Cowbell Kingdom Podcast Ep 83: Think Big Sacramento Executive Director Kunal Merchant

With the clock ticking on Sacramento’s bid to keep the Kings, Cowbell Kingdom touches base with Kunal Merchant, Kevin Johnson‘s right-hand man and executive director of Think Big Sacramento.

Excerpt

Merchant on how difficult this is to put this deal together in a short-time frame:

You have to remember we did a lot of work to get to this point.  What we did two years ago was harder than what we did last year.  And what we did last year was harder than what we have to do this year.  I’m not saying it’s easy by any means.  We still have a lot of challenges in front of us.  But to block a relocation in a way that had never had happened before two years ago was an unprecedented thing to do and then you start to build credibility.  And then nobody thought that we’d be able to pull off the arena deal and our community did that.  So, we have a lot of experience from playing in this triple-overtime game I guess.

Even though these are tight timelines, there’s a lot of people who’ve been working together for a long time and there’s a lot of information and expertise and  relationships that has carried over from previous cycles of this thing.  That’s why it’s not going to be easy, it’s not going to go seamlessly, but we have a great team in all seats at the table and they are grinding and they’re working real hard and we’re gonna get there.

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Music Credit: Ronald Jenkees – Guitar Sound

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