Kevin Johnson, Maloof Brothers Release Statements After Kings Arena Talks Break Down

What Johnson had to say was pretty brutal:

Here’s the entirety of Johnson’s statement, as tweeted by Berger:

Wish I had better news. I came to New York to see if the Maloof family would honor their commitment. They are now saying they don’t want to do the deal, which is essentially saying they don’t want to be in Sacramento. I think Sacramento deserves a partner that would honor the commitment. I am still baffled to say the least how we got here. Whether the Maloofs have the financial resources or not, I don’t know. We set out on a journey a year ago where we said as a city that we would put together a viable financial plan to keep the team. Any owner would jump or do backflips for what we were able to do in a brief period of time. They said they wanted a brand new facility. They said they want to be the talk of the town. We as a city are not interested in doing that. We had a win-win-win. If someone doesn’t want to honor that agreement and partnership, we as a community have to say “No, thank you.” For us, a deal’s a deal. This is about trust and accountability from my standpoint. I want Sacramento to remain an NBA city... but I don’t want our city to lose leverage and I don’t want our city to be held hostage...the only ones who questioned the viability of the project was the Kings. It felt like they were coming up with reason not to do the deal. That’s what it felt like to me... I think we should support our team for the next couple of weeks... but we need to think about what our options might be... Is a deal dead, as we know it? Absolutely.

The Maloofs were more concise:

We are committed to remaining the Sacramento Kings. At the conclusion of a meeting this afternoon with Mayor Johnson he advised us there was nothing to be gained by continued discussions at this time.

Hopefully the sides can sort their differences out for the fans in Sacramento.

For more on the Kings, visit Sactown Royalty.