It’s been awhile, but I thought I would offer some links to stories that pertain to Seattle and what is happening here.

If it was the last game in Seattle, you couldn’t have scripted a better ending.

Listen to conversations with Nick Collison and Jeff Green after Seattle’s 99-95 win over Dallas Sunday night.

Listen to other Sonic players talk about Sunday’s game at KJR’s Sonics page here.

Watch highlights from the game here.

Here’s an interesting story from the New Orleans Times-Picayune that talks about the competition between the Hornets and Saints for government funds. The story asks if New Orleans can support both teams financially.

The New York Daily News reports that former Seattle Sonics general manager Rick Sund is one of two final candidates for the New York Knicks general manager position. The other is former Philadelphia Sixers president Billy King.

An editorial in the Memphis Commercial Appeal advocates that the NBA owners defer on the vote to relocate Seattle to Oklahoma City.

Yahoo Sport’s Adrian Wojnarowski talks about the rookie of the year candidates here.

And he also discusses the Sonics tenuous situation in Seattle here.

Another sign that change is coming, the Sonics are not accepting renewals from season ticket holders for next season because of the uncertainty of where the team will be next season.

Here's the letter they are sending out to season ticket holders.

Over the last several games, we've received inquiries from Season Ticket Members regarding our plans for the 2008-09 season ticket renewal and we want to take a few minutes to address that topic with you. Typically, this time of year we initiate a renewal campaign for the upcoming season. However, with the current uncertainty surrounding the team's status about playing in Seattle for the 2008-09 season, we feel the prudent course of action is to wait until this matter is resolved before presenting you with renewal information.

In the interim, please be assured your status as a Sonics Season Ticket Member is protected in the event we play the 2008-09 season in Seattle. By postponing the timing of your renewal, your seat status and account priority number will remain intact should the team play in Seattle. Although we may accept deposits for new accounts at a later date, no new seats will be assigned until after a renewal campaign begins and we would, as always, provide you the first opportunity to confirm or change your seat location at KeyArena.

We recognize this is a tough and unprecedented period of time and sincerely thank you for your continued support.

Best regards from your Sonics Retention Team,

Here's the full transcript of the conversation with NBA Commissioner David Stern on questions about Seattle arena situation

Q. You said back in August you were satisfied that the Seattle ownership group had been honest throughout with their intentions. Has anything changed in your feeling in that regard?

COMMISSIONER STERN: No. Is there a follow up?

Q. Have you ever I know you've said that you don't believe that the Seattle people's feelings is because of that particular owner, that they wouldn't give money to Howard Schultz. Did you ever talk to Clay Bennett about maybe selling the team if maybe that was different. If a different ownership group could have worked something out there?

COMMISSIONER STERN: Well, actually, I think it's fair to say that extraordinary efforts were made to seek ownership interest when Howard sold the team, including from people who became involved in the effort, the recently unsuccessful effort to get the state to extend the sales tax for purposes of retiring arena debt. So I think it happened already.

There was no one that was interested in buying the team including the very people who stepped forward at the last minute to participate in the arena renovation.

Q. I want to get your reaction to the release of the emails that seem to indicate that while Clay Bennett was indicating to you and to the public at large that there was no intent at that time to move the team, amongst the ownership group there seemed to be thoughts or action to move the team to Oklahoma City. Your reaction to that, and, also, is that something that you could or would act upon?

COMMISSIONER STERN: I haven't studied them, but my sense of it was that Clay, as the managing partner and driving force of the group, is operating in good faith under the agreement that he made with Howard Schultz.

His straight and narrow path may not have been shared by all of his partners and their views, but Clay was the one making policy for the partnership.

Q. Irrespective of anything, who is to blame for what's happened there? As you reach out strongly to Asia, how distressing is it to you that you're about to lose a city that is a major part of the pacific rim and has a large Asian population, and is a good outreach to Asia?

COMMISSIONER STERN: I would say that we don't ever like to lose a city, and we don't like to leave a city that is as robust as Seattle. But the Asian cities that we're tending to focus more on have names like Shanghai, Beijing, and Hong Kong and Guangzhou. So, it's disheartening simply to leave the city as it would be to leave any city.

But in respects to Asia, there are many cities that are jockeying for that title, so to speak, but we have actually even moved past that and are dealing much more forcefully. My guess is that a year from now we'll probably have close to 200 people in different Asian cities. That's NBA employees.

Don't know if you're aware of this story, but NBA Commissioner commented for the first time on the emails the City of Seattle released last week in a conference call today. Here's a quote.

“I haven’t studied them but my sense of it was that Clay, as the managing partner and the driving force of the group, was operating in good faith under the agreement that had been made with (previous owner) Howard Schultz,” Stern said on a conference call today. “His straight and narrow path may not have been shared by all of his partners in their views, but Clay was the one that was making policy for the partnership.”

And you can read the entire story here.