The possibility the city of Memphis could file a lawsuit against the NBA over the league’s still unresolved player lockout has cast a spotlight over the intricate funding plan that paid the debt associated with building FedExForum.

But there’s still a lot to be determined before the situation even gets that far.

What set everything in motion this week was a five-line resolution the Memphis City Council passed Tuesday, Oct. 18, that was sponsored by council chairman Myron Lowery. It requests council attorney Allan Wade to “explore all options for recovery of lost revenues” because of the NBA’s canceled games and “to take steps to recover such revenue, if necessary.”

The council’s resolution does not make specific reference to a lawsuit. But a suit was publicly discussed as one of the city’s potential options.

Lost revenue because of missed games is a very real concern that Public Financial Management, a firm that advises the Memphis-Shelby County Sports Authority, has already built some predictions around.

A couple of months ago, PFM walked the sports authority – the entity that authorized the bonds that paid for the city’s $250 million basketball arena – through some scenarios that included a protracted lockout and a weak economy continuing to put a damper on the revenue streams that pay those bonds.

PFM has forecast that a yearlong lockout could leave a funding shortfall of a little more than $10 million by 2029.

The council’s resolution also addressed that, by saying “the cancellation of games will cause a loss (of) revenues available for debt service, which may necessitate the appropriation of public revenues to cover the shortfall.”

A day or so before the council took its action, sports authority board member Lang Wiseman went back to PFM and asked that they consider preparing some forecasts built around incrementally higher percentage growth in the revenue streams that help pay the forum bonds.

He thought some of what they already presented the authority with was “too conservative” – even though he said being conservative is an appropriate tack when dealing with public money.

He just wants to see what effect a slightly higher forecast will have on any potential shortfall down the line.

“What I’ve asked them to do, I met with them (the day before the council vote) and asked them to do some further sensitivity analysis and to include a bigger growth rate” in the revenue streams that pay the forum bonds, Wiseman said.

A group of about half a dozen sources of revenue were created to pay back the forum bonds largely in the hope that fluctuations in any one funding stream could be mitigated by having additional funding sources.

Wiseman, a founding partner of the law firm Wiseman Bray PLLC, said the potential of a lawsuit against the NBA “strikes me as a very creative claim.”

“It’s an interesting legal discussion – but if there’s anybody who can take it and do something with it, it’s Allan,” Wiseman said, referring to the council’s attorney Wade.

Along those lines, Wade once told a Daily News reporter the way he approaches his legal work is in as straightforward a manner as he can.

“Let me tell you how I work,” Wade said. “You can put an ‘A’ at the top of the page, and you can put a ‘B’ at the bottom of the page. What I try to do is find the straightest line I can to get to ‘B’. And it may take me 10 minutes, and if I get rid of a case in 10 minutes, I may cheat myself out of thousands of dollars, but that’s how I work.”

Wade is set to report back to the council in two weeks.