Kings’ future in Sacramento on clock
ORLANDO — Sacramento Mayor and former NBA guard Kevin Johnson passed on Sunday’s All-star Game.
He was set to meet through the night with Sacramento Kings owners Gavin, Joe and George Maloof to discuss a financing plan for a $387 million entertainment complex in hopes of keeping the franchise. Commissioner David Stern, who attended the first hour, left for the All-star Game but was scheduled to return.
“The bad news is the meeting is continuing, and the good news is that the meeting is continuing,” said Stern, who made a similar remark during the 149-day NBA lockout that delayed the 2011-12 season.
However, there’s not much time left to haggle. The city has to submit a financing plan to the league by Thursday or risk having the Maloofs relocate the franchise.
“Everybody clearly recognizes the time constraint of the March 1 deadline, and I can just say there’s a sincere effort by everybody in the room to make this happen,” Johnson says.
It was Johnson’s first face-to-face with the Maloofs to discuss the city’s financing plans. Joe and Gavin have been open to staying; George has leaned toward relocation.
“One of the most positive things for me, they said they want to be in Sacramento. That’s a question I had to ask for our community,” Johnson says. “I don’t want us just to be coming up with excuses for why this deal won’t work if somebody doesn’t want to be here.”
The plan centers around parking and how much the city will contribute by issuing a 30- to 50-year operating lease to a private vendor for a city-owned complex.
The city’s contingent thinks, if the sides are $10 million to $15 million apart, the divide can be resolved through increased sponsorships.
Stern acknowledged Saturday that getting the city to contribute more had been an issue for the Maloofs.
“Life is a negotiation,” Stern said. “We’d like the city, on behalf of the Maloofs, to make the largest possible contribution. The city would like the Maloofs to make the largest.”
The Maloofs had a deal in place to move the team south to Anaheim, Calif., before the league granted an extension to Sacramento, the nation’s 25th-largest media market, which has had the Kings since 1985.
If a deal is agreed upon by all sides, the City Council must approve the financing plan by March 6.
Stern also reaffirmed the sale of the New Orleans Hornets, league-owned for the last year, was imminent.
“We are in discussions with one group. We have another group in sort of second place, waiting to see how we do with Group 1,” Stern said. “We expect to have it finished, I’m told, in the next week or 10 days.”
He also shot down expansion. “I just don’t see a North American addition,” Stern said. “We’re at 30, and we’ve got teams that we are working hard on to keep in their cities.”
-Of the league’s new concussion policy, Stern said, “We recognize that there might be some pressure sometimes in individual circumstances to accept a player’s determination to go back into a game, saying he was ready to do it and put himself at risk, and we’re not going to do it.
“I think the teams have been very supportive of that . . . because they wanted a uniform policy, and competitively our policy is there. Everyone gets treated the same. . . . It arms the teams with the ability to say to a player who wants to make an imprudent decision, ‘You can’t do that. The league won’t let us.’ ”