Oh, I wouldn't worry about Stern backing down in such a situation, he has a MUCH larger fin than the boys, and if you think he would let such a precedent be set on his watch you, well, you just don't know David Stern very well.
Now I normally WOULD be concerned that while litigation was pending, the Maloofs would try to just pack up and leave town -- not as if Stern can call the shipping companies and tell them to stop. But two things: first I would think the NBA would be able to get an easy preliminary injuction against that sort of thing; and second, since the ENTIRE point of moving down to Anaheim for the Maloofs is to get Samueli to save them with his bailout loans, and since I see no way that Samueli would give them a single cent until he knew the court would rule in their favor and they would actually be coming, and since they would be playing in his building, they basically have no place to go.
I'm interested in the Maloofs' finances now. If its true that they have already defaulted on The Palms loan and lost all but 12% of their ownership share as a result, where is the current financial stress on them coming from? Are they down to 12% ownership and yet STILL owe money on loans for the Palms too? They sold the beer distributorship -- were they idiots and dropped all of that money on a futile efort to save the Palms? Did they do the same with their stock portfolio, or is it still there? In a world where the Palms loans had been extinguished when they dropped to 12% ownership, where they still had some of the distributorship money, still had a good chunk of their stocks, they would seem to be much much poorer, but stable with only the Sacto loan, and the NBA loan still hanging over their heads. In a world where the beer distributorship money is gone, the stock money is severely diminished, and they somehow still own loans in Vegas even after losing most of their ownership of the Palms, then what happens with the Kings could be absolutely critical to them not ending up in bankruptcy court. And a big question could be do those Sac city and NBA loans run to the franchise, or to the owners? If they sell the Kings does the new owner take over the team encumbered by those loans (and thus would be willing to pay a lesser price for the team), or do the loans follow the Maloofs, and potentially wipe out most of the profits from selling the franchise? In the latter situation there might not be much left of the Maloofs empire. Beer distributorship = gone, Palms = 88% gone, Kings = gone, stocks = ?. If the loans wipe out their profits from a Kings sale they could effectively be relatively poor. Maybe even have fewer than $100mil in assets left, and with no realistic way of getting back to where they were/getting enough money to buy back into the NBA in their lifetimes. If there are somehow loans still hanging over their head from the Palms disaster, bankruptcy might be the only option.
