NBA 2012-13: This time it's... well, probably the Lakers and Heat

As was this:

Alright, I'm officially in panic mode now (although they still somehow have a +2.1 point differential). I wish the Lakers were in the horrible East. I thought it was supposed to be getting better? Even with Charlotte, Cleveland, and Washington posting so many losses, they still can't manage a 7-seed with a winning record.

Wow, I'd actually forgotten that Antawn Jamison was on the Lakers. I wonder why he's been cut out of the rotation over the last month. It's not like their bench is playing stellar without him.

Yeah, it somehow seems to be getting worse in LA as the season continues. I don't know what they are going to do to fix it either, especially given the apparent ownership involvement in the whole thing. You can't just blame the coaching and GM decisions.

There is a report locally that the Maloofs have agreed to sell the Kings and that they will move to Seattle. The source is a now deleted tweet by the daughter of prominent agent David Falk. The Kings are denying it, but that would be expected if everything is not final.

Yahoo! is now reporting the sale as well. Says the Maloofs will get $500m for the team and that it will relocate to Seattle for next season. This is being tweeted by Wojnarowski.

Going to add this here too, fuck the Maloofs. Mostly George. But it looks like Seattle might have been Maloofed as the deal seems to be in negotiations and nothing has been finalized. Part or probably most of the hangup probably has to do with who pays off all the loans the Kings owe to the city which will need to be repaid immediately if they relocate.

No, its not final. But the fact that the Maloofs are willing to talk about it is a move in the right direction. It just depends on how far the Hansen/Balmer group is willing to go to overwhelm the Maloofs natural stupidity.

Which also hopefully means the team can get sold to a buyer that will keep the team in Sacramento. But this is the Maloofs we're talking about so who really knows what is going on.

I'm usually for not moving teams, but Seattle should really have one. If only for the fact that the lack of one makes Ice Cube's Today Was a Good Day sound even more dated.

That's always a possibility, but the numbers being talked about here will make it hard for someone to buy the team and keep it in Sacramento. Hansen can spend $500m for a team because Seattle is a bigger market and he has the arena deal already in place. Someone who spends that much and then keeps the team in Sacramento still has no arena solution. It's the same problem Howard Schultz faced when he sold the Sonics - his options were either Clay Bennet, who wanted to move the team to OKC, or Larry Ellison, who wanted to move the team to San Jose. Nobody local wanted to buy a team that was losing money in its current arena and had no arena coming.

There has always been a few noted interested buyers that have been willing to keep the team in Sacramento, notably Ron Burkle. Also the arena deal that was proposed last year is still on the table according to Kevin Johnson so that option is still viable. Of course all of this never came to fruition because of the Maloofs. And according to reports the Maloofs will absolutely in no case sell to Burkle. So it seems they are now willing to sell the team but just not to anybody that will keep the team in town seemingly out of spite. Which really shouldn't surprise me since the Maloofs have been such poor managers of the team they owe the NBA and Sacramento somewhere totaling around $200 million.

Is Burkle wililng to pay $500m for a team that is probably worth less then $300m? Because if he is the Maloofs might come out ahead selling to a local from what I've read. So if they refuse to sell to him at that price then its pure spite, not business sense.

Don't know, but then again the team hasn't been up for sale in the past. But yes, $500 million is just such a mind-boggling price for the Sacramento Kings.

The potential profit from a move to a rabid Seattle basketball market might have been factored in as part of the purchase price.

I am very surprised too though at the price. The Suns were sold for 401m in '04, and they were on much better ground in terms of attractiveness as a business at that time.

I feel bad for the fans of the Kings. I hope a local buyer is somehow found.

I'd like to take this opportunity to again issue a hale and hearty fuck you to Howard Schultz and David Stern.
Fuck You Gentlemen.

Golden State was sold for $450m in 2010 so the numbers mentioned here are not totally crazy in that context. Its only when you consider the state of the Kings that it seems off. But its a supply and demand thing and this is the team it would be easiest to move.

Word is the deal is nowhere close to done and the Maloofs still want a say in how the team is run after the sale. Now Seattle knows what Kings fans have been dealing with for the past few years. Hell, before this deal, they got VA Beach to spend some $1.25 million in trying to get the Kings moved there.

The Maloofs are playing their games to try and get more money. It'll come down to how far the Seattle group is wililng to go and what pressure, if any, Stern and the NBA put on the Maloofs to stop being idiots.

I'm sure Stern is praying the Seattle group is going to paper over his atrocious collusion and lying with his short fingered vulgarian oil man buddy Clay Bennet handling of the previous Sonics transactions, but given his batting record of late, he should probably just lay low.

Probably should. As much as I feel for Seattle fans this is not the way to do it. Removing another team's history and legacy and angering another loyal fanbase is not the way to do this. As much as Sarkus is hopeful and logical, you can't be when dealing with the Maloofs. Who knows what they really want and what they're doing. They got Sacramento to built them a new arena only to decide they were good with Arco. They got Samueli to spend milions to upgrade the Honda Center to NBA standards and VA Beach to invest a million plus to try and possibly bring them there. Now they're looking at Seattle and what is great offer but they have now Maloofed it up.

In an ideal world the NBA would award an expansion team to Seattle but that isn't happening. So now the guys in Seattle that want the NBA back have to go buy another team and move it. Unfortunately, there are limited options in that regard at this point.

It is a shit sandwich in all directions. By moving a team from a strong market with a monied fan base* Stern made this inevitable. I also suspect this pattern will repeat some time in the future when a Durant leaves OKC (retirement/injury/trade). I maybe underestimating the desire to watch pro basketball in OKC but it is a tiny market that is unattractive to high profile free agents. The Kings peak was only 10 years ago remember? (Maybe Stern will finally admit that the 2002 Conference Championship was an atrocity as a way to make it up to Sacramento Fans for allowing the Maloofs to kill the franchise.)


*anyone who thinks that the Sonics fan deserved to lose the team because they didn't support the team and refused to buy billionaire Howard "Starbucks" Schultz a new stadium needs to read this.

...

Seattle fans didn't deserve to lose their team and do deserve to get it back. But what annoys me most about this is everybody right now is all so happy that Seattle is potentially getting it back in nearly the same way they lost their team. Having it get stolen. So it bugs me greatly. Sacramento fans love their Kings. It's just they have sort of become apathetic as of late due to 6 years of losing and bad ownership. When your team's salary cap is the NBA salary floor, you tend to lose hope little by little. Combined with all the rumours and attempts to move the team it takes it toll on you as a fan. If this deal was to be done I wish it was done quickly because it's wearing me down too. Will there be a SuperKings? Will a local buyer emerge? Will the Maloofs demand a private island as part of the purchase? Who knows? I certainly don't.

People like Seattle more than Sacramento.

Although I will always remember fondly the 2002 Lakers-Kings series, and enjoy the tears of all the Lakers haters who bring it up now and then. And I did like Vlade even after he went to the Kings.

Edit: Alright, fine, I guess I'd miss the Kings.

Don't mind Hanacker he's having a tough year.

An argument I've heard is that people think Seattle fans got more screwed in the sense that the team was suprisingly sold to the OKC guys without much effort supposedly to find local buyers (FWIW Schultz always has maintained that only two groups offered to buy the team and both had relocation angles). And then the OKC guys claimed they were going to try and make things work in Seattle, only to apparently intentionally mishandle things while in the background privately planning their move to OKC. So in that sense you can argue that Seattle fans were blindsided in a way the Sacramento fans have not been.

I don't really buy that argument, but even though I think the Maloofs have been at fault for a lot of this, the national uninformed assumption seems to be that teams move because there is no local support for keeping them. Plus the vagabond nature of the Kings franchise makes people think the Sonics 40+ year history in Seattle makes that a more important market to satisfy if somebody is going to have to be hosed. Sacramento hasn't had much of a chance to make things work because the Maloofs are not making Kings only rational decisions in this case. It reminds me a bit of when the Browns left Cleveland because the owner wasn't capable of seperating the best interests of the franchise from his personal business and desires. That is exactly how the Maloofs are treating the Kings.

Part of the anger around the Sonics move was exactly this. Everyone knew that Seattle would get another team and that the new team would come at the expense of another fan base. I doubt any fair-minded Sonics fan is happy about how the King's fan-base is being treated.

For me, the chain has been broken, this will not be the Sonics of my youth - Jack Sikma, Lenny Wilkins, Slick Watts, Xavier McDaniel, Shawn Kemp, Gary Payton, Nate McMillan and Sam Perkins all belonged to a shared history that went all the way to Kevin Durant, that has ended.

How will the new Sonics honor Vlade, Webber and Mitch Richmond?

Hey look I found another picture of Hanacker -

They won't would by my guess. if the Seattle group ends up with the team they will either a) leave the name and history in Sacramento or b) trade it off to the Thunder as part of whatever deal they make to gain exclusive rights to the Sonics history. Keep in mind that no major Sonic player has ever done anything with the Thunder in terms of honoring the legacy that the OKC owners insist is theirs.

No love for Detlef Schrempf?

Tons.

One of the things I liked about moving to Portland was the couple of years I got to watch Detlef and Arvydas Sabonis on the court at the same time.

What is it with Detlef and everybody's love for him? Myself included. Some local buyers have appeared to emerge with interest for the Kings. So we'll see how all of this plays out. Either way it will either end in heartbreak for Kings fan or by adding more salt to the wound for Sonics fan coming oh so close to getting a team back. This is just a bad situation all around.

Wojnarowski over at Yahoo, who broke the story first last week, has a minor update to report that the parameters of the deal had already been discussed with the league early last week. What's more interesting to me is that he reports that the deal is for the Seattle group to buy the Maloof's ownership share as well as one of the minor holders, for a total of 65%. It turns out the Maloofs are down to a 53% ownership stake. At any rate, it would cost the Seattle group about $340m. The $525m figure represents the total assumed value of the team.

No real new info there except the $525 million is the total evaluation of the team. Which actually makes much much more sense then the $525 million for the Maloof share. Which was why I thought it was a crazy figured since that would put the worth of an NBA franchise at $1 billion or more for other teams. Either way I'm still hopeful since this is a handshake deal and you never know what the hell is going on with the Maloofs as I have learned over the past few years.

Edit: I don't know how I missed it but the minority share that is being sold is part of the Maloof's share. The Maloofs actually only own 42% or so of the team and Henriech owns 10% accounting for the 52% or so controlling interest in the game.

Todays news on the Kings front is that Sacramento mayor Kevin Johnson has been told he will be allowed to present alternative buyers to the NBA Board of Governors. Some reports say this won't happen until April, which would be past the NBA relocation deadline, while others say it will happen before the relocations deadline at the end of March. What strikes me is that the mayor presenting alternative owners to the league suggests the Maloofs have already said no to those owners. And Johnson essentially admitted that none of the potential owners he's lined up are willing to pay as much as the Seattle group are offering.

If the ownership alternatives that Sacramento can bring to the table are legitimate and the NBA finds there is sufficient reason that the team can financially succeed there then I hope they award the team to those local buyers even if it is less money (though that would probably result in a lawsuit by the Maloofs). However, if that is the case then the league needs to promise a team by expansion or relocation to Seattle with a firm timeline.

A friend is teaching me about basketball -- I only know the basics -- and I watched last night's Nuggets-Blazers game while discussing/asking questions via AIM. That was a pretty insane first-ever full NBA game for me.

Jebus, its not bad enough Sacramento is (probably) going to lose its team, Stern is going to go make everybody go through the same charade he did in Seattle. He's always let the owners do whatever they want, to the detriment of the league (Hi Donald Sterling) much less giving a shit about individual fan bases.

Nuggets-Blazers is usually good. Did you enjoy it? Would you watch another?

Yes and yes.

Many reports late tonight that the deal to sell the Kings to the Seattle group is done and will be annouced shortly. Supposedly the league has been notified.

One of the articles I read quoted Kevin Johnson as talking about trying to make the Kings the Packers of the NBA, which presumably means he wants some sort of fan ownership thing. If that is the path he is going down, that was probably a very dumb thing to say. No sports league supports that idea; what the Packers did is grandfathered into the NFL. Johnson saying that may have just pushed a few unsure owners into the camp that will be willing to ignore whatever last minute offer he can arrange.

Bah. If they do it, they should immediately hire Nate McMillian and put a 24/7 camera* on DeMarcus Cousins.

*I don't mean in the Police State sense, but in the Lets Watch DeMarcus discover Endless Rain, boozeless strip clubs and West Coast hipsters sense.