Any little goodwill the Maloofs had left in Sacramento was washed away a few months ago when after they and the city of Sacramento agreed to a deal to finance a new $391 million arena in the Downtown area, near the State Capitol building. Not too long after, the Maloofs backed out due to what was cited as "economic differences" (in other words, they re-neged on agreeing to paying their part of the arena construction, which would have been $73 million). One of the Maloof brothers suggested that the city should finance a renovation of the team's current home, the Power Balance Pavillion (which will be re-named soon because Power Balance recently filed bankruptcy), but the problem is that the arena is also owned by the family...public money being used to finance a facility that is privately-owned doesn't make a hell of a lot of sense.
In my opinion, it seemed to me that the Maloofs never necessarily want to stay in Sacramento to begin with. The team starting winning soon after they took ownership in 1999, and they pretty much kept their mouths shut while the team was successful. Once the team started trading off and not re-signing their top players, the Kings started losing again, and the Maloofs began whining about a new arena. They have been a few attempts to get a new arena somewhere in the downtown area, as their current arena is located in rather isolated corner of the city limits.
If the team moves out of Sacramento, it won't because of lack of fan support...in the early half of their time in Sacramento, the Kings fielded pretty awful teams, but yet still sold-out every home game. The people there are fed up with the Maloofs, and until they're forced to sell the team, fan apathy will continue to grow.
