Category: Sports (Page 5 of 18)

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.

This may sound a little like sour grapes, but it’s not.  This is n’t a complaint, merely an observation.

Thanks to USC’s fall from dominance, the Pac-12 South is a very competitive race this year.  You have two distinctly bad teams in Utah and Colorado, then 4 teams with a legitimate shot to play in the Pac-12 championship game – USC, UCLA, ASU and Arizona.  So lets say they all sweep Utah and Colorado and everyone beats each other a couple of times in their other 3 games.  That puts everyone one game within each other in the division games, and causes the 4 games versus the North to be the deciding factor.

Here’s where the unbalanced schedule plays a huge role.  Up in the North, you also have 2 bad football programs, in WSU and Cal.  But you have 2 teams who have spent time in the top 25 (Stanford and UW), one who has spent time in the top 10 (OSU) and 1 who is a National Championship contender (Oregon).  The 4 teams you draw out of this group of 6 are hugely important.

So let’s look at the Pac 12 South teams contending for the title, and who they drew from the North:

Arizona: Oregon, OSU, Stanford, Washington
ASU: Cal, Oregon, OSU, WSU
UCLA: Cal, OSU, Stanford, WSU
USC: Cal, Oregon, Stanford, Washington

If you are a UCLA fan, you have to be excited that the Bruins are the only ones who don’t face Oregon.  That’s 1 loss everyone else is getting that you won’t have. Not only do you miss Oregon, you GOT both WSU and Cal. So that’s 2 wins you should have gotten (but didn’t).

ASU probably netted out 2nd best.  They get the Oregon loss, but they skip OSU and Washington.  They should get at least 2 wins in the mix from WSU and Cal.

USC got a fairly tough road.  They have to face Oregon, Stanford and Washington – all tough games, with only one respite – Cal.

Meanwhile, it’s the Arizona Wildcats who had to run the whole North Gauntlet, and they paid the price, finishing 1-3 against their Northern foes.

It’s a quandary every 12 team conference faces, so this isn’t sour grapes on my part.  But here in Pac 10 country, we didn’t have this problem in past years.  When you have 1 team that is an outlier for being uber talented, and a couple teams as outliers as under talented, it really makes for a giant wild card.