The second this “Kings to Virginia Beach” rumor started to gain traction online, it was clearly not realistic — there are no designs for an arena in Virginia, no financing in place, not one approval and nobody had really talked to the league about it. This was the backers of the idea of an arena in Virginia Beach trying to make their case that teams were interested.
To put a nail in this coffin there is this, from CBS13 in Sacramento via ESPN:
That would be the owner of the team saying no. So can we move on now?
Well, we can from this rumor, but there will be others — Kansas City, Seattle, Las Vegas, Anaheim and maybe more to come. Places that have or can likely get an arena are out there.
So it comes back to the Maloofs. They could make a commitment to Sacramento, but they have not. They could work toward a solution to getting an arena in Sacramento rather than just shooting ideas down. They say they aren’t moving the team, but does anybody trust what they say? Tom Ziller gets into this at Sactown Royalty, go read his stuff.
The fact is the Maloofs are looking for some investor to come in and buy a minority share of the Kings and build a brand $400 million (or so) new arena for them — give the Kings a new building (wherever) but leave the Maloofs in charge of the team. Good luck with that.