Comments on: Sacramento jumps the shark on arena deal

By: Hondo

Hondo — Mon, 25 Mar 2013 17:43:03 +0000

Our memories are short. If I remember, Stockton went bankrupt, partly because it built a sports arena it couldn’t support in the best of times.
Like i said before, the NFL has kept LA,one of the most populated metropolitian places on earth, from getting a team so it could extort arenas from all the smaller market cities in the league. Why has San Diego had a team forever. Why haven’t the Rams been replaced. St. Louis is a fraction of the market that LA is. Cleveland and Denver, teams who have sold out their games for decades, were told they weren’t ‘supporting’ their teams enough. That they had to build a new arena or else. Cleveland’s owner actually left.
Only the largest cities can support, and afford to build these arenas. In baseball, the NY Yankees support several other teams that just can’t compete enough to stay afloat. Teams like Pittsburgh, and Kansas City. Those teams will never win the world series because their cities can’t support a payroll big enough to compete with the Yanks and Red Sox nation.
When did you have any small market team win the NBA championships. Decades ago, Seattle won as did the Warriors. But count up the Championships of LA, Boston, Chicago, Miami. I’m stunned that NY has only won a couple. Milwaukee only won because they drafted Kareem, then he left for LA. They, like Sac town and Portland and Utah and Denver will never win anything.
Green Bay doesn’t count. Those cheese heads are off their heads. But most of their championships occurred before free agency, like the Steelers. But the Packers and the Steelers are the exception, rather than the rule.
Sac town will never win an NBA championship, nor will they be able to support an NBA team with the the collapse of their economy.
Sac town should be happy to get a minor league baseball team. Minor league baseball, as displayed in St Paul Mn, is one of the most affordable and enjoyable forms of pro sport. As long as you don’t try to build and finance a gigantic stadium. The Denver Bears played in old Mile High stadium when I lived there and for 5 bucks I could go to a pro ball game and eat popcorn and a hotdog with a beer for less than 20 bucks. Can’t do that any more.
Hondo……

By: boethius

boethius — Mon, 25 Mar 2013 06:59:26 +0000

Your analysis is 100% spot-on. If I see KJ fist-pump in celebration that Sacramento is “keeping” the Kings (again – we all remember his faux-celebration with the Maloofs on center court) I may have to throw up. A downtown arena is a massive boondogle especially given they’ve had the perfect site already for over 20 years, one that will be vastly less expensive to upgrade than build an entirely new arena in a terrible part of town.

Sacramento is hardly the first city to mortgage its future for a professional sports team and I seriously doubt it will be the last, however KJ is utterly shameless in how willing he seems to be put the cow town out to pasture for the sake of a stupid basketball team. More debt? Yay! With Obama’s epic, aggressive debt-seeking model for running governments, KJ’s own ambitions hardly seem unique.

Whatever happened to fiscal conservatism? Belt-tightening? Cutting services, jobs, agencies, departments, and expenses to the bone: You know, like real businesses and individuals do when they’re not profitable?

I sincerely hope he fails, the Maloofs and the Kings leave town permanently, and that the City follows a path of extreme fiscal conservatism so Sacramento can grow the proper way.

By: Sacramento jumps the shark on arena deal | FlashReport

Sacramento jumps the shark on arena deal | FlashReport — Mon, 25 Mar 2013 03:10:12 +0000

[…] cross posted at CalWatchdog […]

By: Left of Rio Linda

Left of Rio Linda — Mon, 25 Mar 2013 03:00:51 +0000

I used to pull this strategy when I was a kid, make a commitment to do something or go somewhere without parents permission and then try to get them to go along by saying “I already said I would” to extort permission after the fact. Never worked.