Why are the Shock leaving Detroit, really? Yes, the Pistons have been bleeding money: like everything else in Detroit, team sports are hurt by the bad economy (worse in southeast Michigan than almost anywhere else). The NBA-WNBA joint ownership model, some say, relies on an NBA franchise rich and successful enough to absorb the six-figure losses a WNBA team can expect.

But really every NBA owner is that rich-- at least, every owner who can keep a team. (Howard Schultz in Seattle, and now the Indiana people, may be different stories.) The worst-paid Piston for 2009-10, Will Bynum, will make almost $900K, and there's no talk (or none that I've seen) of the Pistons departing Detroit. As Clay pointed out six years ago, any folks who can keep on paying even below-average NBA salaries can afford a WNBA team if they want one.

And that's a big "if." The Fever aren't going away, at least not this year, because the region's reaction to the team's postseason would make it rather awkward to give up now.

And if the Shock go away, the biggest reason won't be the Pistons' money woes; rather, the Shock will leave Detroit because the admirable man who chose to bring the Shock there in the first place died in March, and his heirs may not share his taste for the team.

Pro sports teams move all the time. Sometimes they even move in the dead of night. It sucks that one more group of loyal fans is going to lose the team they've supported for so many years, but at least there's a buyer: the team isn't going to fold.

That's the reaction from Phoenix Stan at Swish Appeal (who doesn't live in Detroit). And it was almost my reaction too. Trouble is, if the Shock relocates to Tulsa, that could be bad news for the whole league, because it's bad news for the Dream: Atlanta's chief stakeholder, Ron Terwilliger, has never been a men's-side owner-- he may not have the money, or he may not want to spend it on sports (he's also a Habitat for Humanity bigwig). He's made clear that he can't afford to keep running the team; his money comes from residential construction, and real estate hasn't exactly had a great year.

If the Shock could stay put and the Dream were for sale, it might well be the Dream who moved to Tulsa, thus avoiding any contraction in 2010. It might be that there's hope for new owners within Atlanta. But it might also be that the Tulsa buyers had their pick between two WNBA teams; they picked, unsurprisingly, the three-time champions. And down South, the fans still hold their breath.