Sacramento Kings Moving: Why I Don't Understand Southern California at All

Rochester, to Cincinnati, to Kansas City, to Sacramento and now, the Kings are looking to move once again. 

The NBA? Seems to me the NBA figure heads agree with the move, extending the moving deadline for the Kings to April 18th.

The ideal move is to Anaheim, California, to become the third team in the southern California area. The owners of the Kings, the Maloofs, probably would have preferred Las Vegas, but Anaheim was already ready for the power move. 

However, there are some things I don’t understand.

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For starters, why become the third best team in the So-Cal area? With the Los Angeles Lakers winning titles and contending for the foreseeable future, along with the Clippers, the team that now owns the most exciting player in Blake Griffin, should  be controlling all the money in that area.

The Kings do have good, interesting players (Tyreke Evans and DeMarcus Cousins), but they are now 15-44 and destined for another lottery night. If the Kings become an Oklahoma City Thunder-like team on the cusp of success with young players that fans can get behind, then I can see this being a good move. Only time will tell.

This doesn’t help the Kings on TV either. The  Lakers have agreed to a new television deal. The deal, worth $1.3 billion, will have all Laker games televised on Time Warner Cable.

You know what that means? Lakers fans in southern California who cannot go to Laker games, will be able to view EVERY game on TV.

How does this help the Kings in the move? Well, it doesn’t. Just another reason this move makes almost no sense. Thinking about it, when the Lakers aren’t playing, would you rather watch the Kings or the Clippers? That’s what I thought. Blake Griffin wins 10 out of 10 times.

The biggest gaff for me: Why Anaheim? No disrespect to the Anaheim region, but you couldn’t move somewhere else? For a franchise that’s moved four times in 62 seasons (not counting the fact the Kings split home games in Omaha and Kansas City in the 70′s. five different homes in 62 seasons), you couldn’t find somewhere to go that’s a little more…undiscovered?

Off the top of my head, Seattle, Vancouver and Louisville would have been better situations for the Kings. Here’s why:

Seattle- The Seattle/Washington area is still filled with scorn watching their former team have success. It was a rebuild to get out. The issue with Seattle is the fact they didn’t want to renovate the arena. It would have been a long shot for the Kings to land in Seattle, but I could have seen someone looking at a team with a high draft pick coming in the next season, two solid, young players and a potential lockout, which would allow you to get revenue to renovate could have been an ideal situation for Seattle.

Vancouver- David Stern considered it his “biggest mistake” and wished the current Memphis Grizzlies franchise remained in Vancouver. The idea of moving the NBA back to Vancouver, with an already built roster and guys who can succeed down the road and potential of a playoff team could have been a good selling point for the Vancouver area. If you think about it, the fact Steve Francis reacted the way he did, along with terrible draft picks ( 1995: Reeves over Damon Stoudemire, 1996: Abdur-Rahim over Ray Allen, Stephon Marbary and Kobe Bryant, 1997: Antonio Daniels over Tracy McGrady) really killed the franchise from the start.

Louisville- I support the NBA moving a franchise to Louisville, mainly because the ABA had success there and the state of Kentucky is a strong basketball state. While the NBA team would have issues playing in the new KFC Yum! Center ( The university of Louisville has clauses which could cut any team from playing there), there’s Freedom Hall available, which has decades of history.