refusing to sign off on the deal. They had to have something written into the contract to cover such things.

I also think what he did violated the terms of his NBA governorship. 8 of 9 partners wanted something, he being the only one who did not, and he put the entire deal in danger. Granted, it's all legalese and that stuff is ALWAYS very word dependant. But I think in essence, that's what he's done.

[Plainview1981]

That's what I was thinking... Everybody appears

to want the deal but him... I've I had money

in them I'd want that type of deal where the

majority of the votes win. I don't know all

that much about the legal stuff... But it comes

off that way to me.

[TnDawg]

I hope that's not the case, otherwise we may have 4 more years of him holding rings as Gov.

[flava]

i'm with chillzatl on this one, belkin clearly has violated the agreement - he's got nothing to stand on here - by pushing the issue he has essentially opened the door for his exit... which is much deserved....

flava

[spid3167]

chillzat

Quote:

---

Belkin becomes a pariah in teh city of Atlanta.

---

He already is

[Packfill]

What we have here will boil dow to an issue of contractual interpretation. Based on the article from the AJC there is contractual language that allows the partners to remove Belkin as the governor on two grounds. The court in Boston will decide whether one of those standards are met.

As far as buying Belkin out of the LLC, there should be language in the limited liability company's operating agreement which sets forth how and when a member can be removed. Often times when something like this happens with a partnership or LLC, there is a provision in the operating agreement or partnership agreement which provides for dissolution of the company. Basically, the other partners would force Belkin out by dissolving the LLC and then reconstituting it without him in it. Whether such a business action would fly with the NBA is another question, but that is usually how you do it when a business goes sour.