L.O. is my home town. The fact that the lake (canal) was dug by Chinese laborers makes it twice as cool!
Below is the message by Chris Hansen...sounds like he's not giving up. Gotta give it to the guy, he's a fighter.... To the Sonics Faithful While we are disappointed with the relocation committee’s recommendation, we just wanted to let you all know that we remain fully committed to seeing this transaction through. As you are all well aware, we have a binding transaction to purchase the Kings for what would be a record price for an NBA franchise, have one of the best ownership groups ever assembled to purchase a professional sports team in the US, have clearly demonstrated that we have a much more solid Arena plan, have offered a much higher price than the yet to be finalized Sacramento Group, and have placed all of the funds to close the transaction into escrow. As such, we plan to unequivocally state our case for both relocation and our plan to move forward with the transaction to the league and owners at the upcoming Board of Governor’s Meeting in Mid-May. When we started this process everyone thought it was impossible. While this represents yet another obstacle to achieving our goal, I just wanted to reassure all of you that we have numerous options at our disposal and have absolutely no plans to give up. Impossible is nothing but a state of mind. “Impossible is just a big word thrown around by small men who find it easier to live in the world they've been given than to explore the power they have to change it. Impossible is not a fact. It's an opinion. Impossible is not a declaration. It's a dare. Impossible is potential. Impossible is temporary. Impossible is nothing.” ―Muhammad Ali —Chris Hansen
Sounds like he is considering litigation. That would be pretty epic. The NBA said play nice with Bennett and you will get a team. Well, they didn't. I think litigation would be pretty entertaining. The NBA has a lot more to lose than Hansen. Say bye to the salary cap if Hansen wins.
I have never seen this happen, explain. You sound delusional, I can prove it just edit one of your posts and see when my quote of your post "changes". Nice try.
Well this is just not true, come on man. Without the Kings (which many people don't like), people will just spend their money elsewhere. Building a stadium takes business away from local vendors and creates various negative externalities. There's only X amount of dollars to spend on entertainment, this is simply a transfer payment.
Couldn't you just have cited the study you're talking about instead of insisting that I stop using plain English and resort to economics jargon? All those words and back and forth could have been reduced to the quote you have above. In Seattle's case, the bulk of the public financing commitment comes from Seattle and then, to a lesser extent, from King County. In other words, people from outside the area will be attracted to Seattle because of the arena and will come spend money. Edmonds, Everett, Tacoma, Puyallup, Bainbridge, Bremerton are all outside of King County and you can bet fans will come to the arena in significant numbers. The King County contribution is lower and at some point its portion will be paid off so that fans from Kirkland, Bellevue, Issaquah, Renton, Kent, etc. will be attracted to Seattle to spend their money.
Well it isn't my fault you keep trying to dodge my questions. I've asked you a serious of questions you have not even attempted to respond. All that matters to me is the economics jargon, the Socialist Calculation Problem has not been addressed. Source? Not really, I'll give you the spoiler alert. And taxpayers. Yes your point being? I don't have to "bet" on anything, show me the econometric data supporting your assertion. What is "cost"? What is the "cost" of the arena? I'll throw you this curveball to mix things up, what is the interest rate on the loan?
This could get pretty interesting. One of the morning talk radio guys talked with Balmer yesterday right after the announcement and he got the sense that Balmer was more mad than sad. In particular, Balmer didn't know what more they could do - their ownership group, market, arena deal all were superior to Sac and it was finalized in definitive agreements. If that's true and the Hansen group doesn't see a path forward, they might well play hard ball. I'm no anti-trust lawyer, but I could see claims made around that as well as tortious interference (someone disrupts the ability of a party to perform their obligations under a contract). I'd absolutely love it if they'd go right after it and make Stern's life miserable.
Dude, I'm out. Not up for playing your game. You keep asking me to answer your questions and I'm not in to your socratic method game. The actual drama being played out between the NBA, Sacramento and Seattle is far more interesting.
