City Council Vote On Sacramento Arena Delayed To March 6

We’ve heard for awhile now from the local press about $200 million from parking and $130 million in private money in the form of $50 million from AEG around $80 million from the Maloofs/NBA.

And KJ has even said publicly that AEG would operate the ESC so there has to be some beginning of an agreement there at the very least. As for the parking, assuming the CIty already figured out the legality of leasing the parking meters (big if but they must feel comfortable thinking they can use the meter revenues to cover the $52 million in bond payments) it seems like the City is still struggling to come up with the $9 million hole in the general fund given the weird weekend phone poll.

And now here we are with the city doing everything they could get done and leading right up to the deadline still with funding issues to figure out outside of the $330 million or so they were planning to get from AEG/NBA/Kings/Parking and needing to hit around that mark and now we are left to wonder whether Stern is going to hold KJ over the barrel? Bullshit. Hopefully Stern corrects his remarks or backs off on this because he runs the risk of turning this into a mess pretty quick.

There is nothing out there right now to indicate that the parking deal has hit a snag other than the legality of leasing the parking meters.

And now Stern pulls the “their money is our money” bullshit? Wow, talk about “Hey, I know a way to completely destroy momentum as quickly as possible!” It wasn’t even in the context of revenue sharing yet, just putting up money to build the thing and yes I know they are tied together but that’s a pretty ballsy statement.

It seems quite clear that locally we are depending on around $80 million in total contributions from NBA/Maloofs which is a fantastic deal for the Kings. I don’t think Stern understands that they can lose the vote if he

Those numbers have been public for a long while and KJ has been talking to the league a lot. KJ appears to have the parking numbers lined up. KJ got AEG lined up. I don’t know if KJ can find a deal to firmly replace the 9 million that will get 5 votes, but I’ll bet he can. Now the NBA has the leverage and they are pulling hard on a deal that’s held together with tape and paper clips.

They city has done everything they can simply to make a deal. Not to make the best deal they can try to make, just make a deal. The NBA and Maloofs already have a very good deal on the table. On Thursday, it appeared we had 5-6 yes votes.

I think Stern has taken this from 70-30 to 50-50 just to try to get another 5-8 million for two dummies that have almost killed basketball in this city. That’s just by pissing people off and pushing back KJ’s deadline. And if he really plays hardball, he could misread the cards and kill the deal.

At this point, if the deal fails. A lot of the blood is on Stern. Yes, the city botched this for a decade. But they were ready to make a a great deal, and the numbers and timeline were out there for months. And then 7 days before the deadline, Stern is making public comments that while “substaintial,” he’s not going to hit KJ’s number.

Yes, it’s business and posturing. But this deal was only going to get done if everybody was collaberative and rushed. And now Stern is stalling and playing hard ball … because it’s not like he had any problems with that in 2011.

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