Sacramento

[JoMal]

http://sports.yahoo.com/nba/news;_ylt=Asue...=yhoo&type=lgns

 
By Adrian Wojnarowski, Yahoo! Sports
November 16, 2006

The commissioner was working late on Wednesday, a conference call cutting into his evening commute out of midtown Manhattan. Far from the big city, out in the sticks in Sacramento, David Stern wanted to send word: The NBA isn't letting the Sacramento Kings leave without a fight.

The Maloof brothers had visited his office on Monday, determined for Stern to get between their franchise and city and between the acrimony and the risk of the regrettable resolution of exiting Sacramento. It's turned so nasty between Sacramento and the Maloofs that the Kings owners threw their hands into the air and gave up.

Essentially, they asked Stern: Step down out of the Olympic Tower, take over the new arena initiative and save the Kings in Sacramento.

"The NBA has never done anything to this scope," Stern said.

Maybe that's because the NBA has never had as profound of a franchise crisis as it does now. Stern has called this a "model" franchise in the sport, "a spectacular success story," and there's a genuine urgency for the commissioner's plans to visit Sacramento in early December and begin probing the possibilities with the politicians and developers and Kings ownership.

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Make no mistake: The biggest issue in the NBA isn't about toy store basketballs and bad behavior technical fouls, but the stability of its most successful franchises. Sacramento has a league-best streak of 317 sellouts at Arco Arena, which has been the loudest arena in the league and the most anchored to its franchise. Pound for pound, cowbell for cowbell, there's a good case to be made for Sacramento as the best market in the NBA.

So, there's no salvation awaiting the Maloofs and Kings elsewhere, no city that'll ever love this team and cherish it and, yes, support it the way Sacramento has done in good times and bad. It won't be Las Vegas, where the Maloofs run the Palms Casino. Nor Anaheim. Nor St. Louis. Nowhere else.

The Maloofs lost a confusing public vote on a downtown arena initiative last week, a referendum that was never clear to anyone – not the citizens, nor the Maloofs, nor the commissioner. In the end, the campaign was punctuated with allegations that the Kings owners sabotaged the vote because they themselves didn't want to move downtown.

Especially in the West, the climate for public and private arena-stadium partnerships has never been worse. Good relationships go awry over building issues; love affairs between cities and teams turn traumatic. Nothing had ever come between Sacramento and its team – not Garry St. Jean coaching, not Olden Polynice playing center, nothing until this.

The NBA could live with the New Jersey Nets leaving East Rutherford for Brooklyn, but Sacramento is a soul-bearer for the sport, a beacon of possibility for small-market teams. "Some skeptics questioned whether the NBA could succeed in Sacramento," the commissioner remembered. It's flourished there, and it is everyone's responsibility to make sure this unravels no further.

Once, the NBA had a beautiful thing going in Charlotte, but when the city grew to disdain its owner, George Shinn, the people refused to ever vote him the public funding needed to build an arena. Charlotte never should've lost the Hornets, and it's a painful memory that was still on Stern's mind this week.

"It sort of dawned on me in listening that there is really nothing more important than this," Stern said. "Maybe I could have been more helpful in some other cities, like the first time that the Hornets left Charlotte."

If he didn't do enough to save Shinn from his political mess, Stern sounds determined not to make the same mistake with the Maloofs. He goes back with their father, George, to the early 1980s when he owned the Houston Rockets. His kids, Gavin and Joe, were the whiz kids who breathed life into one of the NBA's worst basketball operations. Sacramento was dying for a winner, and the Maloofs gave it to them.

Now this seven-year fight for a new arena to replace Arco has grown acrimonious, and Stern concedes that part of his job here is to "diffuse" the two sides. These are the worst fights in sports now: communities vs. owners, public vs. private funding. The arena issue has also raged in Seattle and Portland, two longtime thriving NBA cities.

Yet nowhere could the Maloofs move the Kings and ever replicate what's happened in Sacramento. Through everything there, the fans are still the loudest in the league and still selling out night after night. Just look at Memphis now. The Grizzlies were a novelty for a couple years, a hot ticket under Jerry West and Hubie Brown, but they're gasping for air now, ranking last in attendance this season.

As a sports town, the whole identity of Sacramento is wrapped up in its pride for the Kings. A recent Sacramento Bee poll found that six out of 10 citizens declared themselves Kings fans. Still, this has turned terrible. Public officials are decrying the Maloofs as duplicitous, and newspaper columnists are taking sides with city officials and developers here, the owners there.

All of it has been polarizing, and all of it needs the commissioner's political savvy and his deft deal-making.

"The Kings and Sacramento are an NBA success story and I'm not interested in seeing the success end in failure," Stern said. "We don't accept that."

The NBA shouldn't now, nor ever. This is a fight the NBA can't lose because here's something no one would've once ever believed about Sacramento:

This is a city the league can't replace.



Adrian Wojnarowski is the national NBA columnist for Yahoo! Sports.
 

[westkoast]

Great read!  You know I honestly didn't think about what Sacramento means to the NBA aside from a good basketball team...it really is a model franchise to prove that if you put together a good team and build a following that you will be rewarded by the small market with sell out after sell out (or at least filling up most of the seats)

Plus in a way, it sort of makes the NBA seem more grounded and accessable for the average joe who doesn't get to live in the LAs, NYs, Houston, and Miamis of the US.

[rickortreat]

The NBA wants to be able to have teams in small markets that make it, and have support in good times as well as bad times.

This is something that should be worked out.  The Maloofs built up a lot of loyalty by building a decent team.  That's too valuable to walk away from.  I don't know why the Maloofs can't build and finance a stadium privately, if it makes money for them, they should do it.  If it doesn't, then why should the public underwrite the loss?  Only a small percentage of the population gets to see the game in the arena anyway. The city should be able to incoporate the Arena into the best area for fan access and local businesses.



 

[JoMal]

Without a local corporate base, which is the main problem for small markets like Sacramento, building a new arena requires private investment and local government financing to get built. The anti-arena folks here in SacTown are essentially telling the Maloofs to pay for the whole thing themselves if they want to get a new arena, or otherwise stay right there at Arco and shut up about it.

Local officials want control of the arena, which they prefer to call a Sports and Entertainment Center because of all the non-basketball events they could easily book with such a venue right there in downtown Sacramento. They would have to relinquish any say in the matter if they also did not have a financial stake in its building, even though the plan is to lease the building out to one tenant - the Maloofs - and let them run the whole booking operation for those non-basketball events.

As such, all revenue from all events and the parking at the facility as well would go to that tenant.

My fellow Sacramento residents who despise the idea that billionaires require a positive cash flow, apparently, from a publically built building so they can meet the expenses of running an NBA team (about $130,000,000 a year), see this as a rip off of city government. They would prefer (and claim to have a complete lack of understanding why this can't stay as it is) the team and the Maloofs just be happy in the existing Arco instead, or build it themselves on land they own out by Arco.

Arco does not have much in the way of luxury suites. The venue does not reflect well on the rest of Sacramento because you don't get to see any of it from there. It is old and it needs to be repaired. Fine, the critics say, pay for repairs and shut up. The Maloofs often lose money because of the lack of enough revenue generating events at Arco and the lack of those luxury suites. You are billionaires, the critics say. You make money anyway, so pay for it all yourselves, and oh, by the way, why don't you share more money with the local area from all that revenue you get from owning the Kings.

We are losing money with that old arena, the Maloofs say. "Ha, Ha", the local critics say, can't you just tap into the revenue from the Palms, you greedy billionaires? We saw your billionaire Carl's Jr commercial and you can afford to lose money, which doesn't make sense to us anyway. How could you billionaires be losing money since we sell out all your Kings games?

And since you have not brought us a championship, you must be bad owners and so you should leave anyway. We only support a championship team and last I checked, you have not done that, so we don't like you anymore.

And YOU are insisting on building this costly arena downtown, bringing all that traffic to a place I have heard is already crowded, but I personally have never seen because I heard there are <homeless> people, who might accost me, down there, so I stay out where it is safe, in the suburbs. And don't basketball teams have <black> people on them and might not THEY also accost me if I were to, like, get amnesia and forget not to go downtown?

And we need more police and firemen and our levees need to be repaired, so why don't we pay for those things before talking about giving you billionaires an arena that would not benefit me anyway because I like opera and don't want to pay for something from which I would not get any benefit and did I mention yours is not a championship team anyway, so I have heard, so you should leave, since you have not won a championship?

(These were all brought up by the anti-arena dunderheads at one time or another)

BTW, the Maloofs never insisted the arena be built downtown, that is the city council's choice because they want an anchor to the 240 acres railyard project that has not progressed yet and has sat there for the last twenty years as toxins in the soil were removed. It is now ready to be built on, but nothing seems to happen. The sports and entertainment arena was to be the start.

The levees are being repaired as we speak by the federal government. After Katrina, Sacramento was thought to be the most vulnerable to flooding, but our congress people got funding to repair them. Schools are paid for by All of California;s taxpayers, not local taxes, and police and firemen work out their needs each year and the city council addresses the need for more of each. It hardly has anything to do with revenue from any new taxes to pay for it, as they manage under existing revenue.

We have a ways to go and if Stern can fix this, he is a genius, because he will have to deal with some local dunderheads who aren't.  

[Lurker]

They could always look to that "other" small market success story for building a new arena.  It was a public/private partnership.  But then we had rings when the deal came up...

[Guest_Randy]

BOTH sides have to pony up to make this work.

The Maloofs created some of the problem themselves:
  First, they decide to snub their noses at the league and the luxury tax (and overpaid Webber, Bibby and BMiller in the process -- they traded Webber only to receive an overpaid Thomas).
  Second, then they decided that they weren't going to pay any luxury tax.
  Third, they decided that SacTown needed to provide them with a new stadium so that they can make more money.  

Well, the Maloofs already have shown that they aren't always fiscally responsible -- and now they want the public to understand why they need to spends millions of dollars to provide them with a new stadium so that they can make more money.  I don't blame the public for going -- "huh"?

It needs to be a joint effort between the Maloofs, private and public industry.  I am amazed how billionaires want to buy a team and then expect the public to make sure that it is profitable for them!  You can call it whatever you want but that is the expectation of today's sports team owner.  They want to own a professional team -- they want to call all the shots and they want the public to ensure that they are profitable in the process.  

I think that a new arena could be built -- but I'm still amazed with the expectations of billionaires.  Of course, the politicians aren't any better than the billionaires so the public gets screwed by everyone!  And all so that a new arena can be built with an increase in tax money so that they have the excuse for charging more for tickets and parking -- yeah, that's fair to everyone except those who want to actually watch a game!

[Lurker]

It can be done with little pain to local residents.  In San Antonio the taxes used to pay for the arena were hotel and car rental taxes.  Therefore the major brunt of the taxation fell on those fine visitors that came to vist our muddy little river.  Thanks to all.

BTW the owners put up around 15-20% of the cost.

[Guest_Randy]

It can be done with little pain to local residents.  In San Antonio the taxes used to pay for the arena were hotel and car rental taxes.  Therefore the major brunt of the taxation fell on those fine visitors that came to vist our muddy little river.  Thanks to all.

BTW the owners put up around 15-20% of the cost.

Well, that would mean that SacTown politicians don't get a cut, Lurker!

And I think that 20% is about right!

Also, didn't Cuban declare that if the Mavs won the title that he would pay to have the riverwalk cleaned and detoxified?

Actually, my family is planning our vacation for SA next summer -- my wife and I went years ago (before children) and we haven't been back since.  It's a very nice town -- we went about 4 times while living in north Texas.

[Guest_Randy]

Okay, the more I think about this story, the more it bothers me.  This is the statement that gets me:

The NBA could live with the New Jersey Nets leaving East Rutherford for Brooklyn, but Sacramento is a soul-bearer for the sport, a beacon of possibility for small-market teams.

How much did the Maloofs have to pay this guy to make a statement like that?

Here's another statement:

Sacramento has a league-best streak of 317 sellouts at Arco Arena, which has been the loudest arena in the league and the most anchored to its franchise. Pound for pound, cowbell for cowbell, there's a good case to be made for Sacramento as the best market in the NBA.

But then I find this statement when it actually comes to how many fans fill the stands?  

Before a sell-out crowd of 19.982 (of which at least half didn't show up!), the Kings began their hunt for the ever-illusive championship. And where better to start but against another strong contender, the Dallas Mavericks, who came oh so close to winning the whole ball of wax last season.

I think there are GREAT small markets out there -- SA is currently one of the best -- but there are several others that have had GREAT success.  It seems that SacTown's current "sell-out streak" doesn't even compare with another small market teams long-time success.  The Portland Trailblazers had what, 20 or 21 years of sellout crowds?  Utah has also been a tremendous small market team.  

I don't think the league would experience even as much as a hiccup if the Kings went to another city (and it's not much of a secret where the Maloofs would like to take the Kings -- although it's hard for me to believe that the casino's will give up the booking rights to NBA games).  You will see some new small market teams that will have great success -- I've already mentioned SA but Cleveland is also going to have great success with sellout crowds as long as LeBron is with the Cavs.  I think it has a lot to do with winning, unfortunately.  I think Portland was the one exception to that rule -- Portland fans would flock to games even when they didn't experience a winning season.  Portland would STILL have that kind of success had it not been for the debacle that we all saw unfold -- and there isn't a city in the US that would have continued to pay for tickets with that kind of drama (not even in LA).

I think we are entering a new era -- people aren't going to continue to pay taxes so that owners can be fiscally irresponsible -- and they shouldn't!  People are getting tired of paying high taxes and paying top dollar to see players act like idiots.  And people are tired of having new stadiums built with tax dollars so that owners can charge more for tickets!

I would like to see the Kings stay in Sacramento -- not because of the fact that the Kings are the heart and soul of the NBA (which is bunk) but because I hate it when a team leaves a city.  It hurts the NBA and it hurts fans.  But I don't believe that if the Kings move, it would hurt any more than if Seattle moves, etc.

PS -- of course, I wouldn't hate it if somebody moved an NBA team to St. Louis or Kansas City!   :rolleyes:  

[Lurker]

Funny thing is that the Kings (Royals) have been in 5 different cities in their history.  So it really isn't like there is this super long term relation between the team and the city.

BTW I was bothered by the "model small market" comment also but decided it was because I was being a homer (no, not Simpson. doh).  But on the other hand it is amazing how many coaches, front office people & GMs have come from the Spurs organization.  And that they are currently (key word) being hailed as a model for NBA franchises...not just small market ones.

[JoMal]

I am not sure where this guy was going with all that hyperbole regarding Sacramento being the "soul-bearer for the sport, a beacon of possibility for small-market teams". We sold out for years before the Maloofs bought the team and made it an annual winner, but right before then, fans started to get disallusioned with the years of losing and Arco was not selling out. So it could happen again if the Maloofs look like they may move the team again, and who would blame us.

While you are right, Lurker, in that the Kings/Royals franchise has been in Rochester, Cinninatti, Kansas City, and Kansas City/Omaha before coming to Sacramento, the 20+ years the team has been here is the longest tenure they stayed anywhere. And the reason they left those other cities was due to fan apathy more then anything else.

I do agree that San Antonio is a better model for what is being called a "small market" - if, in fact, you could call San Antonio a "small" market.

For a city that is ranked 8th in the United States in total population - ahead of Dallas, BTW, and with an estimated population in 2005 of 1,296,000 million people (compared to Sacramento city's 2005 pop estimate of 456,400), I REALLY do not think you can classify San Antonio in the same small market category as Sacramento.

When it comes to arena financing, no one cares about the communities outside the city limits. In California, you can not make the outside, larger market pay for a damned thing for any sports team. I would assume it would be the same in San Antonio, which has a much larger corporate base then Sacramento as well.