If the Kings leave Sacramento after 26 years, it's not because any one person is at fault or the community failed.

The NBA simply doesn't work in Sacramento, and it won't unless the league changes its financial structure so teams without big TV contracts can remain viable by sharing in revenue more equitably.

Even back in 1999, when the Maloof family took over the franchise, the Kings were deeply in debt. It wouldn't surprise me if the debts have swelled, if the Kings have borrowed $100 million from the NBA to go along with the $77 million they owe the city.

Unlike Anaheim – where billionaire Henry Samueli, owner of the Ducks hockey team, is helping to lure the Kings to town with a $50 million loan – Sacramento doesn't enjoy a robust private sector to pad the Kings' revenue or to help fund a new arena that would tether the team to our city.

Local officials confirm that the Kings net roughly $11 million a year in their TV deal with Comcast, which is good for a small market. But it's peanuts compared with a new TV deal the Los Angeles Lakers reportedly secured in the hundreds of millions a year.

Don't discount for a minute the effect the Lakers deal likely had on a possible Kings move.

The Los Angeles Times reported the new Laker compact with Time Warner Cable on Feb. 14. Just five days later at the NBA All-Star Game in Los Angeles, NBA Commissioner David Stern confirmed the Kings were in serious talks with Anaheim.

It's not a coincidence: Rumors of the Kings leaving Sacramento had been simmering for weeks but gained great speed after the Lakers announced their deal. The Lakers on Time Warner will open a slot on Fox Sports West that the Kings could theoretically fill.

Teams in cities with large concentrations of wealth and larger TV revenue are attracting the biggest and best NBA free agents.

LeBron James left Cleveland for Miami. Carlos Boozer traded Salt Lake City for Chicago. Los Angeles has no fear of losing Kobe Bryant and can add Pau Gasol and Ron Artest without blinking an eye.

The TV contracts, luxury boxes and premium seats that major markets can afford is what keeps the rich richer in good economic times and bad. Players have taken note.

On ESPN.com this weekend, writer J.A. Adande quotes NBA players who say flat-out they don't want to sign with small market teams because they can't compete.

The San Antonio Spurs, Oklahoma City Thunder and other smaller teams are doing well now. But they could go the way of the Kings when their core players retire, get injured or leave through free agency – unless the NBA changes its business model when the current collective bargaining agreement expires soon.

The expectation is that Stern will force a lockout of NBA players this summer and pressure them to accept large salary concessions.

There is also speculation the NBA will divvy up its revenue more comprehensively and give smaller teams more of a fighting chance to maintain their bottom lines, retain players, and compete on court.

These are the cold, hard truths shaping the fate of the Kings. But as the franchise today begins what could be its final week in Sacramento, there is still finger-pointing over why Sacramento has been unable to build an arena after years of talking about it.

This is a waste of time.

Expecting the city to shoulder the load of funding for a Kings arena has always been a fatal flaw. The city is only a sliver of a larger county and region that follow the Kings.

When Sacramento officials settled on a plan – a pair of ballot initiatives to fund an arena through a quarter-cent sales tax increase in 2006 – Joe and Gavin Maloof killed the campaign before it could get started.

The idea was for the tax to pay for an arena in the downtown railyard where the Maloofs would pay no money toward the actual construction.

But they wanted more.

They were demanding 8,000 parking spaces and control of the parking revenue and were furious when they didn't get it.

Here is the disconnect: If the only way the Kings work in Sacramento was for the city and a private developer to gift a huge swath of land to the Maloofs, then there is no way the Kings work in Sacramento.

No sports owner in any California city has come close to getting such a giveaway. The San Francisco Giants were turned down four times in three cities when they asked taxpayers to help fund their stadium. If Sacramento had more time, maybe an economic recovery and a reformed NBA could make a Kings future possible here. But the Kings' owners seem determined to go.

The Maloofs seem angry at Sacramento for not giving them what Sacramento could not give. Maybe more reasonable owners could make an arena deal happen here. But the same issues would still be in play. The NBA doesn't work in Sacramento. Whose fault is that?

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Call The Bee's Marcos Breton, (916) 321-1096.

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