The Maloofs are out. According to the Sacramento Bee, the brothers came out of hiding long enough to to sell the Kings to a group for $535 million. The group, led by Silicon Valley billionaire and Golden State Warriors minority owner Vivek Ranadive, will be keeping the team in Sacramento. The deal is to be formally…

The Maloofs recently announced they have a "Plan B" up their sleeves if the NBA does not approve the latest offer made by the Seattle-based ownership group with whom they have been negotiating the sale of the Sacramento Kings: they're going to make things ugly.

Chris Hansen, whose bid to buy the Kings and move them to Seattle was thwarted by unanimous vote of the NBA's relocation committee, has upped his offer significantly. He's willing to pay $65 million more for the Maloofs' shares in the Kings, an amount that would put the franchise's valuation at a healthy $625 million.

When the prospective ownership group led by Vivek Ranadive managed to convince the NBA's Relocation and Finance Committee to keep the Kings in Sacramento, we pointed out that the main incentive driving the NBA's decision was most definitely the city of Sacramento's willingness to build a new publicly financed stadium. …

So that's that. After three years of very public courtship from Seattle, three years of fans preparing for the worst, the Kings will remain in Sacramento. Yet it's the NBA that got everything it could have wanted from this whole ghoulish process.

The optimistic Seattle ownership group led by Chris Hansen has released some mock-ups of what the interior of a new arena might look like, and huh—it looks a lot more crowded than the last time the Sonics played in Seattle.

The owners insisted they had no plans to move the team. That's what the Maloofs swore, raising their right hand as their left hand worked deals with buyers first from Anaheim, then Virginia Beach, then Seattle. And that's what the owners of the Kansas City Kings maintained 30 years ago, even as they did everything in…

Marc Stein and others are reporting that the Maloofs have agreed to sell a majority stake of the Sacramento Kings to a group that would relocate the team to Seattle by the start of next season. Though something like this has happened before, this time the two parties made it official with more than a handshake:

We should note that this is not actually the new Sodo arena, with which Seattle hopes to lure an NBA franchise; this is only a model. And not a strictly accurate one—unless I misunderstand the load-bearing properties of butter, I do not believe the inside is hollow and contains a little butter court with little butter…

Earlier this week, the Seattle City Council announced a tentative agreement on a new arena, to be built in the Sodo (south of downtown) neighborhood where Safeco Field and CenturyLink Field already stand. The revised plan is the product of months of negotiation with hedge fund investor Chris Hansen, who's long made it…