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[font=verdana,geneva,arial,helvetica,sans-serif]Marcos Breton: Would the curtains close?
An early exit from the playoffs by the Kings would damage the chances of a new arena
By Marcos Bretón -- Bee Columnist
Published 2:15 am PDT Sunday, May 1, 2005
If the Kings had won the NBA title in 2002, would we have a new arena in Sacramento today? You bet.
Sacramento was a cauldron of pent-up emotion during that year's Western Conference finals against the Los Angeles Lakers. OAS_AD('Button20');
Can you imagine if the Kings had actually prevailed while tapping fully into a caustic vein of regional rivalry and searing hatred for former Lakers Shaquille O'Neal and Phil Jackson?
Can you imagine the celebration spawned by the NBA trophy paraded down J Street and hoisted in triumph at City Hall? Sacramento would have broken ground for a new arena the next day. Our city would have been so happy, grateful and emotional that approving a taxpayer-funded arena would have seemed the natural thing to do, like a family buying a car it really couldn't afford after a good year in the stock market.
OK, wake up now!
Reality reminds that Peja Stojakovic missed that wide-open jumper at the end of regulation in Game 7 against the Lakers just as he's missing wide-open jumpers against the Seattle SuperSonics now. Reality is that Sacramento's arena plans have whiffed like Peja's playoff shots and the Kings' championship hopes.
Fast forward to today and another must-win game in which a Kings loss would spell near-certain elimination from the first round of the playoffs for the first time in five years.
Would such a setback hurt the Kings' arena prospects? You bet.
If a once-elite NBA team does not reverse course and recapture the emotion of three years ago when the region was ablaze with passion for grabbing the big trophy for its very own, it certainly will hurt.
That kind of excitement has been missing at Arco Arena this season. The annual buzz of the playoffs has scaled back with fans expecting more than just getting there. The trajectory of passion and emotion throughout the region has ebbed noticeably with the Kings' playoff seeding. They're still hot but not white-hot.
And if the Kings lose today and then go out meekly in Seattle, it will only add more uncertainty to a franchise in wrenching transition and forced to reload after stars of yore - Vlade Divac, Chris Webber, Doug Christie, Scot Pollard, etc. - came up agonizingly short.
Yes. A loss today and a first-round fizzle will hobble the Kings in their arena efforts just as each recent championship campaign was wounded by an injured King - Stojakovic and Christie in 2002, Webber in 2003, Bobby Jackson in 2004, almost the entire starting lineup in 2005.
Why? Because just as the Kings couldn't defeat daunting competition without their best players, arena proponents can't win without their primary weapon: emotion.
That's all they have.
Their ranks may include some very smart, upstanding and reputable people, but so far all arena proponents have done is argue emotion to a skeptical, cash-tight region leery of footing a $400 million bill for a new arena while Sacramento schools and services erode like Peja's jump shot.
All we've heard from arena proponents is this: The Kings will leave Sacramento without a new arena (although the Kings' owners have not said that to the public) and Sacramento will be nothing without the Kings. That's it, and that's not enough at a time when emotion for the Kings is declining.
The emotion of a championship and the civic bender it would have triggered might have left all of us feeling happy and light-headed enough to simply say, What the heck, and buy an arena the way fans buy Kings playoff memorabilia for top dollar - only to discard it later.
But we didn't get drunk. All we got was the hangover.
We love the Kings, but our vision is clear enough to see the details.
And arena proponents get creamed in the details: How are you going to put an arena downtown when downtown landowners want a king's ransom to step aside? How are you going to get businesses to chip in heavily when the business community isn't fully integrated into a plan? How can you say that a new arena will benefit the area by bringing more concerts when the Kings owners will pocket the money from the concerts? Why is it that the Kings' owners - at the same time they are expanding their casino empire to national acclaim without any public funds - are silent about what they will contribute to an arena? You ask these questions, and the Maloof brothers demur, while their allies rant and rail about how Sacramento is a cow town.
Emotion is their crutch, their drug. That's fine if you're letting the Sacramento faithful touch the big trophy as it winds past Cesar Chavez Plaza, but that didn't happen.
Peja missed the shot, and arena proponents are missing the point: Emotion alone won't get it done.
[font=verdana,geneva,arial,helvetica,sans-serif][/font]
[font=verdana,geneva,arial,helvetica,sans-serif]Marcos Breton: Would the curtains close?
An early exit from the playoffs by the Kings would damage the chances of a new arena
By Marcos Bretón -- Bee Columnist
Published 2:15 am PDT Sunday, May 1, 2005
If the Kings had won the NBA title in 2002, would we have a new arena in Sacramento today? You bet.
Sacramento was a cauldron of pent-up emotion during that year's Western Conference finals against the Los Angeles Lakers. OAS_AD('Button20');
Can you imagine if the Kings had actually prevailed while tapping fully into a caustic vein of regional rivalry and searing hatred for former Lakers Shaquille O'Neal and Phil Jackson?
Can you imagine the celebration spawned by the NBA trophy paraded down J Street and hoisted in triumph at City Hall? Sacramento would have broken ground for a new arena the next day. Our city would have been so happy, grateful and emotional that approving a taxpayer-funded arena would have seemed the natural thing to do, like a family buying a car it really couldn't afford after a good year in the stock market.
OK, wake up now!
Reality reminds that Peja Stojakovic missed that wide-open jumper at the end of regulation in Game 7 against the Lakers just as he's missing wide-open jumpers against the Seattle SuperSonics now. Reality is that Sacramento's arena plans have whiffed like Peja's playoff shots and the Kings' championship hopes.
Fast forward to today and another must-win game in which a Kings loss would spell near-certain elimination from the first round of the playoffs for the first time in five years.
Would such a setback hurt the Kings' arena prospects? You bet.
If a once-elite NBA team does not reverse course and recapture the emotion of three years ago when the region was ablaze with passion for grabbing the big trophy for its very own, it certainly will hurt.
That kind of excitement has been missing at Arco Arena this season. The annual buzz of the playoffs has scaled back with fans expecting more than just getting there. The trajectory of passion and emotion throughout the region has ebbed noticeably with the Kings' playoff seeding. They're still hot but not white-hot.
And if the Kings lose today and then go out meekly in Seattle, it will only add more uncertainty to a franchise in wrenching transition and forced to reload after stars of yore - Vlade Divac, Chris Webber, Doug Christie, Scot Pollard, etc. - came up agonizingly short.
Yes. A loss today and a first-round fizzle will hobble the Kings in their arena efforts just as each recent championship campaign was wounded by an injured King - Stojakovic and Christie in 2002, Webber in 2003, Bobby Jackson in 2004, almost the entire starting lineup in 2005.
Why? Because just as the Kings couldn't defeat daunting competition without their best players, arena proponents can't win without their primary weapon: emotion.
That's all they have.
Their ranks may include some very smart, upstanding and reputable people, but so far all arena proponents have done is argue emotion to a skeptical, cash-tight region leery of footing a $400 million bill for a new arena while Sacramento schools and services erode like Peja's jump shot.
All we've heard from arena proponents is this: The Kings will leave Sacramento without a new arena (although the Kings' owners have not said that to the public) and Sacramento will be nothing without the Kings. That's it, and that's not enough at a time when emotion for the Kings is declining.
The emotion of a championship and the civic bender it would have triggered might have left all of us feeling happy and light-headed enough to simply say, What the heck, and buy an arena the way fans buy Kings playoff memorabilia for top dollar - only to discard it later.
But we didn't get drunk. All we got was the hangover.
We love the Kings, but our vision is clear enough to see the details.
And arena proponents get creamed in the details: How are you going to put an arena downtown when downtown landowners want a king's ransom to step aside? How are you going to get businesses to chip in heavily when the business community isn't fully integrated into a plan? How can you say that a new arena will benefit the area by bringing more concerts when the Kings owners will pocket the money from the concerts? Why is it that the Kings' owners - at the same time they are expanding their casino empire to national acclaim without any public funds - are silent about what they will contribute to an arena? You ask these questions, and the Maloof brothers demur, while their allies rant and rail about how Sacramento is a cow town.
Emotion is their crutch, their drug. That's fine if you're letting the Sacramento faithful touch the big trophy as it winds past Cesar Chavez Plaza, but that didn't happen.
Peja missed the shot, and arena proponents are missing the point: Emotion alone won't get it done.
About the writer:
[/font]EDITED to add link back to original site of article. Please remember to always post the proper links with articles you have found elsewhere. Thank you. VF21- Reach Marcos Breton at (916) 321-1096 or mbreton@sacbee.com. Back columns: www.sacbee.com/breton.
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He must have been picked on as a kid and this is his revenge. He seems moslt negative, no matter the subject.
