Seattle or Sacramento?

Seattle or Sacramento by Joe Brackets:

This situation involving the sale and possible relocation of the Sacramento Kings has become really interesting.  The Maloof brothers want to sell the team to a group that will move it to Seattle.  Sacramento mayor Kevin Johnson, a former NBA player himself, is desperate to keep the team.  David Stern doesn’t really seem to have a preference.  Both groups are currently in New York pleading their case to the NBA’s owners, and the two offers are the highest-ever for a professional sports franchise.  All of this over the Sacramento Kings!

It all started, of course, a few years ago when Clay Bennett moved the original Sonics to Oklahoma City for no good reason, leaving Seattle basketball fans without a team.  (It’s some sort of sick irony that Bennett is now the head of the relocation committee that will ultimately decide if Seattle gets its team back.)  Much like hockey fans in Winnipieg (which finally returned to the NHL last year), basketball fans in Seattle haven’t given up hope, and are more determined than ever to see the NBA come back to their city.

After all those attempts to revive the SuperSonics, it looked like Seattleites finally got what they wanted.  The Maloof brothers agreed to sell the Kings to a group led by Chris Hansen that would relocate the team to Seattle for the 2013-14 season.  The deal was signed, sealed and delivered.  All that was left to be done was dotting the I’s and crossing the T’s.  And that’s when things got interesting.  That’s when Johnson announced that he was putting together a group that would make a counteroffer and keep the team in Sacramento.  And with that, a bidding war developed.

Everything was supposed to be settled once and for all at the NBA owners meetings that were held this week, but the vote has been delayed because the committee wants more information from both cities.  But the Maloofs have made it clear Seattle is their preference, and it seems like the extra time that the committee “needs” is only prolonging the inevitable.  Barring some last-minute improvements in the Sacramento bid, my guess is the Seattle SuperSonics will be reborn in October.

The Seattle bid has been stronger from the beginning, and that’s not any different now.  Sonics fans’ passion for their team has never been questioned.  When Bennett moved the team five years ago, it was because he couldn’t get the city to build him an arena.  It had nothing to do with lack of attendance.  Now that they’ve been without an NBA team for a few years, Seattle city officials finally fully understand what the consequences of their refusal to build an arena actually were.  This time, an arena plan is in place.  But they won’t start building it until a team is secured.

Meanwhile, Sacramento’s bid group is a hasty patchwork whose membership changes seemingly by the day.  The arena deal has a lot of holes in it.  And the “fans,” who’ve always seemed indifferent anyway, are showing that they really don’t care.  They’ve only secured 10,000 season ticket pledges, while the Seattle group has more than 40,000.  I’m not sure that many people in Sacramento would even notice if the Kings were gone.  Plus, where’s the money coming from?  I’m not the only one who’s asking that question.  With Seattle, they know.  With Sacramento, they don’t.

But the Maloofs prefer Seattle for other reasons, too.  First and foremost, the Seattle bid is higher.  After Sacramento matched the original bid, Hansen threw an extra $25 million on, bringing his bid to $550 million.  That’s a lot of money.  Besides that, though, there are guarantees from Seattle that Sacramento hasn’t matched and (fairly reasonable) terms that Sacramento won’t agree to.  Mainly, the Maloofs want the Sacramento group to enter into a binding agreement, which they won’t do unless the Seattle deal is off the table.  In other words, they’d be leaving the Maloofs without a backup option.  They also gave the Sacramento group a deadline to match the Seattle offer.  That deadline came and went.

David Stern wants the Kings to stay in Sacramento.  That seems to be the biggest thing working in the city’s favor.  But Stern doesn’t have a vote.  It’s solely up to the owners, who seem to be in both a win-win and a no-win situation.  I don’t envy their position.  And since expansion isn’t a viable option right now, one city’s going to be very unhappy at the end of all this.

I think the decision is an easy one, though.  There are so many reasons why Seattle deserves to have an NBA team again.  (For starters, they never should’ve lost the Sonics in the first place.)  It’s not that Sacramento deserves to lose its team.  It’s just that Seattle deserves to have a team more.  There are three other NBA teams in California.  The Pacific Northwest has just the Blazers.  And let’s not forget this, Seattle is one of the largest media markets in the country.  Much bigger than Sacramento, which is boosted only by the fact that it’s California’s capital.  One last little tidbit.  Should the Kings move, Seattle would become the sixth different city they’ve called home since joining the NBA (Rochester, Cincinnati, Kansas City, Omaha, Sacramento).