I just want to say that I am not into the concept of routing for Sacramento's arena to fail. I get that some people want to and don't enforce my moral lines on other people but that's just not the way I want to carry myself. I was comfortable with Hansen pursuing a purchase and sale while there was a team with no lease and no future. I was equally comfortable fighting for the team while he had it under contract (at which point I felt that business ethics should have directed the NBA to support the transaction they had facilitated for 2 years instead of whipsawing the deal into something else). With a building lining up I just do not support calling for it to fail, hoping it is undermined or wishing good things for stadium obstructionists. To each their own but I would not want them to do that to us had things gone differently.
I am hearing that the inflated pricing may have backfired at the end with owners not wanting to see the Maloofs get a big windfall and instead eyeballing the Ballmer money for themselves. If you assume Stern would have rigged it against us anyway and expansion comes into play then it becomes a pretty good move. If they want the money but then bicker about expansion for half a decade then it did not work out well for us.
I know that there were times when it got ugly. I said some things that I regretted and many others did also. It was ridiculously tense between Sacto fans and us but overall I want to say that everybody on both sides of the fight did extremely well. The situation was as ugly and high pressure as it gets and the fact is it could have been 10 times worse. NONE of us wanted to be in the position of taking somebody elses team but we all felt that it was the only way to go and did what we had to do. Despite the ugliness we did really well considering the extreme circumstances.
Tip of the hat Sacto. There is a part of me that is legitimately happy to see the fans win somewhere.
Rumors of expansion talk abound. I'm not putting stock in them right now. To do so would be pragmatic but completely unsubstantiated.
Have a great weekend.