Mayor Kevin Johnson in last ditch effort to keep Kings in Sacramento – NBA Update
The Mayor of Sacramento, Kevin Johnson, knows all about NBA. Not only because he is a former player, but because for the last year or so Kevin Johnson has maintained non-stop contact with the league and its officials.
Johnson’s efforts are geared towards one simple goal; keep an NBA franchise in the basketball mad city of Sacramento.
However, over the past few months, this has become a very hard task.
The Sacramento Kings have had a protracted falling out with their host city. The team owners want to build a new arena for the franchise. They can’t do it themselves, so they have been asking around town for funding of the project.
However, that has not gone successfully at all.
After years of setbacks, the owners of the Kings, the Maloofs, decided to move out of town and were almost on their way to Anaheim, the proposed destination. However, due to the efforts of Kevin Johnson and his assurances to the
Maloofs and NBA, that a new arena will be built for the Kings, the deal failed to close. That gave the city of Sacramento, and its mayor, one more chance to get things right.
The Maloofs were convinced into staying another year in town by Kevin Johnson, who brought together a number of businesses and private investors to pledge their support for the new facility that the Kings are demanding.
Now Johnson is on a mission, preaching to everyone in his city that this indeed is their last chance.
"I'm going to say that commissioner (David) Stern has told me in no uncertain terms," Johnson said, "that it would be very difficult -- 'Your best bet is to try to figure out how to make it happen while you have 'em here, and that's
building a facility. If you don't have a facility, your chances of keeping or getting a team are going to be nil to none.' "
The gloomy picture that Kevin Johnson has painted is because the mayor now has run out of other options. Johnson and Sacramento had a few backup plans in mind when all this started.
The first was coercing the current owners to sell the franchise. Billionaire Ron Burkle, who holds a political stake in Sacramento, was the proposed buyer, someone who would naturally keep the franchise in town. However, the Maloofs
have made it abundantly clear that they will not sell. So that option is of the table.
A year ago, Johnson started looking at other troubled franchises who could be lured to Sacramento if the Kings made their move. New Orleans Hornets and Atlanta Hawks seemed prime candidates. However, Johnson’s interactions with
NBA and his own assessment of the situation have left him in no doubt of that being a very unlikely scenario.
Atlanta and New Orleans are in no mood to let their respective franchises leave, and the league probably won’t allow it anyway because the root cause still remains, the lack of a new arena.
That has left Johnson with just one option,
"Scenario 1," Johnson called it. "We build a facility, Kings stay, owners stay."
He has a year to make it happen.
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