As those of us that are following the Sacramento Kings situation as if an NHL team coming to Seattle depended on it. News broke earlier today that Whale #1 and Pittsburg Penguins owner Ron Burkle is out of the Kings ownership group. This is shocking news with just 10 more days before the NBA Board of Governors Meeting where they will vote on the Hansen/Ballmer deal for the Sacramento Kings. Kevin Johnson had a press conference earlier to go into damage control mode. To summarize the press conference I am including a timeline of Chris Daniels tweets while he was covering the press conference.
Interesting enough, KJ himself tweeted on March 23rd, 3 days before the City Council vote on the deal that he has just closed the deal with Ron B. I was a little nervous after the New York meetings last week but now I am feeling a little bit better about Seattle’s chances. I don’t like the thought of taking a team away from somewhere but KJ should have known this was possible last year and that he should have lined up a buyer last summer. It would have been easier for his city and the people of Seattle. It was foolish to wait until Hansen had a deal in place to figure out how he would match it. A lot of people in both cities have a ton of respect for KJ but I’ve lost some. He is being careless with city money and not being transparent about the $$$ involved here. There were several Finance workshops on the Seattle deal that reviewed deep detail of Hansen’s assumptions and questioned a lot of his figures that he himself answered.
Leave a Reply