The dysfunction of the Kings is relevant to all people in Sacramento, whether they follow NBA basketball or not.
Some may not see the connection between themselves and a franchise that has missed the playoffs for 15 consecutive seasons, while at the same time hiring and firing a carousel of coaches and executives.
On Tuesday, the Kings announced they were bringing back embattled coach Luke Walton despite the protests of some fans.
What a mess.
But this is not just a sports story. This is a Sacramento story.
It starts with the $273 million investment the City of Sacramento made in the construction of Golden 1 Center, the home of the Kings. That represented about half the costs of the $558 million arena. The city borrowed the money in 2015 and that civic bet was backed by city parking revenues.
We all know what happened next. COVID-19 shut Sacramento down, and city parking revenues have taken a beating. As The Sacramento Bee reported recently, the city owes $18.4 million annually on the arena. City parking revenues were budgeted to cover $5.3 million of that cost, but they may fall short.
The Kings are covering $7.7 million of that debt this year and their annual contributions will go up substantially in the years to come. But for now, if the parking money isn’t there, the city may have to look to its general fund to cover its arena debts. Sacramento officials tell me they think the city can manage its arena debt without dipping into the general fund, but we’ll see.
Can you imagine if that happened? Downtown is still recovering from a year of COVID, protests, vandalism and a proliferation of homeless people living and sleeping on city streets. Sacramento has big priorities that speak directly to the dire need of people who are suffering and need help.
The fact that we’re having this conversation proves that Sacramento isn’t just invested emotionally with the Kings and their on-court success. The city’s budget could take a big hit to pay for their state-of-the-art arena.
This would be a problem even if the Kings were an NBA title contender. It’s miserable, galling and infuriating that it could happen when the Kings are the definition of futility in the NBA.
COVID-19 and its financial impact on the Sacramento community, and the funding stream of Golden 1 Center, is not the fault of principal owner Vivek Ranadivé.
But he has direct culpability for eight straight losing seasons since he took ownership of the Kings.
Ranadivé is the one who fired coach Michael Malone when Malone had the Kings going in the right direction. Malone’s Denver Nuggets are now a regular playoff contender while the Kings go fishing each summer.
Ranadivé is the one who signed former GM Vlade Divac to a four-year deal last year and then changed his mind only months later, undermining Divac to the point where the big man left town.
Is current Kings GM Monte McNair the next passenger who wants to get off this crazy train? We’ll find out this summer, when many critical decisions have to be made by the Kings’ brain trust.
If the city has to cut services to pay for the Kings home, only to see poor organizational choices lead to a record 16th straight non-playoff season, Sacramento would be justified in feeling swindled.
Sacramento didn’t sign up for this. Sacramento doesn’t deserve this. Sacramento should be getting a much better return on its investment than this.
The sales pitch to fund Golden 1 Center was sold to Sacramento as being “bigger than basketball.”
That could prove to be true in the worst way possible.
