The Maloofs are an interesting bunch. The entire family is involved in the ownership. They will solicit the opinions of all four brothers and the mother before making a major change, as they did when they parted ways with Rick Adelman.
They are also obstinate, opinionated, outgoing, media-friendly, civic-minded, free-spending followed by penny-pinching, owners who are making a ton of money off of a small market basketball team, while telling one and all they are committed to keeping the team in Sacramento, but insist the city pay for their new arena, which few municipalities in California can manage. In Sacramento's case, the city tried to get the other local communities on board with solving the arena issue, but was turned down flat - no available money anyway.
Then Stern steps in, saying the NBA is completely committed to keeping Sacramento in the League (and, no doubt, Las Vegas OUT), so sends his best fiscal mind to SacTown to work out a deal between all parties. Turns out, Cal Expo, the huge state fair that is located here, along the American River, needs to upgrade its facilities and has lots of land in which to do it. Looks like a deal to build a new arena on these state-owned lands that would be used by the fairgrounds to book other acts is now in the works.
And one of the key reasons is that the Maloofs were not part of the negotiations. Seems that once they get burned (the Webber contract and subsequent trade; the city sponsored proposition the local voters turned down that would have put the arena in downtown and the Maloofs very publically supported), they clam up about the issue and do the opposite of what they did before. No more big contracts and luxury tax issues, no more public comments about the arena issue.
Interesting bunch of owners.
