Gary Chouest Pulls Out of Buying Hornets, One Step Closer to Seattle

Tonight things have gone from bad to worse in New Orleans regarding the future of their NBA team.

The NBA is determining whether to buy the Hornets from George Shinn and sell to local ownership, but it looks like there won't be any local ownership to sell to.

Gary Chouest, according to Marc Stein of ESPN, has officially pulled out of purchasing the Hornets.

This leaves the team just ripe for the picking. 

Chouest was thought to be really reeling from the ban on off shore drilling and rumors had him losing potentially a few billion dollars of his net worth because of this and putting his future business practices in jeopardy.

Steve Ballmer, on the other hand, has $2 billion currently sitting in the bank and the city of Seattle frothing at the mouth to get a basketball team back.

For more on why I think the Hornets are coming to Seattle click here and for my own personal blog click here.