Mayor: Sacramento facing last shot to keep team

SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- Kevin Johnson, the mayor of an NBA-mad
city about to lose its team, was privately targeting a replacement team
last season for Sacramento, even identifying top candidates: the
Hornets, the Hawks, the Pistons, all vulnerable, he thought, to be
looted in the same way Anaheim was about to grab the Kings.

Johnson has been a realist throughout his city's bid to retain the
Kings, a role that has served him as well as the role of head
cheerleader. He plotted the response strike last spring. He declared
the decades-long romance between the team and the town all but over in
the closing days of the regular season. (The Kings had, in fact, decided
to leave. Only the inability of Anaheim to close the deal kept the
team in Northern California for next season and provided one final
chance to find funding for a new arena.)


And now Johnson knows this: that if the Kings leave after this one
final push, the NBA probably isn't returning, the way it went back to
Charlotte and could still be lured back to Seattle.


The mayor saying that this is Sacramento's last stand is not shocking.
What is interesting is that the message comes from the biggest glass
offices at league HQ, too, Johnson told NBA.com.

"I'm going to say that commissioner (David) Stern has told me in no
uncertain terms," Johnson said, "that it would be very difficult --
'Your best bet is to try to figure out how to make it happen while you
have 'em here, and that's building a facility. If you don't have a
facility, your chances of keeping or getting a team are going to be nil
to none.' "

Nil to none. Somewhere between zero and zero.


That means a new tact going forward: No backup plan. No fresh attempt
to get the Maloof family to sell to billionaire political power player
Ron Burkle, or anyone else dripping money. No updated try at marrying
an interested party with the Hornets or any other team.


So it's time for Johnson and the Maloofs to mend fences now that they
need each other all over again. It's the Kings or nothing here, and
it's going down as Sacramento against itself.

If the money comes in this economy, from private funding and public
financing, if about a decade's worth of setbacks ranging from the
debated location of an arena to the obvious question of exactly what
part of the sky hundreds of millions of dollars will be falling from
are settled, the franchise stays, just as Stern has wanted all along.

Same owners, same team.


"Scenario 1," Johnson called it. "We build a facility, Kings stay, owners stay."


There is no other alternative. There is no more time. Burkle or Larry
Ellison can want to buy a team all they want, but the Maloofs have
steadfastly demonstrated this one is not for sale. There are no more
franchises to approach about playing in a new building in a few years.
The NBA has grown more hesitant about going into a small market with
little prominent corporate support.


"No," Johnson said in a city hall interview at almost the exact moment
the league released the 2011-12 schedule. "There's not a backup plan
because we control our own destiny. In those other scenarios (last
season), the Kings were making a choice and we had to react to what
they did. Right now, if we build it, then they will stay here. If we
can't figure out a way to build it, they're going to potentially leave
and I will be back in trying to figure it out. But I've still got to
build a facility or nobody's going to come anyway."


The Sacramento native and former Suns All-Star point guard -- who
braced people for the Kings' departure and who was kept out of the loop
on plans by the Maloofs -- now says the city has an "excellent" chance
to keep its only major-league franchise. That is overly optimistic --
an obscene amount of money has to suddenly appear when it hasn't before
-- but there is a good chance the team stays. Coming so close to
losing it a few months ago created a scared-straight effect. Fans and
civic and business leaders were marshaled into action, putting immense
pressure on local government to find a solution.


These definitely are not the dark days of late in the regular season anymore. There is new momentum to get an arena deal done.


But Johnson and the people of Sacramento have to act now. Because it's
more clear than ever that if they can't somehow keep the Kings, the
chances of Sacramento ever getting another NBA team lie somewhere
between nil and none.