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Khobi Price: The Lakers have announced an additional preseason game: vs. the Sacramento Kings on Oct. 11 at the Honda Center in Anaheim. The full six-game preseason schedule: pic.twitter.com/PgEOwxjsdz
The Lakers have announced an additional preseason game: vs. the Sacramento Kings on Oct. 11 at the Honda Center in Anaheim.
— Khobi Price (@khobi_price) July 5, 2023
The full six-game preseason schedule: pic.twitter.com/PgEOwxjsdz
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While Sacramento continues to argue with the NBA Kings over an arena deal to keep that franchise up north, Anaheim continues to prepare its arena for an NBA team. On Tuesday night, the City Council will consider an environmental-impact report that would allow the Honda Center to hold 222 events per year, up from the current 162.
Working with the National Basketball Association to bring a new team to Anaheim to further benefit the city's businesses will be one way to achieve the goal, he said. Tait wants to make Anaheim the central hub of Orange County, believing there is room for more than two professional sports teams in Anaheim. "We have our own unique identity and population.? A county of 3 million people can easily support an NBA franchise," he said. "There is no doubt Anaheim is NBA ready.? I'm confident that we will get a team."
There still are numerous unanswered questions and details to hammer out before the NBA's March 1 deadline for having an arena financing plan in place, including whether city or government bonds will have to be issued to finance construction. March 1 is also the NBA relocation deadline, so Johnson wants the plan in place by the end of the calendar year. If progress is slow, it's anybody's guess how long the Maloofs will wait before they start talking to Anaheim officials again. Officials from Anaheim Arena Management, the Henry Samueli-owned company that runs Honda Center for the City of Anaheim, are staying out of this one. They won't even say they're still interested if the Sacramento arena plan falls through, but it's safe to assume that, with planned arena upgrades scheduled to begin in the next month. The Nexus Report will be delivered to the Sacramento City Council on Tuesday.
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Is Anaheim still a threat to Sacramento? Kevin Johnson: All this did was buy us one year. What we have to accomplish before March is we need to have a critical path on where we're going to finance a new entertainment sports complex. If we do that, Sacramento will be the final resting place for the Sacramento Kings. If we don't do that, then if I'm the Kings and the NBA, I'm going to say Anaheim is still in play When I went and spoke to the NBA governing board I said there's three scenarios. I'm not going to tell you guys how to run your business. I'm not going to say anything about the Kings, because they've been good partners in Sacramento. And I'm not going to criticize the Anaheim deal. With that said, I'm going to fight for my city, and any of these three scenarios would allow Sacramento to be an NBA city: •Same team, same owners: That was our preferred option but we couldn't control that. •Same team, new owners: Meaning, if the Kings decided to sell, then I had someone to buy the team and keep them in Sacramento. •New team, new owners: Meaning, if the team left for Anaheim, that we had a new owner who would try buy another team and bring them to Sacramento. My choice, the optimal outcome, was to keep the Kings and the owners in Sacramento.
What are their roles in this? KJ: Joe and Gavin Maloof are going to focus on the basketball operations for the 2011-2012 season. They're going to get out there in the community, talk up the team, sell season tickets, become part of this community in a more intensified way than they've done in the past The other brother, George Maloof, he's the one going to be the point on the entertainment sports complex. He is working with the NBA.
If you're able to get this new complex approved, what's the timetable on it opening? Kevin Johnson: We think the worst-case scenario is 2015. If we can get the financing of all this stuff lined up as we think we can, before 2012, we've already got a design team, architects and contractors starting to work on real numbers, starting to think about schematics and renderings and all that. It's going to an intermodal, which is very similar to Madison Square Garden (New York) and Boston, where you have a transportation hub connected to a venue that deals with green and transit-oriented development, all those "Smart" things. It goes back to us only having one team. Our market can probably support something that's 600,000 or 700,000 square feet and not something that's humongous, because we just don't have the market to do that. Our footprint will be a little bit smaller. That's why we think we can keep our cost under $400 million.
What about your relationship with NBA commissioner David Stern? Kevin Johnson: I'm 45 years old. I was in the NBA at 21 so I've known him more than half my life. That relationship is something I was able to drawn on. His trust and confidence in me as a mayor, and certainly the respect I have for him, created a very unique dynamic. That if it's going to happen, now is the time to make it happen. How often to you talk with Stern? We communiciate regularly. We talk as frequently as a couple times a week. … There's some sort of communication between us. I think he's doing an unbelievable job of sending out his top lieutenants to make sure this project is working. My team and his team talk two or three times a day, in many cases. We're 100% in sync. … Somebody who is as shrewd as the Commissioner who has seen this thing happen for 28 years, he knows where the pitfalls are. He knows where the optimism should be. … We have a great partnership with the NBA.
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