To recommend that others contribute to the Kings' coffers, I need the Maloofs to make good on the agreement that they came to with the city of Sacramento. The Maloofs agreed to pay $73.25M towards the construction of a new arena in the railyards, but now claim (falsely, I believe) that they never agreed to the $3.25M in pre-development costs, despite that contribution being explicitly laid out in the term sheet. With their recent letter to the city manager running down pages of reasons why they now believe an arena cannot be completed by the city (only now, when they have to start putting money into the project), along with their media blast starting with a leak to the LA Times trying to sway public opinion immediately before a city vote to embark on the pre-development portion of the project, I believe it is abundantly clear that the Maloofs are trying to sabotage the agreement that was reached between the Kings, the NBA, the city of Sacramento, and AEG in order to weasel their way into the Anaheim market. There is a long-standing pattern of the Maloofs doing just this. They sabotaged the Q&R effort, they sabotaged the finances of the team before last year's relocation deadline (remember the $10M in corporate sponsorships that they neglected and that Mayor Johnson brought to the NBA at last year's BOG meeting?) and now they are sabotaging an agreement THAT THEY AGREED TO.
I will not, in any way, financially support the Kings, the team I love, until the Maloofs hold up their end of a bargain that they agreed to, or there is new ownership in place, and I will not recommend that my friends or colleagues support the Maloof Kings either.
Fortunately, this "boycott" of mine may end shortly. It is less than two weeks until the NBA Board of Governors meeting, when the issue of the Maloofs reneging on their agreement with Sacramento will be hashed out. I expect that Mr. Stern and the other NBA owners will put a very big foot down at this meeting, especially considering their very rapid response to put forward, on behalf of the Kings, the Maloofs' share of pre-development money to fund the city of Sacramento in moving forward on the arena effort in the meantime between now and the BOG meeting. If the Maloofs believe that they are going to find sympathetic ears at that meeting, ones that will agree with them that Sacramento cannot build an arena and that they are best off moving the franchise, I think they are sorely and sadly mistaken. The NBA clearly wants basketball to remain in Sacramento, and the NBA is clearly getting quite tired of the Maloof mismanagement of the Kings. For the sake of the Kings team, for the sake of the Sacramento region, and for the sake of Kings fans everywhere, we can only hope that these two weeks represent the end of a dark era in Sacramento sports and politics, and that a new and brighter era will be ushered in by the NBA and an owner who truly wants to cater to the great fanbase in Sacramento.
