August 06, 2004

Kings balk at arena cap

The Sacramento city council voted last night to put a funding plan for a new Kings arena on the March 2005 ballot - and the Kings promptly turned it down. Upset that the council had capped the public's share of costs at $175 million, Kings president John Thomas walked out of the council meeting, handing out a pre-written statement that "after four years of exhaustive work on this, it is now apparent that neither the city nor our business can produce the revenues necessary to make that dream come true."

Kings owners Joe and Gavin Maloof have repeated said they're not interested in threatening to leave town if a new arena isn't built - the team is actually the 12th most valuable in the NBA, despite playing in one of its smaller markets - instead leaving that to arena booster Tony Giannoni, who told the Sacramento Bee: "Without a new facility, the Kings can't stay in this community for more than the next five or six years." With Kansas City set to build a new arena without a team to play in it, it'd be pretty ironic if the Kings threatened to go back to its old home twenty years after skipping town.