Several things happened in this order:
* Groves tried to hide the extent of his money woes towards Feb/March when rumours were circulating that his wealth would diminish and having a basketball team would be a luxury ANYBODY in that situation wouldn't be able to justify affording.
* Several weeks passed where rumours were flying around about the stability the Bullets would have because of Groves problems as his downward spiral became headline news- Groves continued to deny he was in any sort of significant strife in his business and claimed the Bullets were fine.
* Further stories continued to come out about the extent of his losses, this time, he reluctantly and cryptically danced around the thought of losing money.
Still denied he would have to sell his beloved club, which with every passing day, greatly devalued their bargaining power to negotiate a sale while still on top.
* At the 11th hour, several weeks after he should've seen the writing on the wall and sold for the benefit of the club, not his stubborn ego, Groves admits the club is a luxury he can no longer afford after flying back from the US from a business meeting that was unsuccessful- by this stage a significant chuck of respect has been wiped off the Bullets branding and now resembles a desperate fire sale: everything must go a la Cowan's Dragons gear for $5.
* NBL try to help with some negotiations but end up making it worse by publicly claiming every few days they are 'quietly confident' the Bullets will get a buyer. Whoops.
* Kemp consortium take over for a lot less than what the club should be worth because of Groves killing it with kindness instead of letting go- 8 weeks passes before due diligence is completed upon which the Kemp consortium say 'the numbers don't add up'.
Tell us something you should've noticed 8 weeks prior- Groves ran the club like it was a bank and we all knew it- Kemp agreed with Wright and Kerle at the time to help clean it up.
* Virgin Blue decide not to renew their lapsed sponsorship on the Bullets- hardly surprising with this sort of instability going on and partly why I get reminded of the devalue to the product that is caused when clubs don't handle their business professionally similar to the Tigers/ Dragons fiasco that contributed Fox to revise their sums and get cold feet from public bickering.
* Groves then goes on a rampage to say they should have done due diligence sooner- about the only valid and responsible thing Groves has done since Feb when the whole Cindarella story started to collapse.
* NBL then say that for them to keep their licence, they will have to pay a $1mil bank guarantee which was not discussed, let alone imposed on any other club at the time when several others were in financial trouble- Groves said take your bank guarantee and shove it up your a$$ and rightly so as it was not a requirement anybody else had to suddenly bow down to with 3 days notice.
* Licence gets handed back and Chuck's name becomes scum in Brisbane, while most of Brisbane quietly want his head on a stick when he shows up at the Bullets relaunch in Sept.
Since then, Ipswich Mayor Paul Pisasale and another guy that formed part of the Kemp consortium (can't remember his name right at this moment- some real estate tycoon) have come under public fire for dodgy dealings in other areas of business, so in retrospect, their short-lived support would've been a red herring and they'd end up having bigger fish to fry elsewhere also and tarnishing the brand.
(Mod: Points for effort.)