The battle…is now truly joined.

Late on Friday, an attorney representing Anthony Davis, Sr. told the Chicago Tribune that a lawsuit will be filed next week against Michael O’Brien and the Chicago Sun-Times.

According to the story at the online version of the Tribune, Mr. Davis’ attorney, Georgette Greenlee, told the paper that “It boggles our mind where O’Brien got his information from.”

The Sun-Times knew they could face legal action if they persisted with the story that the elder Davis had made a $200,000 deal with the Kentucky program in exchange for a commitment by the younger Anthony Davis, and after receiving that strongly-worded letter from lawyers representing UK, did they back down?  Only temporarily, but then came back with a story in which O’Brien claimed he had three sources claiming that Mr. Davis was shopping his son. Kentucky’s press release on Friday afternoon stated that they would support “any action” that the Davis family took against O’Brien and the paper, and it looks like that’s exactly what’s going to happen next week, unless the Davises are attempting to call what they consider a bluff by the Sun-Times.

But both sides appear extremely confident in this matter, which means that each thinks it has a piece of trump-card information that will annihilate the other.  If a lawsuit actually gets filed, it’ll be incredibly interesting to see what tidbits of information are revealed as a result of the discovery process.  Will Michael O’Brien and the Sun-Times produce solid evidence that will support their article and implicate the Davises (and maybe Kentucky)?  Or will we soon see Anthony Davis reviewing movies with Roger Ebert?  It’ll be one heck of a showdown.