Seattle columnist explains the arena game

Posted on May 14, 2013 by Paul Clegg

Because our elected officials have sucked up to the NBA and done everything the billionaires’ club has asked by way of funding a new arena, shouldn’t Sacramento get to keep the Kings? Isn’t that what integrity is all about?

On the other hand, the Maloofs might argue, why shouldn’t the majority owners of the team get to say how much profit they want to realize on their investment, where they want the team to go and whom they sell to? That’s what good, old, American capitalism is all about.

These competing arguments are at the heart of the tug-of-war between Sacramento and Seattle and are cogently presented by Seattle Times columnist Jerry Brewer. He cuts through a lot of side issues and lays out the stakes for the big-money boys. 

What Brewer doesn’t discuss – and what the Sacramento Bee and other local media have downplayed – is the way local residents are used and abused in the NBA arena game. They put up the public money and financial worry in return. Even loyal Kings fans will get the shaft if Mayor Kevin Johnson’s dream team prevails. It’s willing to forsake $15 million a year from the league to help the Kings buy better players despite the team’s six straight losing seasons.

Here’s a taste of Brewer’s insights:

The real battle is about entitlement. It’s about two parties arm-wrestling to have their rights to the Sacramento Kings defined. It’s the Maloofs vs. Sacramento. And in a general sense, it’s about an NBA owner’s rights vs. the rights of the city that the team represents….

On the surface, it seems a silly thing to ponder. Owners own their teams, and they do as they darn well please, no matter how stupid. But those partnerships with their cities, which so many oppose, complicate matters.

The business of the NBA, as well as any other major sports league, revolves around making cities chip in for sports palaces. It’s your team only if you pay for it to be your team. If you don’t, there’s always the threat of moving to another city.

It’s the build-or-bolt method. And it works. An overwhelming majority of cities consider it stepping up, when they are often being conned. These sports leagues hold your civic pride hostage, and many arena/stadium deals are emotional decisions, not practical ones.

Here’s why this is so relevant to this custody battle over the Kings: If it’s an accepted truth that cities get rewarded for “stepping up,” what happens when that’s still not good enough for an owner? What happens when an owner believes a franchise is still better off elsewhere? What happens when an owner is adamant about exercising his right to do what he wishes with his private business?

Read Brewer’s whole column and you’ll know why little people are the pawns in this rip-off game.

 

 

 

 

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In Kings arena fight, who’s doing the bullying?

Posted on May 13, 2013 by Paul Clegg

“Don’t you just hate bullies?”

That was an opening line I read in a Sacramento Bee column yesterday that expressed outrage over Seattle investors and the Maloofs  supposedly “disrespecting” Sacramento.

It’s revealing how local journalistic watchdogs magnify the faults of Seattle power brokers while ignoring the bullying and disrespect that has been going on in their own backyard for more than a year.

If Seattle big shots Chris Hansen and Steve Ballmer are bullies for using their financial clout to try to buy the Kings, then what do we call Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson and his political cronies who have kicked aside the concerns of local taxpayers? What do we call the billionaires who use their financial clout to try to extract millions of dollars from a city that is deeply in debt? What do we call the developers lining up to snatch hundreds of acres of city-owned land being given away by ambitious politicians? What is the term for NBA folks who have set the stage for a bidding war?

The fact is, Johnson and his buddies have been bullying the taxpayers of Sacramento and risking the financial stability of city in their drive to build a downtown arena . They’ve trotted out absurd projections about economic benefits from a downtown arena. They engaged in secret negotiations with NBA officials that always left the city agreeing to fork over more money. They’ve sidestepped a public vote on the issue and belittled critics.

Unfortunately, the Bee and other local media, the supposed watchdogs for the public interest, have a big stake in keeping the Kings in Sacramento. They have failed to fulfill their journalistic responsibility to provide fair, balanced and unbiased coverage. They’ve given short shrift to opponents of the project. They have served as cheerleaders without bothering to question what they are cheering.

It would be fitting to see our local bullies kicked aside by bigger, badder dudes in Seattle. That’s one of the lessons in bullying. Another lesson is that bullying may lead to unintended consequences. In this case, the good, hard-working  residents of Sacramento may avoid getting exploited.

 Let Seattle folks pay the price for stealing the Kings.

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Ballet is quite a kick

Posted on May 11, 2013 by Paul Clegg

I don’t know when I ruled ballet out of my life. I just got it in my head early that ballet was too dainty, prissy and feminine for me. My pals at Braddock Park didn’t sit around on the benches drinking beer and discussing the perfect pirouette. Even in my college years, when I took courses on modern art and classical music to expand my cultural horizons, ballet never entered my mind.

The art form was too far out. It seemed a few steps beyond opera, which my mother loved and I could barely tolerate.  She was an avid listener to Saturday radio broadcasts live from the New York Metropolitan Opera. “Wasn’t that just wonderful!” she would exclaim after a lengthy aria that sounded like screeching to me. Occasionally, she would get dolled up, put on long gloves, drape a dead fox around her neck and go into the city with my older brother Ambrose to attend a performance. I guess the male presence legitimized opera a bit in my mind.

This prelude is my sheepish way of saying that I got a taste of ballet last night and found it exciting, enchanting, beautiful, amusing and even risqué. The athleticism of the female and male performers was impressive and humbling, particularly for a guy who is lucky to stand on one leg for three seconds as he tries to do core exercises.

The occasion was a performance put on by members of the Sacramento Ballet at the Capital Athletic Club,  where I usually spend my time at the club playing basketball and lifting weights. The dancers presented a varied musical selection, ranging from classical to modern, blues to Broadway, which helped demolish my stereotype of what ballet is. The strength and agility of the dancers was impressive to see up close. I had expected the high leg kicks of the female dancers, but was amazed to see one fellow kneel on the floor and bend backward until his head touched the floor. In my own stretching routines,  I get my back at a right angle to my legs and that’s where it stops.

I doubt that I will become a balletomane in my senior years, but I definitely be attending performances by the Sacramento Ballet in the future. The eye-opener last night served as a reminder to be on guard against stultifying routine. I’ve seen aging friends lose their enthusiasm for life because they couldn’t overcome their resistance to trying new things. It’s not a pretty picture.  I’ll take a high leg kick.

 

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How to keep the Kings losers for years to come

Posted on May 7, 2013 by Paul Clegg

Here’s an ironic twist: long-suffering Kings fans who finally see hope the team will stay in Sacramento could get screwed by the dreamers and schemers scrambling to buy the Kings.

The Kings have suffered through six straight losing seasons and have one of the lowest player payrolls in the league. They haven’t been able to compete fairly against the richer teams in Los Angeles, New York and Miami. Last year’s  revenue-sharing agreement between the NBA and the players union is supposed to help level the playing field. The Kings are expected to take in $18 million this year from the program.

During 2011 labor negotiations, NBA commissioner David Stern used the Kings as an example of problem. The Los Angeles Lakers spend “well over $100 million on the payroll and Sacramento at 45,” Stern said, according to the website Deadspin. “That’s not an acceptable alternative for us. That can’t be the outcome that we agree to.”

In a surprise revelation this week by the Sports Business Journal, Mayor Kevin Johnson’s band of billionaires has tried to strengthen its bid for the team by telling the NBA it would limit its share of revenue sharing while a new arena is being built and then decline to accept any revenue-sharing money at all.

The pledge by Vivek Ranadive’s ownership group, designed to undercut the view that Sacramento would be a long-tern NBA charity case, would mean more money in the loaded pockets of NBA owners while exposing the city to increasing financial risk.

It would also mean that any return by the Kings to their glory days would be a long time coming – unless you’re inclined to believe the pie-in-the-sky economic predictions arena promoters have long touted and that have been dismissed by credible academic analysts.

As Deadspin pointed out, the NBA’s supposed desire for competitive balance is pure bull as is any concern for our city. If the Kings stay in Sacramento, it won’t be “because the NBA gives a shit about the city or the fans, but because it will give the league a fancy new arena and the other owners a few extra million dollars with which to line their pockets.”

The latest move by arena promoters is another indication of their recklessness and willingness to promise anything to get their way. If they do, the losing Kings will be a visible symbol of much greater losses to be suffered by the exploited residents of Sacramento.

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Return of the shad brings back memories

Posted on May 6, 2013 by Paul Clegg

Just yesterday, I told my wife I ought to get a fishing license so I would be ready for the shad run. Today, the Bee has a front-page picture of fishermen lined up at the confluence of the American and Sacramento rivers. There was quite a crowd. The shad must be a little early this year.

Once upon a time, I would have known the shad had arrived on their annual spawning run. I didn’t need a newspaper to tell me what was happening in the local rivers. I was out on the river a lot, and I was one of the guys who started spreading the word to the dilettantes to get their gear ready.

That’s how those crowds start developing at traditional spots along the river. In October, boaters and bank fishermen crowd in at the confluence when the salmon run gets into high gear. In September and November, only the serious fishermen who know the river’s holes are willing to put in the long hours needed to catch a salmon.

Shad are fascinating fish, but they aren’t held in high esteem around here like salmon, trout and the vaunted steelhead. Shad used to come up the Sacramento River system in huge numbers, and catching 20 to 30 in a few hours was common. Even with today’s reduced runs, weekenders and kids have a good chance of hooking into a fish that can equal the steelhead in strength and fighting ability on a pound-for-pound basis.  Most returning adults are in the 2- to 5-pound range, although a few may go 10 pounds or more.

Shad, like striped bass, are transplants from the East Coast, where they get proper respect, both as a game fish and source of culinary delight. They were an important food in Colonial America, as you can read in John McPhee’s delightful book titled “The Founding Fish.” American shad were introduced into the Sacramento River in 1871 at the town of Tehama, south of Red Bluff, according to a 2010 article in the Redding Record Searchlight I came across today in a Google search. The author was John Spencer, described as “a longtime north state resident and fisherman.”

I’ll digress here to say that Spencer was the fisherman serious anglers envied back in the era when Red Bluff was a salmon and steelhead hotspot. He was a fly tier with an uncanny knack for catching fish. Of course, I didn’t know that when I wound up in Red Bluff in 1969. Looming poverty had forced me to get my first newspaper job. I was hired as a one-man sports department for the Daily News, circulation about 6,500. Red Bluff was a cowboy town far removed in distance and spirit from Berkeley, where I had been doing my post-college bit for the revolution. I left a Berkeley of tear gas and student protests for a town of potlucks and Friday night football games.

Spencer came into the newsroom one September morning before dawn wearing hip waders and a battered hat loaded with tiny balls of colored yarn to drop off his weekly fishing column.

“Salmon are working below the dam,” he said in a whisper. “Steelies in with them.

His words made no more sense to me than his sartorial outfit. Did Red Bluffians typically walk in from Main Street dressed like that?  Why were salmon “working”? What the heck were “steelies”?

That morning marked the beginning of my piscatorial education from Spencer, and I soon learned that “working” meant spawning and that “steelies” were steelhead – anadromous rainbow trout that were exceedingly difficult to catch. Any old redneck could catch a salmon, but only a sophisticated angler dared to go after steelhead. Come spring, shad would be a good starter fish for me, Spencer suggested.

The following June, Spencer introduced me to shad fishing in the Sacramento River, and even a neophyte like me caught 20 or so the first evening out. I was hooked for decades, but not in the obsessive way I got about steelheading, so much that I took jobs in  Idaho and Washington just to be close to renowned steelhead rivers.

Shad fishing is a way to refresh myself with the mystery of nature each spring. I can stand in the river and wonder where the shad go in the ocean and what force directs them home to spawn. I can practice my fly casting and not worry how imperfectly my line tumbles into the river. If I catch fish, fine. If I don’t, I’m satisfied to have spent time along the river. Guess I better got my license and put some new line of my fly reel.

 

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