Sometimes you want something so bad, you forget to look at the total environment you are living in.
I’d love for Seattle to get a basketball team back. I love the energy the sports community would have if we had multiple teams to root for, multiple opportunities every year to feel playoff energy.
But I think I want the Hansen group to step back for a moment. We’ve done something that seemed unfathomable – We’ve given the Maloofs leverage.
On one side of the table, you have the Maloofs. By all accounts they seem to be business numbskulls who have managed to lose money in industries that it is fundamentally impossible to lose money in. They have put themselves into such a debt hole that the team realistically should not be alive anymore. Were it not for the NBA bailing them out, this team would have folded, and its players would be looking for new jobs.
On the other side of the table is the Hansen Group. A collective of gentlemen so wealthy that they are willing to overpay by as much as 25% just to get these guys to pick up a pen and disappear forever. It’s the equivalent of you or I paying our little sister a quarter to give us control of the Xbox and go away.
But now a new table has been pushed into the room, led by Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson. Johnson is the Mayor we wish we had in 2008. Someone who actually DOES something. He CARES. He is LOOKING OUT for his people, not because an economic study says to, but because he believes the Kings are part of the fabric of the City of Sacramento, and P&L Statments be damned, he doesn’t want that fabric ripped away.
So the battle has become Johnson vs Hansxn. In some ways it’s a rematch of Johnson vs Gary Payton, with KJ trying to keep Seattle from getting what it wants. Meanwhile the Maloofs are sitting courtside.
Thus, it’s time for Hansen and Johnson to call timeout.
Without a bid from Hansen on the table, Johnson doesn’t need to pull together a ridiculous package to get a new arena built. He doesn’t have to get investors to overpay to cover the costs of a team hemorrhaging money.
And more importantly, the Maloofs don;t have anymore leverage.
They will keep losing money and the NBA will keep having to bail them out and someone in New York will finally say, “We need to buy this team from these idiots or we need to call the loan in and fold them.”
Let the Maloofs sell what’s left of the team for pennies on the dollar back to the NBA. There is precedent here with the Hornets. Let the NBA take things over and get the Maloofs clear of the whole issue.
If there really is a local ownernship group in Sacramento who can make it work, and a way to build a stadium that won’t cost Sacramento or California tax dollars they need for things like schools and roads, then the team should stay there. If there isn’t, then the city has to accept that professional basketball is a luxury, not a right, and they need to get their house in order before they can have extra amenities. That’s not a basketball perspective, that is Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.
If they don’t have a real plan, then the NBA should sell that team to the Hansen Group. Tell me Mark Cuban and Paul Allen wouldn’t rather have Steve Ballmer sitting next to them at their exclusive Owners’ Meetings than the Maloofs.
But let’s let all that play out after we’ve rid the league of the Maloofs. And let’s get that done by not bidding against each other. Let’s all just stop the ridiculousness and get back to the point that the Maloof’s can’t afford to keep running things, and shouldn’t have any leverage. Let’s call a timeout, stop this momentum in the wrong direction, and draw up the right play to get the lead back.
