Agreement for new Seattle arena reached

[Coug00]

Seattle with get an expansion team..Sacramento keeps its team..both cities thrive (despite what some have said about my city..in this thread included, but I won't go there)..I have thought it from the beginning and think this is how it will end.

The NBA got rid of the Maloof family so, everyone is happy. I think it was a fair end to this long situation.

It wasn't a shot at your city, it was a shot at your mayor. Personally, I think he is irresponsible, but I don't I have to live with him, thankfully. I would have made the same statement about Frank Chopp or Greg Nichols if they had caved to the NBA 6 years ago...and that was before the recession.

Both cities have a lot of hoops remaining to jump through to ensure the NBA is a longterm option. I hope everything works out for Sacramento.

[DonkeyJote]

Re: Agreement for new Seattle arena reached

Seattle with get an expansion team..Sacramento keeps its team..both cities thrive (despite what some have said about my city..in this thread included, but I won't go there)..I have thought it from the beginning and think this is how it will end.

The NBA got rid of the Maloof family so, everyone is happy. I think it was a fair end to this long situation.

I think you're drastically overestimating how much people don't like the Maloofs. Everything I've ever heard is that most owners don't mind them too much, but maybe I'm wrong. But I feel like Sacramento fans blame them for all their woes, when all of that team's success came in the Maloof era (.490 winning % as opposed to .370 before them, 34 playoff victories compared to 3, 5 50 win seasons with Maloofs, 0 without). I think you guys are expecting to magically get right back to where you were 10 years ago, and I don't think that's likely for a very long time, as that roster needs to essentially be purged.

[jWILL253]

Re: Agreement for new Seattle arena reached

Seattle with get an expansion team..Sacramento keeps its team..both cities thrive (despite what some have said about my city..in this thread included, but I won't go there)..I have thought it from the beginning and think this is how it will end.

The NBA got rid of the Maloof family so, everyone is happy. I think it was a fair end to this long situation.

Regardless of how you feel about it... the fact remains that Sacramento is $2 billion in the hole.

Congrats to keeping your team, but I like to call a spade, a spade; the NBA and KJ just gave your city a raw deal. I don't know where KJ is going to get a quarter of a million dollars, but you can be sure taxpayers like you are gonna feel the brunt of it. It's irresponsible...

[23]

Re: Agreement for new Seattle arena reached

Does this sound pretty accurate?

What isn't being said is the REAL reason the league and the owners hated the idea of the Kings moving to Seattle: The Seattle group was all set to build their new stadium with ZERO money from the Seattle taxpayers. The owners think this is a really bad example to set, and will make other cities say, "Hey, if Seattle can build a team without using tax money, why can't __________?"

This is a huge win for loyal Kings fans, but it has a terrible stench to it.

[OSUFan_88]

Re: Agreement for new Seattle arena reached

Explain to me why it doesn't? Teams aren't going be losing money in the deal. To the contrary, there's a chance they'll all end up making more. Adding 3% more players isn't going make anything more than a negligible impact on the talent pool.

What argument is there really against it? Putting a team in a top 15 market with a hefty expansion fee on top of it is more money and more fans.

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It has nothing to do with Seattle, or money.

The NBA talent pool is diluted enough, adding another 2 teams would be horrifying and I'm not sure I see another market the NBA should be getting into, unless they want to try another Canadian city.

[Coug00]

Does this sound pretty accurate?

It's more complicated than that. Washington state got 'raped' on public subsidies with Key Arena, Safeco, and Century Link, so a new law was voted killing public subsidies to new arenas. This was a direct slap in the face of Stern when he was trying to secure funding to a new arena with Howard Shultz (they began begging 8 years after receiving a huge subsidy for Key Arena).

Hansen & Seattle came up with a creative way around this. Seattle is putting either $150 or $200M into the construction (depends if they have a team secured from one or both leagues). Seattle is repaid on that loan through taxes earned only from the arena.

I originally thought this is why Seattle was denied. The NBA admitted it was a better option in their own BOG vote. Whispers started coming out that the other owners wanted Ballmer's money instead of letting the Maloofs having it. I think that's why there have been accelerated tv negotiations. Once that's in place, I think they vote on expansion and each owner gets roughly $20M each by adding Seattle.

[DonkeyJote]

It has nothing to do with Seattle, or money.

The NBA talent pool is diluted enough, adding another 2 teams would be horrifying and I'm not sure I see another market the NBA should be getting into, unless they want to try another Canadian city.

As for the talent pool dilution, you could make that case when there's 15 teams. I don't buy that 3% more players is going to make a difference.

And I don't think there's any reason to add a team beyond Seattle. There isn't another market out there that will add more than it'll take. And the way the NBA scheduling works, there's no need for an even number of teams.

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[12]

Re: Agreement for new Seattle arena reached

Just a quick question for my fellow Washingtonians.

Were you this vocal about financial worry (as you are now about Sacramento) in 2007-08, about worrying about our state when Bennett proposed his ridiculous arena demands?

Because, that was occurring when Washington had its biggest budget shortfall in our state's history. I am a state employee and so many people lost jobs. Prisons closed. The Department of Corrections was absolutely hammered with reductions. Prison sentences for child molesters were reduced. Inmates were let out early because the money simply wasn't there.

I mean, I'm hearing this talk that Kevin Johnson did the city a disservice by fighting for his city's team and fan base... I am just curious if you all felt the same way about the ridiculous arena proposal that Bennett put on the table back then?

Again, I think that the short memories here are baffling. Sacramento seems to be in no worse shape than we were as a state five or six years ago, and that was before a $500 million publicly funded arena proposal was on the table.

I could be way off base here, so correct me if I'm wrong... I've been a state employee for almost five years now, and the truth is, the next biennium projections look to be worse. I don't know a whole lot of places in our country that are prospering financially, so to single Sacramento out seems a bit ridiculous to me.

I think many Seattle fans are happy for the people of Sacramento, but probably more are not. Just wondering how many of you thought about how ridiculous it sounds to talk about their debt as a city when we were broke as **** back then and the only thing that would have kept the Supes here is agreeing to a ridiculous, publicly funded arena proposal that no one in their right mind would agree to.

Done babbling now, like I said, feel free to correct me if I'm wrong here because I very well might be.

[Coug00]

I don't know of a single person who was mad that we didn't publicly fund Clay's new arena, which basically let the Sonics walk away. So I don't see any hypocracy in this case.

[12]

I don't know of a single person who was mad that we didn't publicly fund Clay's new arena, which basically let the Sonics walk away. So I don't see any hypocracy in this case.

Hmm. I know plenty.

[TracerBullet]

Re: Agreement for new Seattle arena reached

Yeah, I'm in the same boat as Coug. Don't know of anyone who wanted to accept that deal. Most were mad that he wouldn't consider anything cheaper than what he offered or at least he should have paid more.

[Coug00]

Hmm. I know plenty.

Were they mad they didn't stay or mad WA didn't give Bennett half a billion dollars for an arena? If it's the latter, I question how much they truly knew about the situation.

[DonkeyJote]

I was irritated that the state legislature wouldn't talk about any financing. But everyone knew Bennett's demands were ridiculous. I remember everyone being mad that he was holding out for an arena that had zero chance of happening.

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[jWILL253]

Re: Agreement for new Seattle arena reached

Were they mad they didn't stay or mad WA didn't give Bennett half a billion dollars for an arena? If it's the latter, I question how much they truly knew about the situation.

If there's someone out there who feels that's it's feasible for any city not named New York or Los Angeles, to fund 90-100% of a $500,000,000 NBA arena, I have a new poorly-constructed 90-degree turn freeway overpass to sell him/her.

As far as the talent pool thing... the talent isn't poor because there are too many teams; the talent is poor because all the stars are are playing on the exact same teams, everything is guard-centric, and all the potential star centers and power forwards are playing football/MMA instead...

[Taer]

Re: Agreement for new Seattle arena reached

... Done babbling now, like I said, feel free to correct me if I'm wrong here because I very well might be.

My family, which has been in the Seattle area since the early 1960's has supported the football, baseball and basketball teams since their beginnings. We had season tickets for both football and basketball for years and went to several Pilot/Mariner games a year.

My family was upset with Howard Shultz's idiotic handling of selling the Sonics (ie agreeing that he could not sue if their was a problem with the sale), Clay Bennett and the OKC ownership group (who we all think was going to move the team no matter what Seattle and Seattle fans did) and David Stern (who we hold responsible for ramrodding and making sure what was best for his buddy Clay happened).

The state's budget and the handling of it is something we always criticize, no matter the year or the individual issues. From court enforced school spending to idiotic DoT spending schemes on our roads there are always controversies.

One thing we all agree on is that Kevin Johnson did the "right thing" in finding an ownership group to keep the Kings in Sacramento and that we wish the Pols here in 2008 did the same for the Sonics. We are just grateful that the settlement agreement allowed us to keep the Sonic name and history and we are glad that the Hansen group has found a way to make the new arena project work.