The reports aren't really all that conflicting. It's a done deal. Any snags are just formalities that need to be ironed out.
Aghhh. This makes me sooo mad. I've been a Kings fan all my life. What burns the most, is that this team is mirroring the Seattle Supersonics in terms of on the court performance. The team is rebuilding, and are a few key pieces away from being an exciting up-and-coming team for a few years, and they'll have the cap space once in Anaheim to make the necessary moves. This will, in turn, bring just enough people in the doors for the Maloofs to put on a happy face and smile and applaud the fans while David Stern dubs Anaheim as a "model sports town." At which point Anaheim residents will convince themselves that the team left Sacramento for a lack of fan support, which we all know to be untrue.
Still though, they'll always be second fiddle to the Lakers. The Clippers will remain the Clippers, and any excitement generated will fade after the Griffin effect. We saw the same thing with Danny Manning, Elton Brand, etc. It happens every 7 or 8 years, but they always fall back in line.
I haven't lived in Sac for over a decade now, but I still follow the Kings (I even went to the 40 point drubbing last night here in Chicago wearing my powder blue Kings hat just to say goodbye to my childhood memories). This is terrible, but at least once the move is complete I can completely divorce myself from the NBA. I just can't continue to support a business that treats their customers with such disdain.
Lets face it, the NBA has a business model where small market teams have no chance. People like to point to San Antonio as the exception, yet San Antonio is the 7th largest city in the country, and they probably control a large majority of the Texas demographic. Cities like Sacramento have no chance at winning a championship with David Stern at the helm (only 7 teams have won an NBA championship under his watch), and I doubt that the new collective bargaining agreement will do much to help the situation. The NBA is now at a point where they need extravagant new buildings complete with restaurants, luxury suites, shopping boutiques, acres upon acres of parking, and oh yeah, a basketball court in order to generate new streams of income to keep up with the skyrocketing and unsustainable costs associated with having a team. The NBA generates enough money to build these arenas, but they know they don’t have to because some city will come along and subsidize the costs. So instead of keeping overhead low and player salaries reasonable, they inflate their worth and pass the risk on to their hosts cities. And once they bleed the city dry, they point to the arena and claim it is inadequate, and start the process over in a new city. It’s disgusting. And it’s even more sickening when you consider that teams like Sacramento will never reap the benefits and be rewarded with the ultimate prize of an NBA championship. Charlotte, New Orleans, take notice. Who will be the next domino to fall?
Proponents of a new state-of-the-art arena like to point to the income generated and the benefit of local economies. And while it is true that an arena can serve multiple purposes aside from NBA games, we shouldn’t let the NBA off the hook for their corporate greed. The NBA demands a portion of funds from an arena, even for non NBA events, and they also like to claim that an NBA arena is a boost to the local economy. Almost all scholars on the subject claim that the economic benefit of an NBA team is negligible, and in some instances a burden to the host city. And if this were in fact the true intent of the NBA (it’s not) then new arenas would not be necessary with “large footprints” that are designed to keep that revenue stream inside of the building and funneled directly to the NBA. Realistically, sports teams that actually do benefit local economies are arenas or stadiums that are urban, such as Wrigley field (which is quite old), which is in the middle of a neighborhood surrounded by bars, restaurants, and other business that see a boost during and after games. Key Arena in Seattle was another urban arena, and we all saw what commissioner Stern thought about that
The NBA is not interested in a private-public partnerships. They are simply looking out for number 1. The fact is, the NBA is operating at a cost that it cannot pay for with ticket sales/merchandise/tv contracts alone. It now requires almost half a billion tax dollars per city every ten years or so in order to stay solvent. Literally billions of dollars are given to the NBA to keep the business afloat. In any other “business,” this demand would be laughed at for the fraud that it is.
I’m a huge Kings fan, and I would be devastated if they left, but the truth is that the NBA is going to make a move that is in the best interests of the NBA; local governments, local economies, and years of tradition and fan support be damned. Enjoy your "Royals" Anaheim, but don’t expect it to last, as the NBA has started a dangerous trend that isn’t likely to stop any time soon. The Honda Center will be deemed inadequate soon enough.
