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HANG TIME HEADQUARTERS — The long wait is almost over … well, we think it might be over.
We could know before nightfall where the Kings will play in the future: Sacramento or Seattle.
The NBA’s Board of Governors meet today in Dallas with an expected final vote by all 30 owners on the Maloof family’s relocation proposal that would move the Kings from Sacramento to Seattle, where a group led by hedge fund manager Chris Hansen and Microsoft executive Steve Ballmer is set to purchase the franchise for a record price.
The formal recommendation two weeks ago from the committee of owners formed to study the relocation plan was a resounding vote for the Kings remaining in Sacramento. But the Maloofs have made it clear that their desire is to go with the Seattle group’s generous reported offer of $406.25 million and flee California’s capital city.
It’s not as simple as that, of course, what with the lawyers involved and the league waist-deep in a back and forth between two cities that are both desperate to keep a team, in Sacramento’s case, and regain a team, in Seattle’s case.
That’s the short version. The long version, in complete detail courtesy my main man, TNT’s David Aldridge, who is going to be on the scene in Dallas today, is much more complicated.
The Seattle group has covered all of its bases in trying to complete this deal. They’ve reached an agreement on that secondary deal, which they want enacted in the case that the Board of Governors reject the relocation proposal today.
That deal would include the Maloofs selling 20 percent of the Kings to the Hansen-led group for $120 million, and that’s based on a franchise valuation of $600 million. The Kings would stay in Sacramento for the 2013-14 season with the Maloofs as the owners. The Hansen group is also willing (and able) to pay an unprecedented $115 million relocation fee, a payout of approximately $4 million for every owner, if the owners allow them to purchase the Kings and move them to Seattle next season, raising the stakes yet again in this hundred million dollar exhibit in the business of basketball.
Sacramento Mayor and former NBA star Kevin Johnson is using the Kings’ history in Sacramento and the NBA’s loyalty to a fan base and city that has supported the Kings fervently, through good times and bad, as his trump card in this saga. The Sacramento group does not seem at all interested in some bidding war for the franchise that’s made it’s home there for last three decades.
Sort through the minutiae as best you can, but the bottom line is one set of fans will wake up tomorrow relieved that they finally have some answers about their team while another group of fans will wake up to the nightmare that their team is either leaving or not coming to town.
Again, the long wait is almost over … we think!