Published: 1 years 26 days ago
ESPN.com:
I know three things about Sacramento: the Kings play there, the governor lives there and Kevin Johnson won the city's mayoral election without pulling either of his hammies. (Inside joke for anyone who ever had KJ on a fantasy team.) I certainly don't want to think about Sacramento during one of our most entertaining NBA postseasons ever. I'd rather wonder if Rose and Durant are making The Leap, if Nowitzki can reinvent his legacy, if the Moheatos are coming together, if the ragtag Grizzlies can pull a Hickory High, if Kendrick Perkins swung the NBA title, if Kobe has anything left in his apex predator tank, if the porous Knicks' defense gave Rondo his mojo back or if Brandon Roy is filming the last 15 minutes of a sports movie and we haven't realized it yet.
But with a momentum-killing lockout lurking and the Maloofs scrapping to keep their franchise afloat, it's hard not to wonder if those two events are connected. Is there a chasm between big and small NBA markets that only a prolonged labor stoppage can prevent? Is Sacramento's failure a glimpse of a bigger picture -- that, in the MultiTasker Generation, middle-class fans would rather stay home and do four things at once than spend their hard-earned money for mediocre seats and uninspired basketball?
http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=simmons/110425&sportCat=nba
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