The Sacramento Kings, and this is official, have secured funding for a new arena and will potentially play in Sacramento for the next 30 years . Less than a year after it seemed all but assured this team would be moving to Anaheim as their owners (Joe and Gavin Maloof) continued to lose money both in their real estate holdings and Sacto's NBA-ancient Arco Arena, Sacramento mayor (and former NBA All-Star) Kevin Johnson spearheaded a startling turnaround to both secure funding for a new arena, and convince both the Maloofs and the NBA that the area would continue to be viable. And, eventually, profitable. Party on, northern California . And then get to work, Maloofs. Because you're going to need to re-engage in the business of basketball in a meaningful way that we haven't seen since Rick Adelman and the team parted ways in 2006. Since then, the Maloofs have taken a proactive role in hiring coaches Eric Mussleman, Reggie Theus, Paul Westphal, and extending one-time interim Keith Smart. The results speak for themselves, to those that bothered to pay attention to the squad. Kings fans are stuck in a lose-lose situation as long as the Maloofs continue to tinker with personnel decisions, or if GM Geoff Petrie is given carte blanche with his hirings and transactions. It's an indelicate time to be calling for anyone's job at this point, especially now that the worry about Sacramento's impermanence has lifted, and the ability to run an NBA team with an NBA-sized payroll has become a possibility once again for Petrie. But quite a bit will have to change, if the Kings want to meet this spate of good news with a return to the postseason for the first time since Adelman was on board.
More...
More...
