RIP Sacramento Kings

Oh how I hope I'm jumping the gun. Kevin Johnson, the former NBA player and current mayor of Sacramento had his attempts to strong arm the city into coughing up tax-payer cash for a new arena rebuffed, has for his last ditch effort an intriguing one. He wants to take the team public like the Packers in the NFL.

The Maloof assholes owners have agreed to sell their 53 percent of the team, along with 12 more percent owned by another minority owner to the Seattle based group intent on bringing a team back to their region.

But the Kings...(sigh)...

They moved to Sacramento around the same time we did, and the logo above is one of my earliest memories of a local team. During this era I was a Laker fan, what with Magic Johnson being himself and taking the league by storm and my mom being from LA. But the Kings were lackluster at best. They did have the coolest away uniforms, though, the powder-blues:

Then some things started to happen. They changed their logo to a more aggressive black and purple look, like the anti-Lakers. They got Tim Hardaway and Mitch Richmond and they started making the playoffs. Then they scored a crazy hit in the form of Peja Stojakavic, a Serbian national who played in the Greek league and was billed as their Michael Jordan. In Sac, he was just an all star.

The Kings became a city of destination for Slavic players. Then, one season with C-Webb and Vlade Divac and Peja and the Kings were in the Conference finals against the Lakers, against the Kobe/Shaq Lakers, pushing them to a decisive game 7, and does anyone remember what happened?

Vlade Divac fouled out in the first seven minutes of the game. There is a neat conspiracy theory about the fix coming in on this game, how David Stern preferred the Lakers in the Finals to the NorCal television market, and the "evidence" is there if you want to believe. It wouldn't be the last time David Stern actively screws Sacramento. The disgraced gambling referee Tim Donaghy claims the game was fixed, but nobody except Kings fans were listening.

And Kings fans in Sacramento are about as crazy and fanatical as any teams fans. Actually, more so. There are no other fans that love their team as much as the fine folks in Sacramento. The Thunder in Oklahoma City are as close as we'll get today, and they're part of the problem that has befallen the Kings in the River City.

The team is one of the oldest teams in the NBA, and for all of its longevity, it has been as rootless as the Celtics and Knicks have been institutions in their cities. The franchise started as the Rochester Royals, one of the three New York State teams (along with the Syracuse Nationals, who became the Philadelphia 76ers):

This previous logo shows that purple wasn't a totally foreign concept to the essence of the Kings. From Rochester they moved to Cincinnati:

And in Cincy they developed, in 1971, the logo that would remain for nearly 25 years:

The very next year the team moved for the third time, and spent a few seasons split between Kansas City and Omaha, Nebraska. Can you imagine an NBA team today splitting their home games between two cities almost 200 miles apart? Are you ready for the Trenton, New Jersey/Germantown, Maryland Pipers?

But now, doesn't Kansas City have a team already called the Royals? What should they call the team?

Now we have the Kings as a name. Eventually they stop heading to Omaha and sty in KC. Does anybody love the Kings? Has anyone ever loved this vagabond team?

Sacramento is the answer to that question. They love the Kings, and like any capitol city that wants attention, a professional major league team in any of the big three sports (hockey counts more in the northern states) certainly makes a city feel important, feel validated.

But in all reality this team has no deep history, no roots. The NBA doesn't really care what the fans want, and never really has. A team that was a symbol of an area, was a community stalwart for more than 40 years, had a fan base that was nearly as loyal, and was a symbol for the dreams of countless Reservation kids was allowed to be sold to a dude who stole them away from that community.

And now that owner, the owner who was disingenuous about his plans to keep the team in that community and eventually moved them to his town, is the head of the NBA's relocation committee. That team is the Thunder, and the community that had its heart ripped out was Seattle.

A deal has been reached. If the NBA doesn't let this last effort to take the Kings public (sadly this will NEVER happen--franchise ownership in major league sports in America is scared club), there will be a green and gold Supersonics team playing in Seattle next year, and Arco Arena will be dark 41 new nights a year.

On the one side, Kings fans can thank Clayton Bennett and his jacking of Seattle. That left one market very hungry for a team. Then you can also thank the Maloofs, who've had their eye on moving the team ever since I can remember living in Sac. First it was Las Vegas, but Stern said, "Ehhh, nah." Then they tried to get Sac to build them an arena, and the city said, "Nope." Then, most recently, the threat was that the team was heading back to Kansas City, or heading down here to the Southland and living in Anaheim, or, now the most likely and obvious destination, the dreaded rebranding of the new Sonics.

The NBA isn't on schedule to expand anytime soon, so maybe the Grizzlies may need a new home before too long.

One of the sad parts of this is if it goes down and the Kings become the new Sonics, the franchise will reclaim all the stats and history of the Seattle Supersonics, a history that the Thunder left behind. The Thunder, with their great team, will be building history like an expansion team, while the Sonics play in Seattle and go on and retire Gary Payton's number. The folks in Sac?

They'll be left with less than three decades of memories, and the legacy of one of the oldest franchises will be set in lucite and preserved forever. There'll literally be no more Kings. A franchise consigned to the books, like the Chicago Zephyrs or Decatur Stayleys.

And, on top of all of that, what else does Sacramento have, sports-wise? Seattle has the Seahawks and Mariners; Kansas City has the Royals and Chiefs; Cincinnati has the Reds and Bengals. Omaha and Rochester don't have other teams, but the age is different nowadays. At least Oklahoma City is pretty close to Norman and the OU Sooners football. Sac will be left with memories.

Say, in a few years, the Grizzlies have a need to move, and there's structure in Sacramento to bring in a new team and the deal gets made. Do we think that team will be renamed the Kings? Is the legacy in Sac that strong?

[[Updated some of the Kings logos. Thanks Chris Creamer!]]