My post yesterday about the blasé baseball fan base of the Seattle Mariners opined there seemed to be more excitement in Seattle about the possible return of an NBA franchise. That prompted an interesting note from a friend I’ve know for four decades who now lives around Sacramento, where there’s a wobbly team Seattle city fathers have been, ah, courting. With my friend’s permission, here’s what this obvious devotee of Henny Youngman wrote:
What Seattle needs to shake off the boredom is a new NBA franchise. Take the Sacramento Kings. Please! Hell, you wouldn’t even have to change the name.
At the moment the Kings are trying to hook the city into putting up $250 million for a new arena in the downtown area where there’s not even enough room to add sufficient parking. The deal is being pushed by the mayor–Kevin Johnson, himself an ex-King–and city council members are nodding their heads ominously.
The city is closing schools and can’t keep its streets in decent repair, but it needs a new arena for the next-to-last-place Kings.
To make matters worse, the team’s owners–the Maloof brothers–are already starting to weasel out of the handshake financing agreement they, the city and the NBA reached in Orlando in February.
This would all fit right in up there, right?