If I’m the Maloof’s, I now target getting Blake Griffin to leave the Clippers for Anaheim in 2012. Of course I’m sure that the Lakers will target him too, because Kobe’s not getting any younger and the Lakers will be looking for their next marque draw in order to keep hosing their fans with their outrageously high ticket prices for good seats (I’m sure that Jack Nicholson could care less what he pays for his court side seat, but he’s not going to want to pay those prices just to see a 16-65 team led by the next Baron Davis).

Seattle lost the Sonics because of the same reason Sacramento will lose the Kings. Old, undersized building and low corporate interest. Las Vegas doesn’t have a building.

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out why they’re moving.

The NFL is the only major sport that has the right concept when it comes to labor, and that’s that in order to collect on your contract you have to actually make the cut each year. Meanwhile over in the NBA you see completely useless stiffs like Eddy Curry getting paid $12.5M/year just to stay away from the team, and then to add insult to injury his “dead expiring” contract actually becomes more valuable than getting any players back in return via trade due to the NBA’s totally goofy trade rules (i.e., requiring the matchup of contract values being exchanged).

MLB has gotten their act together somewhat with the growing movement of teams buying out arbitration eligible years for their rising stars in return for their stars being willing to commit to sign up for more years after they would have otherwise become eligible for free agency. It’s still not as good as what the NFL has in place (as there are still of course misses that saddle teams with big guaranteed deals just as in the NBA), but it’s still alot better than what the NBA has in place currently.

I think that the logo (Jerry West), though is spot on when he said a few weeks ago that he thinks the the league would be much stronger and better off if 6-8 teams were contracted, but that’s not going to happen because of all the litigation that would follow from municipalities that are holding long term leases needed to finance the debt on their arenas that would suddenly be faced with losing 81 booked dates (or more), a season.

Due to division based scheduling, baseball has become a Regional sport (not a national sport anymore, as has been evidenced by recent dismal World Series TV ratings). What the NBA is quickly now migrating towards is becoming strictly a big TV market sport, as filling up 18,000 seat arenas in big cities is almost a foregone conclusion (yes, even the horribly managed Clippers manage to pretty much fill up the Staples Center in LA).

As for the government officials, I’m not as sure that all of the blame goes to them. I believe we wouldn’t be having so many franchises moving and the labor negotiations conflict if the financial structure of the NBA wasn’t so messed up. I think the government officials in Sacramento could have helped the team stay in their city for a couple more years, but in a league where only 8 or so teams make money every year, there’s not much the government can do.

Unlike the Podunk Sacramento local officials, the city of Anaheim local officials are astute enough to realize that the projected tax revenues that would result from booking the Honda Center 81 more dates a year (including increased occupancy rates at local hotels, restaurants, etc.), should make approving the bonds a no-brainer.

As for the gamble that the attendance will be there even for an initially bad team? It’s going to be MUCH easier to attract a big name free agent to Southern California than it would have been to attract one to Sacramento, that’s for darned sure!