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http://www.sacbee.com/content/sports/basketball/kings/story/12041705p-12911782c.html
Big-time love affair began with this team
Capital warmly welcomed the Kings in 1985-86
By Joe Davidson -- Bee Staff Writer
Published 2:15 am PST Saturday, January 15, 2005
These were the Kings of Reggie Theus, Eddie Johnson and Mike Woodson, a prolific guard trio that went by the names "GQ," "EJ" and "Woody."
The muscle and scowls came from Mark Olberding, who was tough enough to chew on nails and throw elbows into the chests of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Moses Malone. The leaper was Terry Tyler, a gap-toothed, grinning veteran from Detroit. The future, seemingly, was in the wide-bodied frame of a big redhead, Joe Kleine. The owner was a flannel-wearing, ambitious fellow named Gregg Lukenbill.
Home was a tidy little warehouse that stood alone in a North Natomas field - Arco Arena, which rocked like a college field house found in the 1950s Midwest.
Twenty years ago, the Kings debuted in Sacramento after years of a steady westerly shift, from Rochester, N.Y., to Cincinnati to Kansas City, Mo., and finally to the California state capital. Their arrival cemented Sacramento as something to behold on the athletic scene, bigger than the Solons and bigger than the Pig Bowl. And that first Kings season was a wondrous maiden voyage, a love affair between players and fans that seems so ancient and foreign across today's NBA landscape amid security concerns and greed.
No one charged $40 for autographs then. Players didn't roar off in large vehicles with tinted windows when fans came up to say hello in the parking lot. And today, members of that Kings team will sign autographs and mug for pictures - for free - at the current Arco Arena starting at 2 p.m. They will also be recognized at halftime of the 7 p.m. game against the Los Angeles Clippers.
"That first year was the year," said Kings director of player personnel Jerry Reynolds, whose first NBA job was as an assistant coach that season. "It was like a great marriage. Everything was so new and exciting. And the Kings changed the image of the city. I think a lot of people always felt downtrodden compared to San Francisco and Los Angeles. There was never a reason to feel that way, but it was true.
"But with the Kings, Sacramento was able to compete against New York, Chicago and Los Angeles. It was something special."
First, there was the adjustment for the players. Kansas City fans were apathetic to the Kings. Former coach Cotton Fitzsimmons once suggested the team was the fourth-most popular in the region behind the Chiefs, the Royals and golfer Tom Watson.
And where the heck was Sacramento? Theus, a guy with the GQ look who was raised in sunny Southern California, offered a curt response when initially informed the Kings would relocate West: "Sacramento ain't California!"
But a funny thing happened. Late in the 1984-85 season, the Kings stopped by Sacramento after a game at Golden State. Some 5,000 fans greeted the team at the airport. Thousands packed into American River College to watch them practice.
"It was wild, like a concert," said LaSalle Thompson, then the Kings' starting center and still a Sacramento resident. "The fans in Kansas City didn't care anymore. The fans here were rabid."
The Kings started 9-22 that season, but raucous Arco was bursting at the seams. The 10,333 who wedged inside the arena didn't seem to really care when the Milwaukee Bucks roared to a 34-point lead during one game. They cheered everything.
They offered standing ovations to such NBA stars as Abdul-Jabbar, Julius Erving and Larry Bird, then proceeded to rattle their eardrums. It only got louder when the Kings got better. Coach Phil Johnson tinkered with the lineup, Woodson ignored his bad knee and the push was on.
The Kings were 11-0 on Tuesday nights, a quirky stat that drew national attention, but the real test during that streak came when the eventual NBA champion Boston Celtics visited town Feb. 11, 1986. Bird, the league MVP that season and an 88.6 percent career free-throw shooter, missed two foul-shot attempts late to seal a 105-100 Kings victory and later that night ponied up his lost bet wages with brews to Reynolds, a fellow French Lick, Ind., native. For years, Bird said that Arco scene was the loudest he had ever encountered.
"That old Arco, we'll never see anything like it again," said current Los Angeles Lakers assistant Frank Hamblen, who was then a Kings assistant. "That crowd carried us to the playoffs."
The Kings finished 37-45 and inched into the postseason. That they were swept by the NBA Finals-bound Houston Rockets in three first-round games hardly seemed to matter. The Kings were here.
The future appeared bright. The team averaged 108.8 points, led by a young core of Johnson (18.7), Theus (18.3), Woodson (15.6), Thompson (12.8) and Thorpe (11.9).
But the Kings' future was altered on opening night, Oct. 25, 1985, when the Clippers came to town (hence, the reunion feel tonight). Two bad things happened. The Clippers won 108-104, making for a downer for thousands who had marched in wearing tuxedos, and Derek Smith torched the Kings for 36 points.
If Kings management hadn't already been a bit enamored of Smith, they were salivating at the prospects of acquiring him by this time.
After the season, general manager Joe Axelson made the most vilified, crippling trade in the Kings' Sacramento tenure, shipping Woodson, Drew and a No. 1 draft pick for Smith, Franklin Edwards and Junior Bridgeman.
The team learned years later the Clippers didn't intend to match any free-agent offers for Smith, meaning the Kings didn't have to sell their soul to acquire him.
"I think Axelson panicked, because he wanted Derek so bad," Thompson said.
"It killed our team. You can lay that deal on Joe's lap. We had a great thing going, great chemistry, good team ..."
Smith was a bust, slowed by knee injuries and an inability to get along with teammates. Before long, the original Sacramento Kings team was trimmed away by trades and cuts. The Kings didn't make the playoffs for 10 more seasons.
Kleine found out he was traded to Boston in 1989, when he was plucked out of the delivery room, where his wife, Dana, was giving birth to their first child.
"It was an overwhelming day," Kleine said from Fayetteville, Ark., where he owns a barbecue restaurant and lives with Dana and their four children. "I hated to leave.
"I'll always remember that first year and how great the fans were and how loyal they were. Even when we played awful, terrible basketball years later, those fans were still there. Everything would change - players, coaches, general managers - but not the fans. "The biggest disappointment for the original Kings is we could never give the fans something real special back."
Big-time love affair began with this team
Capital warmly welcomed the Kings in 1985-86
By Joe Davidson -- Bee Staff Writer
Published 2:15 am PST Saturday, January 15, 2005
These were the Kings of Reggie Theus, Eddie Johnson and Mike Woodson, a prolific guard trio that went by the names "GQ," "EJ" and "Woody."
The muscle and scowls came from Mark Olberding, who was tough enough to chew on nails and throw elbows into the chests of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Moses Malone. The leaper was Terry Tyler, a gap-toothed, grinning veteran from Detroit. The future, seemingly, was in the wide-bodied frame of a big redhead, Joe Kleine. The owner was a flannel-wearing, ambitious fellow named Gregg Lukenbill.
Home was a tidy little warehouse that stood alone in a North Natomas field - Arco Arena, which rocked like a college field house found in the 1950s Midwest.
Twenty years ago, the Kings debuted in Sacramento after years of a steady westerly shift, from Rochester, N.Y., to Cincinnati to Kansas City, Mo., and finally to the California state capital. Their arrival cemented Sacramento as something to behold on the athletic scene, bigger than the Solons and bigger than the Pig Bowl. And that first Kings season was a wondrous maiden voyage, a love affair between players and fans that seems so ancient and foreign across today's NBA landscape amid security concerns and greed.
No one charged $40 for autographs then. Players didn't roar off in large vehicles with tinted windows when fans came up to say hello in the parking lot. And today, members of that Kings team will sign autographs and mug for pictures - for free - at the current Arco Arena starting at 2 p.m. They will also be recognized at halftime of the 7 p.m. game against the Los Angeles Clippers.
"That first year was the year," said Kings director of player personnel Jerry Reynolds, whose first NBA job was as an assistant coach that season. "It was like a great marriage. Everything was so new and exciting. And the Kings changed the image of the city. I think a lot of people always felt downtrodden compared to San Francisco and Los Angeles. There was never a reason to feel that way, but it was true.
"But with the Kings, Sacramento was able to compete against New York, Chicago and Los Angeles. It was something special."
First, there was the adjustment for the players. Kansas City fans were apathetic to the Kings. Former coach Cotton Fitzsimmons once suggested the team was the fourth-most popular in the region behind the Chiefs, the Royals and golfer Tom Watson.
And where the heck was Sacramento? Theus, a guy with the GQ look who was raised in sunny Southern California, offered a curt response when initially informed the Kings would relocate West: "Sacramento ain't California!"
But a funny thing happened. Late in the 1984-85 season, the Kings stopped by Sacramento after a game at Golden State. Some 5,000 fans greeted the team at the airport. Thousands packed into American River College to watch them practice.
"It was wild, like a concert," said LaSalle Thompson, then the Kings' starting center and still a Sacramento resident. "The fans in Kansas City didn't care anymore. The fans here were rabid."
The Kings started 9-22 that season, but raucous Arco was bursting at the seams. The 10,333 who wedged inside the arena didn't seem to really care when the Milwaukee Bucks roared to a 34-point lead during one game. They cheered everything.
They offered standing ovations to such NBA stars as Abdul-Jabbar, Julius Erving and Larry Bird, then proceeded to rattle their eardrums. It only got louder when the Kings got better. Coach Phil Johnson tinkered with the lineup, Woodson ignored his bad knee and the push was on.
The Kings were 11-0 on Tuesday nights, a quirky stat that drew national attention, but the real test during that streak came when the eventual NBA champion Boston Celtics visited town Feb. 11, 1986. Bird, the league MVP that season and an 88.6 percent career free-throw shooter, missed two foul-shot attempts late to seal a 105-100 Kings victory and later that night ponied up his lost bet wages with brews to Reynolds, a fellow French Lick, Ind., native. For years, Bird said that Arco scene was the loudest he had ever encountered.
"That old Arco, we'll never see anything like it again," said current Los Angeles Lakers assistant Frank Hamblen, who was then a Kings assistant. "That crowd carried us to the playoffs."
The Kings finished 37-45 and inched into the postseason. That they were swept by the NBA Finals-bound Houston Rockets in three first-round games hardly seemed to matter. The Kings were here.
The future appeared bright. The team averaged 108.8 points, led by a young core of Johnson (18.7), Theus (18.3), Woodson (15.6), Thompson (12.8) and Thorpe (11.9).
But the Kings' future was altered on opening night, Oct. 25, 1985, when the Clippers came to town (hence, the reunion feel tonight). Two bad things happened. The Clippers won 108-104, making for a downer for thousands who had marched in wearing tuxedos, and Derek Smith torched the Kings for 36 points.
If Kings management hadn't already been a bit enamored of Smith, they were salivating at the prospects of acquiring him by this time.
After the season, general manager Joe Axelson made the most vilified, crippling trade in the Kings' Sacramento tenure, shipping Woodson, Drew and a No. 1 draft pick for Smith, Franklin Edwards and Junior Bridgeman.
The team learned years later the Clippers didn't intend to match any free-agent offers for Smith, meaning the Kings didn't have to sell their soul to acquire him.
"I think Axelson panicked, because he wanted Derek so bad," Thompson said.
"It killed our team. You can lay that deal on Joe's lap. We had a great thing going, great chemistry, good team ..."
Smith was a bust, slowed by knee injuries and an inability to get along with teammates. Before long, the original Sacramento Kings team was trimmed away by trades and cuts. The Kings didn't make the playoffs for 10 more seasons.
Kleine found out he was traded to Boston in 1989, when he was plucked out of the delivery room, where his wife, Dana, was giving birth to their first child.
"It was an overwhelming day," Kleine said from Fayetteville, Ark., where he owns a barbecue restaurant and lives with Dana and their four children. "I hated to leave.
"I'll always remember that first year and how great the fans were and how loyal they were. Even when we played awful, terrible basketball years later, those fans were still there. Everything would change - players, coaches, general managers - but not the fans. "The biggest disappointment for the original Kings is we could never give the fans something real special back."
I think my favorite thing that season, besides making the playoffs, was meeting Joe Kleine at an AM/PM Mini Mart and getting my picture with him.
