An end to the epic Spirits of St. Louis/NBA deal.

And I mean epic.

The NBA has reached a conditional agreement with the former owners of the defunct Spirits of St. Louis, buying out their share of the league’s television revenue, according to a published report Tuesday in the New York Times.

The agreement ends a lucrative deal that gave Ozzie and Daniel Silna, owners of the American Basketball Association franchise in St. Louis, “visual media” rights to NBA games “in perpetuity.”

The article reports that the Silna brothers made about $300 million off of those rights (the Spirits dissolved with the end of the ABA), and that the payout for them will be $500 million.  And at that the NBA is lucky.  This is why you think twice before you sign the contract, ladies and gentlemen: the NBA’s failure to think things true will end up costing them almost a billion dollars…