Remembering the Sacramento Kings at Their Finest
The Sacramento Kings may be relocated, but the magnificent teams of old will not be forgotten.
The Sacramento Kings may not be in Sacramento come the 2011-2012 season. There is a move to Anaheim in the works, which is painful for those who have followed their team through the years, including me.
I watched Sacramento Head Coach Paul Westphal give their fans an ovation at the end of their final home game against the Los Angeles Lakers. I watched their announcers struggle to keep their composure during the final minutes of their broadcast. Sacramento hasn’t been anything special the past couple years and their fan-base has decreased but there was a time when the Kings were the talk of the NBA.
I wasn’t a die-hard fan of the Kings in the early 2000s but I loved basketball so I caught them every chance I had. They were at their peak before I reached my teens—and were they ever fun to watch. Doug Christie, Hedo Turkoglu, and Peja Stojakovic on the wings. Chris Webber and Vlade Divac on the front-line. Mike Bibby and Bobby Jackson sharing duties running the point.
They were as entertaining as can be.
They had an attitude about them, one that is reminiscent of some of the great teams in the 1980s. They knew they could beat anyone and, when on the road, they would let their fans know. Bibby would taunt opposing crowds; so would Webber and Christie. They were flashy, playing at times with a streetball mentality that played to their advantage more than not.
They were robbed in the 2002 Western Conference Finals by rogue referee Tim Donaghy. For Kings fans that has to still sting, given just how good they were that season. Stojakovic had one of the prettiest shooting strokes I have ever seen. And he was perhaps the only player who just went about his business. Everyone else made themselves known either showing up opponents, throwing alley-oops or dishing dazzling assists.
Man oh man were they good passers. Divac was the head honcho in that department, with the deftness not expected to be in the arsenal of a 7’1″ 250-pound center. Flip passes out of double teams, behind-the-back passes, wrap-arounds, or just whipped bullets to players coming off screens and curls. You name it and Divac could do it.
Bibby, Webber, and Christie weren’t chopped liver either. They had a similar ability to find teammates in a ‘How did he do that?’ fashion and befuddle defenders in the process.
They were touted prior to the 2001-2002 season as “The Greatest Show On Court” by Sports Illustrated—and they were just that. They won their first playoff series in 20 years that postseason, then took the league by storm by winning 61 games during the 2002-2003 season. That year they went an incredible 36-5 at home. In my mind, the Portland Trail Blazers have the most passionate fans now. The Kings did then.
Sacramento won their second straight division title in compiling those 61 wins but they weren’t the same after Donaghy helped the Lakers win in the Western Conference Finals. They were still tremendously successful and didn’t lose their excitement, but their win total declined thereafter: those 61 wins turned into 55, then 51, then 44, and 34.
The team broke up over that time but their increasingly terrible defense played an integral role in their demise, as head coach Rick Adelman’s philosophy caught up with him.
In the 2003 playoffs Webber suffered a knee injury, forcing him to undergo micro-fracture knee surgery and miss nearly a year’s time. He still produced until his departure from Sacramento following the 2005-2006 season but his decline coincided with the team’s.
All good things must come to an end, as the saying goes, but it was hard to watch the Kings lose their touch, lose their core, lose their razzle-dazzle and lose their ‘we can beat anyone, anytime, anywhere’ attitude.
Their teams of the early 2000s are considered to be one of the best to never win a title and that cannot be refuted. After those eventful teams were broken up, with Christie, Jackson, Webber, Turkoglu and Stojakovic all traded, the Kings went south and are now in the midst of a youth movement built around talented guard Tyreke Evans.
Sacramento wasn’t worth watching anymore, yet the once constantly abuzz Arco Arena was packed to the gills for their home finale against Los Angeles, an eventual loss. The once tremendously passionate fans didn’t want to have to feel Seattle’s pain, fearful that professional basketball may be no more in their great city. The relocation isn’t a done deal, however.
Billionaire Ron Burkle, who owns the NHL’s Pittsburgh Penguins, has formed a group in efforts to keep the Kings in Sacramento. Webber, now a terrific NBA analyst for TNT and NBA TV, has done the same. Mayor and former NBA player Kevin Johnson is putting up a fight as well. One can hope that any of these three attempts will be successful, considering how beloved the franchise is and how bright the team’s future is.
There is the likelihood that the current owners, Joe and Gavin Maloof, will be able to conjure up the money necessary to relocate the team. That’s why the announcers, Westphal and the fans were so emotional. Times are tough now and the what the future holds for Sacramento basketball may be depressing.
Yet, they have the Kings of old to look back on, with the memories of the aforementioned seven that are undoubtedly still fresh.
