President Barack Obama is busy because he has one of those crap jobs in which nobody ever leaves you alone or misses a chance to irritate the hell out of you.
Not that we feel bad for him, mind you. He knew the gig was a steaming vat of detritus when he took it.
But through a spokesman, he said Wednesday that in 204 days, he would like to pursue a post-Presidential career joining a group of cash cows in a very exclusive herd.
He would like, as it turns out, to be part of an NBA ownership group. And you know what team I thought of right away? The same one you did. The Sacramento Kings.
Obama wraps up his current job in 29 weeks, not that he's counting the days, hours, minutes and fractions of seconds. And when the aptly named press spokesman Josh Earnest said the President would "potentially, if the opportunity arose, under the right circumstances" be interested in an opportunity, the first thought was that he would be joining a group of megawealthy Republicans who would view his presence among them as a rash-inducing nightmare.
This is not the first time he has offered himself up for a chair; he said the same thing to then-ESPN-and-now-HBO employee/maven Bill Simmons a year ago. But now that he has a little extra time for retirement planning, he can think out loud a little more.
And so can we.
Being a transplanted Chicagoan, he would probably prefer a piece of the Bulls, but owner Jerry Reinsdorf has already told his heirs to sell the Chicago White Sox before they sell any piece of the Bulls. So that's probably a closed shop.
He can also probably rule out any piece of the Orlando Magic, where owner Rich DeVos donated to nearly every Republican candidate (though not Big Daddy Donnie Trump), or San Antonio, where Peter Holt tossed $2,700 to Texas governor Rick Perry. Indiana (Herb Simon), Oklahoma City (Clay Bennett), New Orleans (Tom Benson), Atlanta (Mike Gearon), Cleveland (Dan Gilbert) and Brooklyn (Bruce Ratner) also tossed money in to other Republican candidates.
Simon and Ratner, though, also donated to Hillary Clinton's campaign, so they're more bet-hedgers than ideologues, and Milwaukee's Peter Feigin donated to Clinton's campaign as well.
As did (trumpets, please) Vivek Ranadive. Twenty-seven-hundred bucks worth of support, which is .00000385 of his net worth.
So we extrapolate. The Kings are the wackiest ship in Adam Silver's navy. Ranadive has some fractious partners, and could use an ally with some throw-weight for the next investors' meeting. And Obama is one hell of a grand distraction.
Plus, the Kings may have a new arena but they're still operating under the same M.O. An M.O. that someone of Obama's intellectual and image-based heft could only help.
Now this would mean that Obama's next job would be going from the leader of the free world to the NBA's version of Game of Thrones.
And who wouldn't want that, if only for the entertainment value?
Watching him at courtside making sense of the Boogie Cousins Experience would be worth it. Hearing Malia and Sasha peppering head coach Dave Joerger at pregame pressers with insistent questions like "Why doesn't Jaylen Brown play more?" would be must-see TV (on CSN California, because I pimp for those who pay me). Mic-ing up Michelle for that special moment when she's chewing out Bill Spooner for missing that illegal defense call against Karl-Anthony Towns is what we can all agree is first-class entertainment.
And watching the members of the Secret Service detail suffer through the Sixers game and making mental notes to put in their papers as soon as the Kings are eliminated from the playoffs – well, it's YouTube-able, is all we'll say.
Will this happen? Probably not. If the President has a choice, he probably wouldn't make it Sacramento, if only because as the state capital it is crawling with politicians, and Obama has seen enough politicians crawl in his day.
But choices aren't unilateral. Potential owners have to take what's available. Steve Ballmer was going to own a piece of the Seattle Kings when it looked like the team was moving to Washington, and now he's paid nearly 10 times as much to run the Los Angeles Clippers.
And we're hoping that Obama's open window leads him to Sacramento. If nothing else, he can do the pressers general manager Vlade Divac doesn't want to do – which is probably all of them. I hear he can spin a yarn or two – maybe talk Kevin Durant into doing what no sane man does willingly or eagerly.
Become a King.
