 |
Mullin Calls Co-Owner’s
Claims “Character Assassination” |
Montgomery County (MD) Circuit Court Judge Eric Johnson issued a stay, pending
appeal, on his ruling allowing Atlanta Spirit co-Owner Steve Belkin to buy out
the other seven co-Owners, but Johnson “attached several conditions to the
stay,” according to Tim Tucker of the ATLANTA CONSTITUTION. Johnson ruled
that during the appeals process, the Hawks and Thrashers are “not to initiate
the purchase, sale, trade or negotiation of any NBA or NHL player contract ...
excluding contracts involving present or future draft picks and contracts for
any other player with a contract duration of one year or less.” Tucker writes
this “apparently means that, during an appeal that could take at least a
year, the Hawks and Thrashers are not to sign free agents to multi-year contracts
or to make trades for players who have multi-year contracts.” Johnson also
required that the other owners “continue to fund the teams’ operating
losses and that they make no changes in current management without Belkin’s
consent,” in addition to posting an $11.4M bond. Belkin had asked for a
bond in the “hundreds of millions of dollars,” and his attorney, Jack
Fabiano, argued that it was “needed to protect Belkin against any potential
drop in the value of the franchises during the appeal.” Fabiano said that
Belkin “needed protection against ‘not only the blunders’ of
current management, but against the possibility of reckless spending designed
to saddle him with onerous obligations.” But Atlanta Spirit CEO Bernie Mullin
said, “I found the character assassination and the challenge to the professionalism,
competence and integrity of myself and my staff to be, quite frankly, obnoxious.”
Thrashers GM Don Waddell added, “That’s really shooting at my integrity”
(
ATLANTA
CONSTITUTION, 7/7).
