Adam Silver and Steve Ballmer Together at Clippers - Thunder Game

Hmm.. MT @BillPlaschke: Clipper ownership watch? Steve Ballmer, former Microsoft CEO, walked up to sit w/Adam Silver between quarters here."

— Chris Daniels (@ChrisDaniels5) May 11, 2014

This was also spotted by a few people on TV.  I missed all but the last two minutes of the game (amazing ending by the way).  Bill Plaschke with the tongue-in-cheek tweet there which you can speculate all you want, but the Clippers are NOT moving out of Los Angeles.  Far too many people with far too much money in LA that want to keep them in town and will pay a lot of money to keep them there.  It doesn't matter how much money is thrown at the NBA right now, their precedent is now to keep teams in their current markets no matter what.  Plus, there is no way that the NBA would ever move a team out of Los Angeles.  They won't make the same mistake the NFL did.

The point not to be missed here though is that we now have publicized, not behind closed door confirmation there is an open dialogue between Adam Silver and a potential Seattle ownership group.  Oh to be an NSA guy tapped into their phones to hear what they were talking about would have been gold for us.  Steve Ballmer has been to a lot of games recently and we've heard that Chris Hansen does have an ongoing open dialogue with the league.

I continue to think we are closer to getting a team than most of you believe.  I know you feel like you've been burned countless times by Mr. Silver already, but there is already more evidence out there that the new boss is definitely not the same as the old boss.

For example; Adam Silver took pictures with every kid who wanted to get a picture taken with him today at the game.  He did not turn a single one down. That's the type of access a fan should have to a commissioner.  Adam Silver is definitely a man of the people and I look forward to him being the best commissioner in all of sports.