The NBA forcing a team to sell would be a dramatic step for a league that is traditionally very risk averse.
However, stuffy David Stern is gone, and the situation in Phoenix just demands it at this point.
The Phoenix Suns are run by a private ownership group, but they operate at the will of the National Basketball Association. For the league to seize the Suns they’ll need their board of directors to authorize the seizure.
This presents a political problem because the board consists of owners who don’t exactly have an incentive to see the board sprint down a pathway that might ultimately end up with any of them potentially being ousted from their own team.