I thought about that, but California has had 4 teams for a long time now, and I think our projected population and demographics look better than theirs.
The Spurs thing doesn't concern me; however UT would be a major obstacle. The university probably wouldn't let it happen.
Eh, Population isn't really always the greatest proxy in this equation, or else there would be teams in San Bernadino, St. Louis, Baltimore and Pittsburgh, and not Oklahoma, SLC or New Orleans. Not sure if Austin even based on population & demo has a strong case, based on being within the middle of the Spurs-Rockets-mavs triangle and the all-consuming behemoth of a university.
Its not just about the population of the market area, the reach of the broadcast rights to a particular team is the real driver of economic success in today's NBA. Austin probably would be great in terms of attendance but who would watch them on TV besides people in Austin? Texas already has three healthy NBA franchises with strong followings. Nashville is unapealing for the same reasons. There wouldnt be enough TV sets that would care to watch them. I could see a team doing well in Kansas City (Yes, I know the Kings failed there once). They have a nice NBA quality arena and more importantly there is a stong corpoate base. The potential TV market includes all of Kansas and Missouri as well as Nebraska and/or Iowa.
We had a similar conversation about pro sports in Austin a few years ago in the hangout. In a nutshell, UT -is- pro sports in Austin. The only pro team I could see getting in to Austin is an NHL franchise. I could see a fan-base there given how much of it's population is from out of state.
If anything I can see the Bucks moving to Chicago. This market can handle another NBA team. It's practically a move 90 miles further south.
I highly doubt it can or there's any business reason to do so, unless the Kohl family sells it to somebody who is obsessed with having a team in the northern suburbs like Rosemont or somethign. Then who's going to pay for the arena? The rare instances of mega-huge urban areas supporting two teams are for truly massive ones like Southern California and NY/NJ; Chicago isn't in that group, and even then, those are mostly historical accidents based on the ABA history of the Nets and the utter horribleness of Donald Sterling rather than any business rationale.
I'm not saying it would happen. I'm just saying I can see it working if it did. Paying for an arena, yeah, that'd be a big deal. I'm not really sure who would build it. For the NBA team you do have a point about only Southern Cal and NY/NJ. But for say football, that isn't exactly the case -- the two exceptions being the Bay Area and Washington Metro. Obviously basketball is a little different though with more games and being less popular and all so I can understand what you're saying.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p>NBA committee teleconference will start at 11am Pacific & is slotted for 2 hrs. Hopefully Twitter doesn’t have a meltdown at 1pm. <a href="https://twitter.com/search/%23NBAKings">#NBAKings</a></p>— Chris Daniels (@ChrisDaniels5) <a href="https://twitter.com/ChrisDaniels5/status/328917206077431809">April 29, 2013</a></blockquote> <script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
I don't see expansion as being so awful. Maybe in the early 2000s when the quality of play was so low that would be bad but I think the leauge is VERY healthy. With the new CBA making it so tough to hoard stars on one team there is good reason to expect every team to have a decent shot at a top-tier talent. I like Seattle, KC, San Jose, Vancouver and maybe the Ralighe-Durham area of NC as expansion/relocation markets.
As a sac resident, and a 10 minute walk from the Arena i sure do hope this team stays put. The city has done everything in its power provide an Arena and a comparable payout to the Maloofs. It would be unprecedented for the NBA to allow the sale to Seattle considering what we have on the table. New beautiful NBA Arena Billionaire owners International influence with majority owner from India Last but not least I think the major difference is that they are currently in Sacramento so for them to actually allow the franchise to move you would think the seattle offer would have to be greater and in my eyes the seattle offer is merely comparable.
Charlotte and Milwaukee. Besides local fans, nobody would miss them at all. The NBA product would improve and be less diluted.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p>Just filed to <a href="http://t.co/b8H6X2SelB" title="http://ESPN.com">ESPN.com</a>: Sources tell ESPN a committee of NBA owners voted against moving the Kings to Seattle today.</p>— Brian Windhorst (@WindhorstESPN) <a href="https://twitter.com/WindhorstESPN/status/328976590425956352">April 29, 2013</a></blockquote> <script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
NBA owners voted against moving to Seattle...just popped up on Twitter from Brian Windhorst (ESPN guy)
Appears that the decision was unanimous, too. What will be interesting to see is if the Maloofs actually sell to the Sacramento group. Remember: this all started because the Maloofs agreed to sell to Seattle without any warning and accepted $30 million from Hansen as a deposit. They have not agreed to sell to the new Sacramento ownership group.
