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http://www.sacbee.com/content/sports/story/11365608p-12280168c.html
New expectations accompanied the team's long-awaited success
By Mark Kreidler -- Bee Sports Columnist
Published 2:15 am PST Tuesday, November 9, 2004
Allow me to go ahead and quote directly from the horror show itself, if for no other reason than pure entertainment value.On the evening of the first game of the rest of my life as an occasional Kings scribbler, I sidled up to the new head coach and asked what needed to happen for his team to be a playoff contender.
"Here's the way it would have to go," Garry St. Jean replied. "No injuries.
"Walt Williams has a great year. Then we have a shot at the final playoff spot."
The year was 1992. Williams wound up scoring 17 points per game as a rookie.
Sacramento lost a collective 150 player-games to injuries. The starting center was Duane Causwell, then Causie got hurt. You couldn't tell.
The best player was Mitch Richmond. Final tally: 25-57.
And congratulations, Kroger: You're at the top of the Delta pledge class.
I mention all this not to frighten the young children in the audience, who probably are too busy debating whether Rick "Six Straight Playoff Teams" Adelman should be fired to really notice, but rather to explain how representative of the era 25-57 truly was. Bear with me.
Trying hard to fall asleep one recent midnight, I began thumbing through some old Kings media guides and came up with the following: 29, 24, 27, 23, 25, 29, 25, 28.
Wayman Tisdale's resting pulse? Nope: Sacramento's victory totals for the seasons beginning in the fall of 1986 and ending in the spring of 1994, just before 1994-95, when one of Geoff Petrie's early-incarnation squads jumped all the way up to 39-43 and missed the playoffs by a game.
The next year, that same sub-mediocre record was good enough for the eighth seed in the Western Conference and a first-round playoff dispatch by Seattle, after which the Kings promptly descended to 34-48, 27-55 and Stop Me Before I Weep Again.
Then things got better. It happened just ... that ... quuuick.
It's hard to review the carnage of the Kings' 20 seasons in Sacramento without coming off as a common scold toward the winner-come-lately faction of the current fan base. That's a task I'll leave to the true veterans who've been here longer than I - and after all, they do the "you don't know what it was like" thing better than anyone else. They lived and bled it. It's all theirs.
Still, and unquestionably, the conversation has changed. And let us count the ways:
People now discuss the Kings in terms of their playoff seed. They once (and for a long, long time) discussed the Kings in terms of their lottery seed.
They now wonder whether a guy like Chris Webber can take them all the way to an NBA championship. They once wondered, and I am not making this up, whether a guy like Anthony Bonner might be the key to finally getting to the postseason.
They clamor for more playing time for their favorite benchies: Hedo Turkoglu, Gerald Wallace, Bobby Jackson (before he became essentially the 5.5th man).
They once clamored for more Trevor Wilson. Any questions?
It wasn't just bad for all those years, it was absolutely hopeless. It was like trying to find something inside a hallway closet with the door closed. And sunglasses on. At night. In a windowless building. (I'm depressing myself.)
When people argue Adelman's effectiveness now, it's certainly no less valid than a conversation about St. Jean might have been 10 years ago. But the context - my heavens, the context.
The coaching, back in the day, was debated, but in that kind of halfhearted, does-it-even-really-matter? kind of way. Sure, you could bounce Dick Motta in favor of Rex Hughes, or Hughes for St. Jean, or the Saint for Eddie Jordan, but to what end? Jerry Reynolds seemed to coach the team most of the time, anyway, since he was the guy the organization always turned to when an old coach needed to be leaving or the new victim hadn't yet been hired.
It was pretty acidic, and that's in a town that was convening sellout after sellout at the Old Arco (if you have to ask, consider yourself an interloper) and then the New Arco. The New Arco is the one that is now deemed too old, for those keeping score at home.
To be a Kings fan back then, it seemed, was to have love but no hope, enthusiasm but no particular optimism. Sacramentans got ribbed all the time about being denim-clad hayseeds, but ignorant they weren't: They knew Bill Russell was killing the franchise at the time Russell was killing it.
But, shoot, let's not pick on Russ; after all, when a team is losing nearly 60 games much of the time, you could point a finger pretty much any which way and land on someone to share the blame. The ownership was in tatters, the salary cap was a crusher, the rosters seemed to be one collective Pervis Ellison. It never got better until the miraculous day when it finally did.
And now they speak of that day, the lockout-shortened season of 1998-99 that officially began the renaissance in Sacramento, as if it, too, might be on the verge of nostalgia. Kings fans may someday find themselves longingly missing it. Goodness knows they won't miss most of the rest.
New expectations accompanied the team's long-awaited success
By Mark Kreidler -- Bee Sports Columnist
Published 2:15 am PST Tuesday, November 9, 2004
Allow me to go ahead and quote directly from the horror show itself, if for no other reason than pure entertainment value.On the evening of the first game of the rest of my life as an occasional Kings scribbler, I sidled up to the new head coach and asked what needed to happen for his team to be a playoff contender.
"Here's the way it would have to go," Garry St. Jean replied. "No injuries.
"Walt Williams has a great year. Then we have a shot at the final playoff spot."
The year was 1992. Williams wound up scoring 17 points per game as a rookie.
Sacramento lost a collective 150 player-games to injuries. The starting center was Duane Causwell, then Causie got hurt. You couldn't tell.
The best player was Mitch Richmond. Final tally: 25-57.
And congratulations, Kroger: You're at the top of the Delta pledge class.
I mention all this not to frighten the young children in the audience, who probably are too busy debating whether Rick "Six Straight Playoff Teams" Adelman should be fired to really notice, but rather to explain how representative of the era 25-57 truly was. Bear with me.
Trying hard to fall asleep one recent midnight, I began thumbing through some old Kings media guides and came up with the following: 29, 24, 27, 23, 25, 29, 25, 28.
Wayman Tisdale's resting pulse? Nope: Sacramento's victory totals for the seasons beginning in the fall of 1986 and ending in the spring of 1994, just before 1994-95, when one of Geoff Petrie's early-incarnation squads jumped all the way up to 39-43 and missed the playoffs by a game.
The next year, that same sub-mediocre record was good enough for the eighth seed in the Western Conference and a first-round playoff dispatch by Seattle, after which the Kings promptly descended to 34-48, 27-55 and Stop Me Before I Weep Again.
Then things got better. It happened just ... that ... quuuick.
It's hard to review the carnage of the Kings' 20 seasons in Sacramento without coming off as a common scold toward the winner-come-lately faction of the current fan base. That's a task I'll leave to the true veterans who've been here longer than I - and after all, they do the "you don't know what it was like" thing better than anyone else. They lived and bled it. It's all theirs.
Still, and unquestionably, the conversation has changed. And let us count the ways:
People now discuss the Kings in terms of their playoff seed. They once (and for a long, long time) discussed the Kings in terms of their lottery seed.
They now wonder whether a guy like Chris Webber can take them all the way to an NBA championship. They once wondered, and I am not making this up, whether a guy like Anthony Bonner might be the key to finally getting to the postseason.
They clamor for more playing time for their favorite benchies: Hedo Turkoglu, Gerald Wallace, Bobby Jackson (before he became essentially the 5.5th man).
They once clamored for more Trevor Wilson. Any questions?
It wasn't just bad for all those years, it was absolutely hopeless. It was like trying to find something inside a hallway closet with the door closed. And sunglasses on. At night. In a windowless building. (I'm depressing myself.)
When people argue Adelman's effectiveness now, it's certainly no less valid than a conversation about St. Jean might have been 10 years ago. But the context - my heavens, the context.
The coaching, back in the day, was debated, but in that kind of halfhearted, does-it-even-really-matter? kind of way. Sure, you could bounce Dick Motta in favor of Rex Hughes, or Hughes for St. Jean, or the Saint for Eddie Jordan, but to what end? Jerry Reynolds seemed to coach the team most of the time, anyway, since he was the guy the organization always turned to when an old coach needed to be leaving or the new victim hadn't yet been hired.
It was pretty acidic, and that's in a town that was convening sellout after sellout at the Old Arco (if you have to ask, consider yourself an interloper) and then the New Arco. The New Arco is the one that is now deemed too old, for those keeping score at home.
To be a Kings fan back then, it seemed, was to have love but no hope, enthusiasm but no particular optimism. Sacramentans got ribbed all the time about being denim-clad hayseeds, but ignorant they weren't: They knew Bill Russell was killing the franchise at the time Russell was killing it.
But, shoot, let's not pick on Russ; after all, when a team is losing nearly 60 games much of the time, you could point a finger pretty much any which way and land on someone to share the blame. The ownership was in tatters, the salary cap was a crusher, the rosters seemed to be one collective Pervis Ellison. It never got better until the miraculous day when it finally did.
And now they speak of that day, the lockout-shortened season of 1998-99 that officially began the renaissance in Sacramento, as if it, too, might be on the verge of nostalgia. Kings fans may someday find themselves longingly missing it. Goodness knows they won't miss most of the rest.
.
