By Satbir Singh
It’s a rough day to be a basketball fan in Seattle, but a great day for the city of Sacramento. The NBA Relocation Committee has voted not to allow the Kings to move to Seattle. A bidding war has gone on for quite a while, and a few months ago a Seattle team looked like a for sure go, but surprisingly Sacramento continued to match Seattle’s offer to purchase the Kings.
The NBA committee consisted of 12 owners, who were: Clay Bennett (Oklahoma City), James Dolan (New York), Wyc Grousbeck (Boston), Peter Holt (San Antonio), Herb Simon (Indiana), Larry Tanenbaum (Toronto), Glen Taylor (Minnesota), Ted Leonsis (Washington), Micky Arison (Miami), Jeanie Buss (Los Angeles Lakers), Robert Sarver (Phoenix), and Greg Miller (Utah).
All owners will vote in the week of May 13th to make the decision official, and anything’s possible from now to then, but expect the vote then to fall the same way the vote did on Monday afternoon.
For Sacramento, in no way did they deserve to lose the Kings, because we know what the basketball team means to that city when they have a winner. However, Sacramento’s attendance this past season ranked last in the NBA at 13,749. It’s fair enough to say that Sacramento still deserves a team, and worked greatly to make sure they didn’t lose to the Seattle ownership bidding for the Kings. The city of Sacramento will have to give a lot of credit to Mayor Kevin Johnson, who put in a lot of work to keep the team in Sacramento.
Seattle got the bad end of the stick, but everyone around the NBA agrees that this city deserves a team, and no doubt will receive one in the future. It just wasn’t meant to be this time around. Seattle had a great fan base before their original team moved to Oklahoma City. Since that relocation it’s just been a wait and see for Seattle for when they do get another chance at a team. Unfortunately, it wasn’t this time around.
One city was going to lose out, but neither deserves to be without a team.
Sports Minded 