I was off for a few days, but it's impossible to stay away from this Kings situation, especially with relocation chairman Clay Bennett and NBA legal consultant Harvey Benjaming coming to Sacramento Thursday and Friday. While there has been considerable angst about Stern's selection of Bennett to head the committee - this is owner who moved the Sonics from Seattle to Oklahoma City in 2008 after all - I would just say this: Stern is too smart to be so obvious. He is also an attorney. If he wanted to simply rubber stamp the Kings' relocation to Anaheim or elsewhere, he would have put someone other than Bennett to lead the study. And he never would have agreed to extending the deadline to May 2. Just my opinion. Just too logical.
Interestingly, the committee is dominated by small to mid-market owners, including Greg Miller (Utah), Glen Taylor (Minnesota), Herb Simon (Indiana), Peter Holt (San Antonio), along with Miami's Mickey Arison and Philadelphia's Ed Snider. Again, while owners of small-mid market teams are not inclined to vote against another small-market owner who wants to relocate, mainly because they want to retain the option of moving into a major market if their franchise is unable to sustain itself economically at some future date, I would revisit the "too smart to be so obvious" theme. There is probably a back story here with collective bargaining discussions ongoing and small-mid market owners demanding "substantial revenue sharing" - a much larger contribution from teams in Chicago, L.A., New York, etc. But the Kings/Anaheim situation is just too fluid and dynamic to say much of anything with certainty, except to say that these next several days will be very, very interesting. Folks within the Kings organization say they are starting to believe the team is coming back next year ...
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