Fadeaway World is back with another installment in our series of NBA franchises moving to different cities and their reasons for the move. We last covered the Buffalo Braves and their move to San Diego and then to Los Angeles to become the Clippers.
In this week’s installment, we will take a close look at why the Kansas City Kings packed up and moved to Sacramento.
The Kings Franchise Gets Its Start As The Rochester Seagrams
The Sacramento Kings of the NBA are having a great year so far, as they are in the playoff hunt this season. The last time the Kings reached the playoffs was in 2006 when they lost 4-2 to the San Antonio Spurs.
Most NBA fans know the Kings played basketball in Kansas City, Missouri, but did you know the franchise was founded in Rochester, New York? Yes, the franchise was founded by Les Harrison in 1923 and was known as the Rochester Seagrams.
The Seagrams were a semi-professional team to start out and would remain that way until 1945, when the team joined the National Basketball League (NBL) and were renamed the Rochester Royals. The Royals would find success immediately as they won the NBL championship in their first season (1945–46).
The Royals also had one of the first African American players on their roster during the 1946-47 season. The player’s name was William “Dolly” King, and he played on an all-white team a year before baseball great Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier on April 15, 1947.
The team would play in the NBL until 1948, when they moved over to the other professional basketball league at the time: the Basketball Association of America (BAA). The BAA was the league that would become the NBA, and any championship won in the BAA is counted as an NBA championship.
This means the Royals’ 1946 NBL title doesn’t transfer over to the NBA. But Royals fans didn’t have to sweat too much about it because the Royals would win the 1951 championship, and the league was officially known as the NBA in 1951.
The 1951 Royals were led by Hall of Famer Arnie Risen, who led the team in scoring during the Finals (21.7), and four other Hall of Famers in Bob Davies, Bobby Wanzer, Al Cervi, and Red Holzman. The Royals were coached by Les Harrison, who was also the team’s owner, as well.
The Rochester Royals defeated the New York Knicks 4-3 in the NBA Finals. This title would be the only championship the franchise would have won.
The team saw success in Rochester but still struggled to make a profit. This led to the team moving to Cincinnati, Ohio, where they would now be known as the Cincinnati Royals. This move occurred in 1957.
The Royals would play in Cincinnati from 1957 to 1972. Although they never won a championship, the team did feature one of the greatest players in league history: Oscar Robertson.
The Big O won the Rookie of the Year award during the 1960-61 season. The very next season, Robertson became the first player to average a triple-double for an entire season when he averaged 30.8 points, 12.5 rebounds, and 11.4 assists per game.
The 1963-64 season was the best year the franchise had in Cincinnati. The Royals finished with their best record in Cincinnati, which was a 55-25 record.
For their players, Robertson won his only career MVP award, and Jerry Lucas won the Rookie of the Year award. The Royals would make it to the Eastern Division Finals, where they fell 4-1 to the eventual champion, Boston Celtics.
Businessman Louis Jacobs bought the Royals in 1963 when former owner Thomas E. Wood passed away. In 1968, Jacobs passed away, and ownership now belonged to his sons, Max and Jeremy Jacobs.
The Jacobs brothers first moved the franchise to two cities, Kansas City, Missouri, and Omaha, Nebraska, in 1972. The following year, the brothers sold the franchise to a group of businessmen from Kansas City, and the team was renamed the Kansas City-Omaha Kings.
The Kansas City Kings And Their Move To Sacramento
The Kansas City-Omaha Kings split their home games between Kansas City and Omaha, hence the team name. They also changed from the Royals to the Kings because of the Kansas City Royals baseball team.
The Jacobs brothers sold the team to the group from Kansas City because attendance was low for games in Cincinnati, and the new group was hoping this wouldn’t happen in their cities. The team would play in both Kansas City and Omaha for three seasons, making the playoffs once in the 1974-75 season.
By the 1975-76 season, the team only played their home games in Kansas City and were now simply known as the Kansas City Kings. The team, while in Kansas City, struggled to find success, as they did in Cincinnati.
The Kings made the playoffs five times while playing in Kansas City. Their two best years were the 1978-79 season, where their 48-34 record led to them being the Midwest Division Champions. The team would lose 4-1 in the Western Conference Semifinals to the Phoenix Suns.
The Kansas City Kings’ next best season came in the 1980-81 season, where, despite finishing with a 40-42 record, the team reached the Western Conference Finals. There, the Kings would lose to the Houston Rockets, 4-1.
The Kansas City Kings, like their Cincinnati Royals days, struggled to attract fans to games. This led to financial hardship, and the team struggled to find sponsors, as well.
All of this led to the downfall of the Kings playing in Kansas City. Some of the problems the team struggled with attendance could be the lack of a star player on the roster.
Aside from Tiny Archibald, who played for the Kings (he started on the Cincinnati Royals in 1970) until 1976, the Kings’ best player while being in Kansas City was probably Scott Wedman. No offense to Wedman, who was a fine player in his own right, but he wasn’t a name that brought fans into the arena.
On June 8, 1983, an investment group from Sacramento bought the Kings. The immediate buzz around the league was the new ownership group was going to move their franchise to Sacramento.
Despite Kansas City councilman Frank Palermo’s efforts to try and keep the franchise in his city, the new ownership group did, in fact, move their franchise to Sacramento. The Kings moved to Sacramento in 1985, where they remain to this day.
The Kings have not won an NBA championship in Sacramento, nor have they made it to the NBA Finals. But the team had seen success, especially the early 2000s Kings, led by Chris Webber, Mike Bibby, and Vlade Divac.
The 2001-02 Sacramento Kings, who went 61-21 during the season, the best in the franchise’s history, famously lost the 2002 Western Conference Finals in seven games to the Los Angeles Lakers. There have been reports that stated the referees cheated the Kings out in the series and, in particular, Game 6.
The Sacramento Kings are currently on a 16-year playoff drought, which is the longest in NBA history. Still, the team looks promising this season, as they are led by two young stars in De’Aaron Fox and Domantas Sabonis.
Will the Kings end their historic playoff drought and bring some playoff excitement back to the city of Sacramento? It looks like this statement will become a reality this season.
