Posted on 01/24/2013 10:39:21 PM PST by Lexinom
Fans of the Seattle SuperSonics, the beloved NBA team whisked away to Oklahoma City in 2008, will soon have reason to stand up and cheer. No, the Oklahoma City Thunder isn’t headed back to the Pacific Northwest – but the Sacramento Kings will be calling Seattle home before too long. The resurrection of the SuperSonics has spirits soaring in the Evergreen State. On Monday morning, the Seattle Times reported that a Seattle group helmed by...
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...The marginal personal-income tax rate for wealthy Californians – a category under which professional ballplayers almost certainly fall – is a whopping 13.3 percent. Washington, on the other hand, levies no personal income tax on any of its residents. Whether a member of the SuperSonics organization is shooting free-throws or taking tickets, he gets to keep more of his earned income.
(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...
Round and round
What comes around, goes around
I’ll tell you why
And as soon as the libs finally get a state income tax passed here, they’ll be leaving again...
Seattle will now be taxed to build a new stadium because it makes no economic sense otherwise does it?
If they can’t survive without subsidies, they shouldn’t survive.
A Seattle team can also underbid high tax state teams, yet still attract good players.
The writer must have his own reality because there’s little evidence the SuperSonics were “beloved”, at least until they were leaving Seattle. They weren’t winning, they didn’t have butts in seats, they couldn’t get a new facility built. Nothing good was happening in Seattle for pro basketball.
This is as much about Sacramento getting tired of supporting a losing team as it is about taxes.
When I arrived in Sacramento in 1987, Rush Limbaugh was a local talk show host, headed for national prominence. The, Kings; not so much.
It was not uncommon for teachers to post no homework assignments on game nights. Season tickets among school age families were common.
Fans dreamed of a season with more than 30 (out of 82) wins, but they still showed up.
In 2002 with Chris Weber and Vlade Divacs the team had their big shot and barely missed beating the Lakers. Then they declined back to winning less than 30 games per season year after year.
The season ticket holding families declined and the demographic shifted to young single men as the fan base. In fact many fan families moved away from California.
The new owners do not have a winning vision as say Mark Cuban of the Dallas Mavericks. These owners are barely solvent.
Sacramento, the 19th largest market in the US; will no longer have a major sports franchise. That’s what happens when the only game in town is government.
At one point they were actually the Kansas City/Omaha Kings. I grew up in Omaha and can remember hiding under the covers with my transistor radio (when I was supposed to be going to sleep) listening to their games. That was during the Nate “Tiny” Archibald era.
This franchise has been around a bit.
From Wikipedia:
“The Sacramento Kings are a professional basketball team based in Sacramento, California, United States. They are members of the Pacific Division of the Western Conference in the National Basketball Association (NBA). The Kings are the only team in the Major professional North American sports leagues located in Sacramento; they play their home games at Sleep Train Arena.
The Kings trace their origins to a local semi-professional team based in Rochester, New York in the early 1920s, making them one of the oldest basketball clubs still in existence. The team joined the National Basketball League (NBL) in 1945 as the Rochester Royals. The Royals defected to the NBL’s rival, the Basketball Association of America, in 1948. In 1949, as a result of that year’s merger between the NBL and BAA, the Royals became members of the newly formed NBA. Though the Royals were often successful on the court, they had trouble turning a profit in the comparatively small market of Rochester, and relocated to Cincinnati, Ohio in 1957, becoming the Cincinnati Royals. In 1972, the team relocated to Kansas City, Missouri, initially splitting its games between Kansas City and Omaha, Nebraska, and taking up the name Kansas City Kings. The team again failed to find success in its market, and moved to Sacramento in 1985.
The team won the NBL championship in 1946 and the NBA championship in 1951. Since 1945, the franchise has won one conference championship and five division championships.”
The year we went to the the first round of the playoffs with Weber and Divacs against the Lakers was when they lost their heart and soul. (That was when Shaq was allowed to consistently step over the free throw line with no foul called among other offenses.) they were never the same after that last, lost game.
Well, I hate to say it but that’s just downright rotten of a city to go steal another city’s bassitball team. ;)
This has less to do with taxes and more to do with the total mismanagement and anti-Midas touch of the Maloufs.
Yeah, I grew up watching the Sonics... Tom Chambers was my idol for a little while... Xavier McDaniel, Alton Lister, Dale Ellis... That was a great year...
What's Mark Cuban's "Vision", other than blowing up a championship team, and failing to sign free agents?
Cuban actually offered more money per year to some of the players who left for other teams, but for contract lengths 1-2 years shorter.
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