Will the NBA love Sacramento if it doesn’t put out?

I’m reminded, as I watch the saga of the Sacramento Kings, of one of those movies about the plain girl in high school—the girl who’s smart and sensitive but aches to have the cool kids like her and a boy tell her she’s pretty.

Right now, with the National Basketball Association’s relocation committee having recommended against moving the Kings to Seattle, we’ve reached the scene when the heroine, her inferiority complex in full bloom, sees her wildest dream come true. She’s been invited to the prom! And not just by another nerd. No, she’s been asked to share the big night with the star of the basketball team, the most handsome and suave of the in-crowd!

Doubt—does he really like me?—gives way to giddy excitement. She trades her normal drab uniform (baggy brown sweater over black tights) for a shimmering sheath, sweeps up her hair in a stylish do, and performs magic with the makeup tray. Bliss is just a limo ride away.

Of course, the audience knows what she doesn’t, something she may suspect but won’t let herself believe. The basketball hero, a bully and predator, has asked her to the prom only because he’s bet his crew he can have his way with her before the night is out. The homely ones are the easiest to nail, he brags. They’re so desperate they always put out.

Sacramento has so far played the heroine to perfection. If they awarded Oscars for desperation, it would sweep the field. Driven to madness at the prospect of losing the Kings, the city’s elected officials broached the idea of offering more than $300 million, roughly $600 per city resident, in subsidy to the NBA.

But now the plot turns. With the move to Seattle vetoed, the argument that Sacramento taxpayers must throw a wad of cash at the NBA because keeping the Kings was somehow economically vital—a weightless argument always—is moot. Here they stay.

Moreover, the city’s latest budget, released the same day the NBA decision was revealed, makes clear that an arena subsidy is money the city doesn’t have and, even if it did have it, needs more vitally elsewhere. The budget shows deficits and more cuts in already savaged city services as far as the eye can see—and then comes the “cliff”: the expiration of the temporary city sales tax that went into effect April 1.

So this is where the plain girl thanks her date for a lovely evening, expresses her hope that they will stay friends, and closes the door. There is no reasonable case for putting out.

The End.

Roll the credits.

Wait, wait, wait, I hear cheerleaders for an arena subsidy shout, that’s not how the movies go. The basketball dude doesn’t take “no” for an answer. If Sacramento doesn’t put out, the NBA will change its mind and move the team.

Really? Do those cheerleaders understand what they are telling us?

That all the nice words the NBA has spoken about Sacramento’s long and loyal customer support of the Kings are just sweet nothings, lies whispered in our ears to distract us from its true agenda.

That the crew of superrich would-be owners of the Kings and self-proclaimed believers in Sacramento and its future, men whose wealth surpasses all understanding by mere mortals, men like Vivek Ranadivé, who modestly bills himself on his blog as “entrepreneur, technology visionary, author, philanthropist, angel investor,“ are so bereft of capital and imagination they to cannot do what Gregg Lukenbill—the local developer, a guy in flannel shirts, jeans, and steel-toed boots, who brought the Kings to Sacramento in 1985—managed to do: build an arena without having to apply for AFGB (Aid to Families of Grasping Billionaires).

That should Sacramento balk at his advances, Ranadivé will lean into the face of the heroine and say, "Don’t you get it, you ugly bitch? I’m only here because I bet I could get into your pants."

Now that’s a movie I’d pay to see.