Last night, at the teams home opener a number of people distributed flyers containing the Save Our Sonics and Storm logo and featuring David Sterns direct office number. This action prompted an article by Jayda Evans in this mornings Seattle Times titled "Mr. Stern, We Have Your Number" which advised that SOS&S had decided to "go stealth" and circulate these flyers.
SOS&S would like to confirm that we had no involvement with these flyers. While we encourage regular correspondence with the league as well as elected officials we have been consistent in encouraging people to use regularly published and publicly available means of contact. We have never, and will never condone the release of private information such as direct phone numbers, personal e-mails, or other information without the direct permission of the persons involved.
Save Our Sonics and Storm is a legal business registered as a not for profit. Our contact information and organizational leadership have been made readily available to media and it is our expectation that publications seeking to represent on our behalf will confirm our statements via those channels. While people may chose to represent themselves as SOS&S members, or their efforts as "Saving the Sonics" they may not represent our organization and we ask that they refrain from using our logo unless granted permission.
At no time did The Seattle Times attempt to contact us for confirmation of our involvement. In our opinion they exercised extremely poor judgement by printing this phone number in their article. They will be printing a retraction of this story shortly.
I want to add to this sentiment a note that, in review of the days comments I am noticing a lot of really borderline statements.
I have no time or desire to conduct significant editing and I understand that its been a long day, emotions are high. Still remember that we don't tolerate personal insults or derogatory statements here. You can say you dislike someones opinion, but don't call them a moron. You can say you hate David Sterns comments, but don't call him an "asshole". There is a fine line we tread here between being part of the solution and part of the problem. Lets stay civil and productive so I don't have to start locking threads and deleting comments.