It looks like the Sacramento Kings are on the way to Seattle. Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! sports reported yesterday that the Maloof family is finalizing an agreement to sell the Sacramento Kings to a group that hopes to move the franchise to Seattle for the 2013-14 season. The buying group is made up of hedge fund manager Chris Hansen and Microsoft chairmen Steve Ballmer, who have been trying to get a team back to Seattle for the past two years. Seattle already has a stadium deal in place to start building a new arena to replace the Key Arena. The group will try to have the team in Seattle by next season and hope to change the name and logo back to the old Supersonics logo. All the details can be found on Wojnarowski’s original story here.
The NBA returning to Seattle makes me and most NBA fans smile. The city that gave us Gary Payton, Shawn Kemp, Detlef Schrempf, and a Sasquatch for a mascot is back and I think everyone is ready to see the team again. But, there’s always the other side. The jilted lover, Sacramento in this case, seems to be the means to an end. Someone had to be robbed to get basketball back in the Emerald City and Sac town got robbed. It is sad to see a fanbase disintegrate and probably will never get back together again. At least when Clay Bennet fleeced Seattle for the Sonics in 2008, there was still a feeling that Seattle would have a team again. Right now, NBA looks like it will never return to Sacramento and that’s a shame to lose a fanbase that is so passionate.
The memories of the late 90s-early 00s Kings will always be close to every NBA fan’s heart. Chris Webber, Vlade Divac, Doug Christie, Mike Bibby, and the rest of those teams were a big part in my personal growth as an NBA fan. The Kings were cool, fast, flashy, and everything that made basketball cool. Past that, the success of those Kings created the precedent for what NBA teams are doing now with small ball. Hedo Turkoglu, Peja Stojakovic, and Vlade were outside shooters that happened to be 6-9 or taller. Players like Chris Bosh who embrace play center but work outside the paint come from that fold. The pioneering Kings should’ve gone to the finals in 2000, when they got absolutely robbed by the referees in the Western Conference Finals, and who knows if they stay in Sactown if they win that championship.
The new Seattle Supersonics will have a lot of work to do as they try to remodel the roster. Decisions on Demarcus Cousins’s and Tyreke Evans’s future will be the first hurdle for this new ownership group. I’d think Cousins and Evans will be on the trading block now as the franchise will look for a fresh start in Seattle. The Kings might be super sellers this trade deadline with a whole bunch of expiring contracts and pieces that don’t really make sense together. But right now, I want to remember the great Kings teams and give a nod to the fanbase that once was.
*Also, remember this deal is tentative and nothing has been signed or promised just yet.
Gabe Ibrahim 