Tag Archives: chris hansen

News, Sports

Seattle to NBA: Do We Get Our Sonics Back or Not?

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Future Sonics owner (knock on wood) Chris Hansen, speaking to the media yesterday in NYC

The city officials and NBA-owner-wannabes of Seattle and Sacramento presented the merits of their respective fan bases and arena deals to league owners Wednesday in New York City, and what have we learned? Nothing. In fact, we actually know less.

Here were the facts heading into Wednesday:

  1. Chris Hansen and his group of Seattle investors have purchased the Sacramento Kings, pending NBA approval.
  2. Leading Sacramentonianites will be permitted to lobby NBA owners to cancel Hansen’s purchase agreement, and are touting an alternate bid for a new arena in Sacramento.
  3. NBA owners will vote on whether to approve Hansen as an owner—and his plan to relocate the Kings to Seattle—at their April 18-19 Board of Governors meeting.

The cities made their pitches in two two-hour blocks at the St. Regis Hotel. The principals, including NBA commissioner David Stern, then met with the media. And the only new information conveyed was that we can scratch #3 off our facts list. Stern now says that the question “Seattle or Sacramento?”—an easy decision for tourists—may be too complex for NBA owners to answer by April 19.

Stern indicated that the owners are specifically interested in the construction timelines for the new arenas that have been proposed in each city, and any potential political and regulatory obstacles. The league presumably also wants to assay the economic strength of the two markets, potential fan and corporate support, and the personalities of the future owners. Which of these factors is most important? Which presentation was best? No one who matters is saying.

Sure, you can find plenty of speculation and opinion. The Sacto group “offered the most intriguing sales pitch of the day,” writes Art Thiel of SportspressNW. “If I was confident going in, I am even more confident now,” King County Executive Dow Constantine told Bob Condotta of the Seattle Times.

Hansen and Steve Ballmer made Seattle’s presentation, with support from Mayor Mike McGinn, Constantine, and current Kings owner George Maloof, who told owners he wants the Hansen deal approved. From Hansen’s four-minute press conference, you can sketch how the Seattle group tried to differentiate their bid from the Sacramento one. “We’ve been working on this for 883 days,” Hansen told the media. (Sacramento lead bidder Vivek Ranadive got involved just 2 weeks ago.) Hansen: “Seattle is doing very well economically, we’ve got the right kind of industries growing.” (Sacramento’s major industry is the state government of California.)

But it’s all conjecture. As former St. Regis resident Ernest Hemingway once said: “Never confuse movement with action.”

The biggest question remains unanswered: If the NBA cancels Hansen’s purchase agreement, by what mechanism would the league force the current owners to sell to the Sacramento group? As I have written here before, this fact—that a purchase agreement has been signed, that the Kings are not a beef cattle up for auction—is the single strongest factor in the Seattle group’s favor. KCPQ’s Aaron Levine tried to get clarity on the issue by asking Stern if the fact that a purchase agreement has been signed pushes the needle Seattle’s way. Stern refused to answer.

So, after a hotly-anticipated day yielded nothing, we count down until…well, who knows? The Sonics’ move to Oklahoma City for the 2008-09 season was not official until July 2, 2008, when Clay Bennett’s ownership group reached agreement to buy out the final two years of the KeyArena lease. If you’re wondering how long the NBA could let this drag on, the answer would seem to be at least another three months.

My recommendation is this: Ignore all of it—yes, wipe this meandering article from your mind MIB-style—until the NBA owners announce their decision. Nothing you learn between now and then will be authoritative, and nothing you can do between now and then will be influential. Meantime, enjoy this exclusive video I obtained from highly-placed league sources showing Steve Ballmer’s part of the presentation.

News, Sports

NBA in Seattle Inches Closer as League Gets Relocation Application

sonicsnodderAt a news conference in Minneapolis yesterday, NBA commissioner David Stern announced that the Sacramento franchise has applied to move to Seattle and play this fall in KeyArena.

This is step two of a process that will end in 70 days — on April 18 (Mark your calendars!) when NBA owners will vote on the proposed sale and move. Stern said that he has combined the vote on the sale and move, even though the sale requires a 3/4-majority, and the move only a 1/2-majority. Which makes sense — with the new owners wanting to move the team to Seattle, purchasing authority without moving authority would make no sense, and vice versa.

Stern clarified the nature of the pitch Sacramento mayor Kevin Johnson will make before the Board: He will be able to suggest an “alternate plan,” and the Board will decide the issue on the merits of the two plans. If you were wondering why Chris Hansen wanted city and county backing of his proposed arena before going after a team, this is why — so he can demonstrate the strong probability that he will indeed be able to build a new arena in Seattle, just as Sacramento promises the same.

The drawback to Johnson’s plan is that the Hansen/Ballmer group already has a purchase agreement in hand. As Stern says, Johnson’s as-yet-unnamed investor group would have to “buy the team in Sacramento.” How they’ll do that remains unclear. Stern says the owners face “difficult decisions.” As previously discussed, the sale and move is considered very likely to be approved.

Here is the full transcript of David Stern’s comments on the move — or you can watch them yourself on this video from KING 5. For the latest news on the Sonics move and the proposed new arena, I strongly recommend following KING 5’s Chris Daniels on Twitter @Daniels5.

The latest with the Seattle/Sacramento situation is that have had submitted a signed agreement for the team to be sold to a very strong group from Seattle. We have had an application to have the team moved from Sacramento to Seattle. I have convened the appropriate committees and told them that as we get more information and more data, we will be sending the information to them because they’ll have to make a recommendation to the Board (of Governors), which will likely decide the issue both as to the sale and move in April at our board meeting. And the mayor of Sacramento has advised that he will be back to us soon with a proposal from a group to buy the team in Sacramento and build a building in Sacramento with a substantial subsidy from the City of Sacramento. And so we’re abiding events. The Seattle application is to play in KeyArena, which, we’d be there for two years, possibly three. There is no final approval with respect to a new building in Seattle, but events are well underway, moving in that direction. So they don’t currently have a building, but they propose to improve Key as a temporary facility while one is being built. And my guess is — it’s likely — that the mayor of Sacramento will appear before the Board with an alternate plan. And that’s why we have a Board of Governors: To make difficult decisions like this one.

(Here Stern responds to a questioner who is inaudible.)

I don’t think it’s a bidding war. There’s a series of issues that are defined by our constitution that have to be considered. And one of the things that our board is mandated to consider is the support for the team in the prior city. So there are real issues for the board to consider — about the buildings, about the likelihood that they’ll be built, about the support in both cities…I think I might have composed the standards, but sitting here today I can’t remember what they are. But there are a lot of them. And actually, to confuse it just a little bit, the application to transfer ownership requires a 3/4-vote, the application to move requires a majority vote. And so I did the sensible thing, I combined the committees and I said “You guys figure it out.” We’ll see how that works.

You can buy that Sonics bobblehead for $75 from Gasoline Alley Antiques.

Sports

What Makes Everyone So Sure the Sonics Really Are Coming Back?

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sonicsnodderChris Hansen and Steve Ballmer’s plan to buy the Sacramento Kings and move them to Seattle was presented as a done deal when the news came out earlier this week. However, Sacramento’s efforts to keep the team have dominated headlines ever since. What makes people so sure the Sonics really will come back? I’m here to tell you.

Q: Sacramento is putting together a counter-offer, funded by billionaires, to buy the team and keep them where they are. What happens if the NBA takes that offer?

A: The NBA can’t just “take an offer.” This isn’t an auction. NBA owners will vote, likely in April, on whether to approve the specific sale agreement between the Hansen/Ballmer group and Sacramento’s current owners, the mercurial and nearly-insolvent Maloof family. If the NBA rejects the sale, the team goes back to the Maloofs.

Q: Couldn’t the Maloofs then sell the team to the Sacramento group for the same price?

A: They could, but why would they? Now they have the leverage of a bidding war. They could drive the price up further and keep the franchise in a period of uncertainty–the last thing the NBA wants.

Q: Has the NBA ever cancelled a sale agreement?

A: They have, actually. In 1994, the league blocked the sale of the Minnesota Timberwolves to a group that intended to move the team to New Orleans. However, the league’s decision had less to do with the possible relocation of the team than the fact the new buyers — headed by a boxing promoter — didn’t actually have the cash to buy the team; their financing plan relied on unknown investors, unsigned loans, and future revenue from an unbuilt arena. Even so, the NBA’s rejection of that deal was called “stunning” at the time.

Q: If the sale is approved, won’t the NBA owners still have to approve the move?

A: Yes. And NBA commissioner David Stern has promised Sacramento mayor Kevin Johnson the opportunity to argue that the team should stay before NBA owners vote. But NBA owners typically like to support the rights of their fellow owners to move their teams wherever they want. You may remember a team called the Seattle SuperSonics that wanted to move despite a massive outcry from fans, protests from two U.S. Senators, and a proposal to keep the team in Seattle by one of the richest men in the world. The NBA approved that move 28-2.

Q: So it’s a 100%-absolute-sure-thing?

A: Of course not. The NBA could find that Chris Hansen’s wealth is entirely tied up in risky Somalian goat futures. Steve Ballmer could be revealed as the true identity of Jack the Ripper. Sacramento mayor Kevin Johnson could have compromising photos from the Annual NBA Owners Nazi Dress-Up Orgy. Nothing is 100 percent, but barring some unforeseen circumstance, the Kings will play here as the Sonics this fall.

Q: Is it fair that Sacramento fans are likely losing their team?

A: No, it is terribly unfair. It was also terribly unfair when the Kings left Kansas City for Sacramento under shady circumstances. It was unfair when the Sonics left for Oklahoma City. It’s unfair that society says we have to wear pants to work. If you’re going to wait around for life to be fair, you’d better bring a book.

You can buy that Sonics bobblehead for $75 from Gasoline Alley Antiques.

News, Sports

The Sonics (and the NBA) are Coming Back to Seattle!

sonicsnodder“You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone.” — Trad.

Our fight seems so silly now. You wanted a new home, we wondered what was wrong with the old one. Soon we stopped trusting each other, even stooped to name-calling. You started thinking you’d be better off with someone else. And — we’ll admit it — sometimes we thought that too. But then you left.

And we went crazy.

We made movies for you, we bitched out our friends for talking to you, we tried to pretend you didn’t exist. We even stalked you 3,000 miles away. We had to have you back. Of course we’ll build you a new place. Need a loan?

Now you’re coming back. And we are SO HAPPY.

—

Chris Hansen and Steve Ballmer have negotiated a deal to buy the Sacramento Kings. They’ll ask and almost assuredly get permission to move the team to Seattle for the 2013-14 season. After five seasons without, Seattle will have an NBA team again.

The NBA was not a runaway success when it first came to Seattle in 1967. There had been no huge public demand, no heroic local owner — at first, the NBA didn’t even disclose who the owners were. Only 4,500 people came to the Supersonics’ first home game; the team was frequently outdrawn at Seattle Center Coliseum by a minor league hockey team.

As the Sonics improved and hockey left, Seattle embraced pro hoops. In 1979 the Sonics moved to the larger Kingdome and won an NBA championship. The team led the NBA in attendance in each of the next four seasons. From 1975 to 1998, Seattle was one of the NBA’s most consistently successful teams, missing the playoffs just five times.

Then things went downhill. A storm of shrinking state budgets, terrible coaching, terrible drafting, a petty and tone-deaf owner, and clueless local leadership pushed the team into the hands of out-of-town owners, who moved the franchise to Oklahoma City over desperate local protests.

While most fans of the former Sonics were in one of the various stages of grief, one man was looking to the future. And, thank God, that man is really, really rich. Seattle-raised hedge fund manager Chris Hansen started quietly buying land south of Safeco Field for a potential new arena.

Once his purchases became public, he negotiated first with the city and county to get political support for a new arena, and then with the mercurial owners of the Sacramento Kings to purchase that franchise. The NBA must still approve the sale and the move, but barring Hansen’s $951-million hedge fund going under, approval is a formality. The result: Largely due to Hansen’s patient, low-key efforts, Seattle will have basketball again in October and a state-of-the-art arena soon after.

In the next few weeks, you may notice strange behaviors from local sports fans — penciling out season ticket budgets on envelopes, suddenly taking an interest in a confused 22-year-old named DeMarcus Cousins, standing wordlessly and worshipfully outside KeyArena. Our minds are in the future now too, instead of the past. In about nine months, we’ll be proud hoops parents.

You can buy that Sonics bobblehead for $75 from Gasoline Alley Antiques.

News, Politics, Real Estate, Sports

City Council’s Two “No” Votes on Arena Justify Their Lack of Love

Apropos of nothing, a still from Grumpy Old Men.

On September 24, 2012, the Seattle City Council voted 6-2 to authorize Mayor McGinn to “execute a Memorandum of Understanding” with King County and ArenaCo, the last being the entity that, led by Chris Hansen, hopes to build a basketball arena in SoDo.

The Council’s Tom Rasmussen managed to miss out on this hotly debated vote. Richard Conlin and Nick Licata supplied the No votes. Both have now written explanations of their reasoning, with Licata seemingly of two minds about the deal. Concluding his analysis, Licata sounds more like a Yes: “In summary, I believe this proposal is a good one; it meets a high bar for public accountability. It is a rather solid tree in a forest of not such sturdy timber.”

But judging the proposal not simply on its merits, but on the other priorities of the city, Licata ultimately decides a new basketball arena is not Job #1. (He does not, however, suggest any alternative use of municipal bonding authority that the arena’s construction would forestall.) But fair enough.

This formulation, in contrast, is something of a drive-by: “They see someone purchase private land and in a couple of years get the city to buy it from him for double the price he purchased it for.” Since the purchase price has yet to be negotiated, it is premature to use the cap on the purchase price as the purchase price itself.

Conlin’s argument is pricklier from the outset. He says that though the revised agreement may do more to shield the city from downsides, it’s by no means clear that “we will wind up benefiting from it, or that it is a good use of the City’s time, resources, or financial capacity.” (In both Licata and Conlin’s arguments there is a tendency to elide the fact that basketball fans are also citizens.)

Conlin, who studied history as an undergraduate, sounds like a history major still when he argues that, “Only since World War II has it become customary for local governments to be primary funders–and the current trend may be away from public finance.” For one, that “only” refers to about 70 years. And his trend furnishes one example: the Golden State Warriors.

Licata and Conlin are, essentially, dismayed by a public-private partnership that they see as making off, somehow, with city monies. They sound particularly aggrieved by the new arena’s “self-funding” mechanism, where taxes paid by arena-goers would be directed to paying its debt. As politicians, both demonstrate the ability to annex notional revenues, and to cry out in pain at the thought of their hypothetical loss.

Speaking of notional revenues, both refer to “income” from Key Arena, which they half-rightly see as a white elephant. (“Half-” because it is a 50-year-old white elephant regardless of what happens with a new arena, though the two insist there’s a causal link. The more hard-headed wonks at Seattle Transit Blog are ready to knock it down, which is probably the best thing.)

Conlin claims the Key “made $310,000 on $6.6 million in revenues” in 2011. This is very similar to the “profit” the city looted from the Monorail for years, while foregoing essential maintenance and improvements; Key Arena’s infrastructure is in no better shape. Properly speaking, the Key’s depreciation wipes out any consideration of profit from operating expenses. Licata meanwhile mourns the $100 million in taxpayer money already spent: He could take comfort in realizing that works out to, over the Key’s lifetime, just $2 million per year.

News, Politics, Real Estate, Sports

City Council Covers Ass, Fans Get Free Beer in Seattle Arena Win-Win

Man Celebrates
Friend of The SunBreak David Swidler celebrates the arena news yesterday in Dingle, Ireland.

Would-be Sonics owner Chris Hansen can bait his hook and cast his NBA-team fishing rod now that he’s apparently steered his SODO arena proposal through the Straits of Seattle Politics.

City Council members Mike O’Brien, Sally Clark, and Tim Burgess yesterday announced their support for issuing up to $200 million in bonds to help finance the arena after Hansen altered the terms of his proposal to their liking.

Asked whether there was anything Hansen didn’t agree to, a smiling Burgess replied: “Nothing. We got it all.” The full Council is expected to approve the proposal Thursday.

The “new” arena deal announced yesterday isn’t substantially different than Hansen’s original proposal. The changes are symbolic, a redecoration of the deal’s iron-clad guarantees so councilmembers can explain them to feisty Magnolia grandmas who haven’t watched a professional sporting event since Frank Gifford retired.

With Hansen agreeing to such demands as a personal guaranty of the bonds, a conversation that would’ve required educating the anti-everything crowd about confusing topics such as “How things actually get done on Earth” can now go a little something like this:

Mrs. Syvertsen: “How can we be sure these fatcat developers aren’t ripping us off!?”

City Councilperson: “Well, ma’am, the loan will be fully paid back by revenues from the sports teams.”

MS: “What if sports goes out of business?”

CC: “Then Chris Hansen will pay back the loan personally.”

MS: “Well how do we know he’ll have the money? He could spend it all like some Goodtime Charlie!”

CC: “The city will audit him every year to make sure his net worth doesn’t fall below $300M.”

MS: “I can’t say I like your tone, you whippersnapper! What if the team leaves after the lease runs out? Why, an empty arena could be a haven of roguery for roller bladers, grunge musicians, and the Irish!”

CC: “In that case, the team will pay to demolish the arena, and give the land back to the city. But you will be dead by then. Hopefully.”

The deal’s propriety now seems immune to all conceivable scenarios–of course, we’ll have to wait and see if Nick Licata reads in Socialist Worker about a coming invasion by basketball-arena-hating aliens. Still, Hansen is ready to celebrate. In an open letter on SonicsArena.com, Hansen offered thanks to arena supporters, and an invitation:

All of the emails and letters to council members, the turnout at the City and County Council hearings, the rally at Occidental Park, and the flood of Green and Gold throughout our City for the entire summer…. Your voices were heard and your hearts spoke volumes. I really hope you all just appreciate how much it meant and what a difference each and every one of you made…And on that note, I would personally like to buy you all a beer at FX McRory’s this Thursday from 5-7. First beer for everyone is on me.

God bless Chris Hansen. After proposing one of the most generous arena investment deals in the history of American professional sports, he absorbed insults from anti-everything idiots, endured a misinformation campaign by the city’s newspaper, survived a blindside hit by the myopic Seattle Mariners and finally swallowed his privacy just so City Council members don’t have to explain capitalism to old ladies. Hansen may be buying the beer now, but if he does manage to hook an NBA team, he’ll get free pints in Seattle for the rest of his life.