All of it had been building toward that night at the Hyatt Regency when, over a bottle of Opus One Cabernet, Wooldridge; his lawyer, Dick Cass; Thornton; and Stephen Perry, the chief of staff for then-Gov. Mike Foster, discussed what they needed to accomplish in the next six months to bring the NBA back to New Orleans. After two hours, the foursome relocated to Commanders Palace, where talks continued deep into the night at the legendary Uptown restaurant. “It was a perfect night,” Wooldridge said. “The perfect way to start the night and the perfect way to end the night. At the end, we shook hands and said, ‘Let’s get it done. We’ll make our application and get to work.’ ” “We were the last group seated, and we were the last to leave,” Perry said. “That night we basically negotiated what was a $300 million deal. I’ve still got the notecards and scratch paper from it somewhere in the house. It was absolutely a very heady moment. But it was scary at the same time. We had to promise to meet a number of significant benchmarks.”