The some people who were adamant about making profits? The Maloofs through their bizops people but also by their own crowing. They're about the only people who would know enough about their financials to make that claim and tell it to the world.
I also don't think President Orender was doing backflips when she got the news from Joe and Gavin because it will make her product better. If ithis was a good thing, then she's not scrambling to try to get Oakland viable before the end of the year. Just like she had to scramble to make Dallas viable or push deadlines for a new group in Charlotte. Both of those efforts ran out of time. The other sorta down side to this scramble, if precedence plays any role...is if Oakland/Bay Area isn't deemed viable in this 30-45 day crunch to beat the hourglass that market dies for the league in the future. Groups in Charlotte, Dallas and Denver ran out of time and were never tapped again. As neither were, the cities where franchises left although like Stern with Seattle, Orender has vowed to get another team Houston.
The league can't count on the fans continuing to watch their players if they are dispersed around the league. That could only work for leagues that have larger television packages and even then I think that puts too much value on retaining fan loyalty to the league when the fan has been dis-franchised. I'm not sure that works like that for the WNBA, or for any sport for that matter.
It really wasn't a surprise that the Comets folded. Les Alexander had been telegraphing that he wanted out for several years before he actually pulled the plug. The investor the league found to take over the team (on the surface, the league still controlled the operations of it behind the scenes) to keep it in Houston (I suspect until they found more solvent investors elsewhere) was a disaster until the league took it back over from him late in the 2008 season. What was a surprise to me was that the league had no soft landing ready for a team it had a direct pulse read on for two seasons.
So no, Donna O is not pleased. But she'll publicly spin it as a positive because that's what league presidents do. But they don't want 12 teams and at the same time, they don't want to lose a good opportunity for the Bay Area investors, that much I'm pretty confident about. If contraction was their ultimate endgame - they'd have set a date to disperse the Monarchs already so the teams can get on with the business of RE-booking travel and accomodations since the schedule which included the Monarchs existing was already finalized. Contract/Expand as a strategy reaches a point of diminishing returns in my eyes. You can only get so small before you begin to sap too many roster spots and players decide to go overseas where they can make more money and bypass the W altogether.
Re: contraction and baseball? Selig had an agenda and it wasn't competitive balance. If it were, they'd have a salary cap in the game.