The city of Sacramento was right to not want to trust the Maloof brothers — the overleveraged, casino-running owners of the Sacramento Kings. The fans of the team were right to be dubious when the brothers went on record in anticipation of the NBA's yearly board of governors meeting as saying they wanted to renegotiate a local arena deal that several non-Maloof'ian entities were helping finance. And you're right to assume that just about any amount of embarrassing public behavior by NBA owners will be tacitly and tactlessly approved by David Stern, and the NBA. Because it appears as if the Maloofs will get their way, and weasel out of their handshake agreement with the city of Sacramento. A city, led by former NBA All-Star Kevin Johnson, that even Stern on Friday admitted had done "what we asked them to" in order to finance a new arena to replace the money-hemorrhaging formerly-titled Arco Arena. Utilizing a third-party economist (one that Stern said came in to ongoing negotiations "with ill grace"), the Maloofs produced documents that predicted that the city of Sacramento would be in bad financial shape after moving forward with a partially-publicly financed arena, and used this as leverage to pull out of the handshake deal. Swell guys, those Maloofs. Always looking out for the city of Sacramento. And though Stern went out of his way to show exasperation in announcing his indirect approval of the Maloofs' machinations, as he's done with various NBA owners through the years, Stern made no attempt to get in the way of their skeeviness.
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