goldman: i hear ya. im gonna be stoked to see this if i could afford tickets. and nhl too.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qcm5o8WrT…

oh shit!!, i just saw sleepy sam, go sonics!

They ought to just change the name of Pioneer Square to Arenaville.

I don't blame Kevin Johnson. He's doing his due diligence here. And it seems like he's been working long and hard to keep his team in town, despite having some untrustworthy and recalcitrant partners in the Maloofs, the current owners.

It's times like this I wish Intrade were still active so I could get an idea what the conventional wisdom is on which way this goes. My gut tells me Sacto's bid is too little, too late.

P.S. Maybe we can just settle this with a game of three-on-three. Johnson, Burkle, Mastrov vs. McGinn, Hansen, Ballmer. OK, maybe not a fair fight considering one of these guys in a former NBA star.

Remember when we almost got their police chief? *sigh*

Regardless of how good/bad these arena deals are, it sure would have been nice to have a mayor with a spine from 2006-2008 (like KJ has shown).

So Goldy is mad because Sacramento out-corrupted Seattle? Pathetic.

It'd never occur to note that the reason Seattle's deal is so much better (than it might've been, and ended up looking much more like Sacramento's does now) is exactly because the Seattle city council intervened. but TheStranger cannot ever print: "Thank you City Council. You've saved us from the machinations of 'the mayor de Holden'"

I'm just waiting for an explanation of how one city's open bidding for an indebted team from a microscopic market constitutes "stealing." I don't give a shit what happens to the Kings.

"...it's not in the NBA's interest to establish a precedent in which owners extort less out of taxpayers than they currently do."

Exactly.

Theophrastus @8, absolutely, let's not give Mike McGinn any credit whatsoever for negotiating what was probably the most favorable stadium/arena deal in recent North American professional sports history. Let's only give credit to the City Council for extracting even more concessions.

Let's face it, most of our brains simply don't have the capacity to process the idea that Mayor McGinn did something good.

Goldy, you mad bro?

@8 The broad terms of the deal that I lay out in this post were the broad terms of the deal initially negotiated by McGinn. Further concessions and guarantees were later negotiated by the council. No doubt the deal got better for taxpayers. But it is largely the same deal.

@12 "Mad" angry, or "mad" crazy? Not sure how @7 infers the former.

Goldy, please wipe Chris Hansen's jism from your chin.

Sacramento has been working this out for over two years, so the premise of this article is just as so many others.....uninformed

The Author is uninformed like so many others, so his premise gores out the window,
Sac Council has been on this for more than 2 years the framework of a deal was vetted long ago

@16 @17 Welcome to Slog, Harry. Nice technique. Restate the premise as something it's not, and then refute your newly manufactured premise rather than the real one (which is clearly stated in the headline.) Classic trolling maneuver, and well executed.

Classic trolling maneuver, and well executed

How Goldy defines "troll."

http://tinyurl.com/goldytroll

Read what finacial trouble Sacramento is in. There is talk of no longer paying for breakfast for needy children. They may lose 20,000 militay jobs from the sequester, and it goes on...

#20, so what? The year after one of those new palaces opened here, Seattle closed schools on Fridays for lack of money. Sports always trumps everything else.

#20 and #21

Both of you are off since schools are primarily funded by property taxes which are a different pot of money that what would fund both cities' proposed arenas. In addition schools are not the responsibility of the mayor or city council though interestingly Kevin Johnson is married to so-called education reformer Michelle Rhee.

The real problem for Sacramento it seems is that the city is already $2 billion in debt.

Seattle closed schools on Fridays. Wow, that's a stretcher even for Slog. Where do you people come up with this shit?

@22, actually, property taxes do pay Hansen's arena bonds and the non-city owned property in the Sac deal will be part of the payback to Sacramento from the investors. Hansen's property tax bill will be covered by the rest of the city/county's property tax payers but it does get pulled out of the general fund and used to pay $1M + in arena bonds. It's in the chart at the bottom of http://clerk.ci.seattle.wa.us/~public/fn…

Sacramento has about $823 M in debt (and a bunch of underfunded benefits) http://www.sacramentopress.com/headline/…
Seattle has about $1,019 M in debt and other obligations (and who knows how underfunded the city pensions are.... )
http://clerk.seattle.gov/~public/meeting…

I think the NBA will choose to support the Sacramento proposal. They'll say it is to keep a franchise at it's proper location, reward the City and the Mayor for their efforts, blah blah blah, but in reality, there is much leverage to be held by each of the other franchises in their efforts to extort new deals when necessary if there is the specter of Seattle and its standing arena deal waiting patiently on the horizon.

You have to realize that the Sac deal is very similar to a deal that was reached with the Maloofs one year ago. The council has known that the deal will use parking money etc. as a basis for the subsidy. This isn't a "never before seen" concept. The council approved the Maloof term sheet, that's why this one will hold less sticker shock.

The Kings are staying. Seattle will get an expansion team down the road. That is the word. Have a nice day Goldy. And what #15 said.

Seattle closed schools on Fridays. Wow, that's a stretcher even for Slog. Where do you people come up with this shit?

From my nieces, who were furloughed on Fridays.

Both of you are off since schools are primarily funded by property taxes which are a different pot of money that what would fund both cities' proposed arenas.

Ever since the sports mafia raided the "education lottery," anyway.

No one is "stealing" any teams. These are private companies that, like any other private company, move if they get a better deal.

I can hardly wait for Chris Hansen's first-quarter financial report. He got his clock cleaned in the fourth quarter when his Apple shares started their collapse. When that "$2.5 billion hedge fund" unravels, the fools who latched onto the guy are going to be mighty embarrassed. Or maybe not. The powers that be in this city never seem to get embarrassed by anything.

The Hansen/Ballmer group has a purchase and sale agreement in hand with the current owners, the Maloofs. Every NBA owner stands to make a tidy sum on the sale when franchise fees and relocation fees are distributed. As well, owners, as a group, are reluctant to void such a sale because it diminishes their own franchise value and ability to profit from a future sale of their own franchise.

The Kings turning into the Sonics is essentially a done deal.

It's amazing the shenanigans governments are willing to pull to get stuff like this. The NBA must laugh its ass off. Taking the Sonics to Oklahoma, the NBA must have known sooner or later we'd offer a sweet deal to get them back. Now they're playing us against Sacramento. So we'll snag their team and in a few years Sacramento will really bend over and hand the NBA some corporate welfare. But I get it, there's a bunch of sports nuts in these towns. It's just too bad they're not environmental nuts, or anti homeless nuts, education nuts, or anti Monsanto nuts, or anti war nuts, or help the poor nuts. Nope, just lots of sports nuts, who probably haven't touched a basketball themselves in years. Amazing what we can accomplish putting our minds to watching grown men toss balls into baskets. Imagine what we could accomplish if we put that much political effort into solving problems that actually mattered.

Now they're playing us against Sacramento. So we'll snag their team and in a few years Sacramento will really bend over and hand the NBA some corporate welfare.

"Us" and "we." You sports fans are such pathetic suckers.

One of these days, Goldy has to explain the mystical bonds between Jews and basketball.