1. We just finished three years of daily reporting/commentary on non-basketball topics. What a relief to be able to focus primarily on the sport! (Welp.)

2. We (editorial staff) don't support the proposed initiative or the group pushing it. For a while there, it looked seriously underfunded, so it needed all the publicity it could get. Why would we, a Sacramento Kings blog, give it to them?

3. I was legitimately hoping the whole thing would disappear in a poof of smoke.

That said, Friday's developments were … big. The DowntownArena.org group (which includes Region Builders and Crown Downtown) has been pushing for disclosure from the petition drive on where the funding is coming from. No one seems to know or want to say. Finally this week the arena advocates made a complaint to the Fair Political Practices Commission. That hasn't yet been resolved, but The Bee's digging turned up some pretty incredible information.

Now L&L is a huge firm. And the Maloofs are denying any involvement. But Loeb & Loeb also hasn't made the proper filings with the city or state on who supplied that $80,000 — it's unlikely that the law firm would be funding the project of its own volition — and isn't commenting. So the mere suggestion of Maloofian taint is enough to lead to …

That's a well-known, well-respected local consultant refusing to get that taint on him.

At some point, the source of that $80,000 will be known. I honestly can't totally rule out the possibility that the Maloofs are somehow involved. And that — the mere possibility — is throwing the anti-arena campaign into upheaval. Pretty amazing.

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