Could the Kings move to city No. 6?
The Sacramento Kings, who have previously played in Rochester, Cincinnati, Kansas City and Omaha (that’s right, Nebraska actually did have an NBA team for a couple years) are rumored (emphasis on rumored) to be thinking about leaving. The Kings’ owners, the Maloof brothers, are not happy with Arco Arena and want a new arena. And like many owners who may not get a new arena, there’s a possibility they could move the team. Sacramento mayor and former Suns point guard Kevin Johnson seems to agree.
"If we don't have a clear path to an arena in the not too distant future, then we as Sacramentans need to know that (the Kings) very well may look elsewhere," he said recently.
For their part, the Maloof brothers have repeatedly shot down the notion of it happening. "There's no way," Gavin Maloof told The Sacramento Bee. "We love the market. We love our fans. This is the only place we want to be."
Keep in mind that when it comes to sports, owners never openly admit that they want to get the hell out of there. They lie. Clay Bennett lied, Art Modell lied, Robert Irsay lied, George Shinn lied. They say whatever they have to so that the fans will go out and buy the season tickets, and THEN they pull the rug out from under them when the season starts to wind down. So take what the Maloofs are saying with a grain of salt. They are businessmen after all.
It’s very hard for small market teams to maintain sports franchises when the franchise isn’t doing so well -- remember a few years ago, there were rumors that the Orlando Magic were thinking about moving to Kansas City. And it would be a shame if Kings did move, because the team’s issue isn’t the stadium, it’s their management, who has not replenished that team since they made it to the conference finals in 2002. And if you think about it, there’s no better time to move a sports team than right now. Sacramento is in a recession like everybody else, and a $200 million basketball stadium isn’t going to be built any time soon. If the Maloofs had a new locale in mind, they could make the Clay Bennett arguments -- we’re losing money and there’s no stadium in sight -- to move to a new city, possibly San Jose.
It all comes down to the owners. If the Maloofs continue to lose more and more money year after year, it stands to reason that the club could be on the way out. Hopefully when they say there’s “no way” it could happen, they’re being honest. Hopefully.
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