It almost didn't happen. At the end of the 2011 season, it looked like the Kings were moving to Anaheim. At the end of the 2013 season, it looked like they would become the new incarnation of the Seattle SuperSonics. But the NBA put the kibosh on both moves, and a deal for a new arena was reached. And so, they have a new home, and are staying in Sacramento for the foreseeable future.
Before You Go. Sacramento is 90 miles inland from San Francisco, so the city's notorious weird weather won't be a factor. The Sacramento Bee website is predicting high 50s for Friday afternoon, and low 40s for the evening. You won't need a jacket before the game, but you'll definitely need one for after.
Sacramento is in the Pacific Time Zone, which is 3 hours behind us. Adjust your timepieces accordingly.
Tickets. Once a guaranteed sellout of 17,317 fans per game, every game, the Kings fell off significantly. However, with their improvement last season, their per-game attendance was 17,268, nearly a sellout. And, with the novelty of a new arena, tickets may be hard to come by.
Tickets in the lower level, the 100 sections, are $164 between the baskets and $133 behind them. In the upper level, the 200 sections, they're $95 and $30.
Getting There. It's 2,824 miles from Times Square to downtown Sacramento. Unless you want to spend 41 hours, plus rest stops making it more like 48 hours, each way, on Interstate 80 (getting off at Interstate 5 and taking that south to downtown), or take an even longer-time trip on Amtrak, you're flying. You should be able to get a flight for under $800, but it won't be nonstop: You'll have to change planes each way, in Denver, Dallas or Phoenix.
If you board Greyhound at Port Authority by 5:00 PM on Tuesday, you'll get to Sacramento at 5:45 PM local time on Friday, which will be in time to get to the game. It's $550 round-trip, but, depending on when you leave, it can be reduced to $482 on advanced purchase. The Greyhound station is at 420 Richards Blvd. at 7th Street. Walking 2 blocks east on Richards will take you to the Township 9 station on the Light Rail Green Line, and from there it's 1 stop to downtown, including the new arena.
To get there in time via Amtrak, you'd have to take the Lake Shore Limited out of Penn Station at 3:40 PM on Tuesday, get to Union Station in Chicago at 9:45 AM on Wednesday, switch to the California Zephyr at 2:00 PM, and arrive in Sacramento at 2:13 PM on Friday. Then you'd have to leave Sacramento at 11:09 in the morning on Saturday, and arrive back in New York at 6:23 PM on Tuesday. Round-trip fare is $647. The Amtrak station is at 4th & I Streets.
Once In the City. Founded in 1850, and the capital of the State of California since 1854 (Monterey had been the capital when California was ruled by Spain and Mexico), Sacramento is home to a little over 500,000 people, and growing.
The California State House
Sacramento still tries to retain a small-town feel, and to resist its connections to far-out places like San Francisco, Oakland, Berkeley, Los Angeles, Hollywood and Venice Beach. Or, as Nancy Reagan said when her husband was working there as Governor (1967-74), "Sacramento is not in California."
Going In. The 17,500-seat Golden 1 Center is the NBA's newest arena, having opened on September 30 of this year. The official address is 500 David J. Stern Walk (named for the former NBA Commissioner). It is in the Downtown Commons and Capitol Mall area, bounded by J Street to the north, 6th Street to the east, L Street to the south and 5th Street to the west. Parking is $11.
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Not quite as weird-looking as the Nets' Barclays Center,
but pretty weird.
Golden 1 Credit Union bought the naming rights. Like Bankers Life Fieldhouse in Indianapolis, it has big windows, allowing fans to see out, which is a novelty in the NBA. The court is aligned north-to-south (more or less).
Food. The arena is only a little over 2 months old, but it's already getting rave reviews for its food. And the theme is buy local: A recent Sacramento Bee article says:
Its stalls are not anonymous hot-dog huts but brand extensions of Paragary's, Selland's, Mulvaney's, Star Ginger and other popular local restaurants that have licensed their names and recipes to concessions giant Legends Hospitality...
We enter the arena at 5:30 p.m., just as Kings fans are starting to trickle in. We hit Selland’s Market-Cafe first, because it’s so close to the entrance and because Tuohy had told us earlier that pizza from Selland's and Paragary's were top sellers at previous arena events...
Next we hit Cafe Bernardo Burgers & Shakes, for a $14 bacon habanero burger. Though the patty is slimmer than what we have had at other Bernardos, the meat holds a similar, and welcome, peppery taste. The sandwich comes with more smoky bacon than one expects to get at an arena, and noticeably fresh lettuce and tomato.
Near the condiment station, at the edge of the main concourse, we spot the dapper figure of Randy Paragary, looking out onto the court and seating areas below. Though not precisely the king of all he surveys, Paragary has more of his brands on Golden 1 stands than any other local restaurateur – two Bernardos, two Paragary's pizza places and a Centro street-taco spot.
Paragary says he and corporate executive chef Kurt Spataro have come to every arena event so far, tweaking ingredients and fine-tuning the preparation process. Centro started with the staff adding salsa to tacos, but that process proved too time-consuming. Now there's a salsa bar that also includes cilantro, chopped onion and cotija cheese...
Whereas the same items repeated at most stands at Sleep Train, Golden 1 offers 82 distinct menu items, Tuohy said. They include a well-executed $12 chicken banh mi, its French roll crunchy and its marinated vegetables crisp, at the Star Ginger stand...
We try Porchetta House, a rotisserie spot named after a specialty of Tuohy, former chef at Sacramento's Grange and LowBrau. The porchetta sandwich marries tender, expertly seasoned pork roast from Chico's Rancho Llano Seco with a substantial yet airy bun and is as good as anything we ever have tried at any sports venue.
The $12 "carnitas nachos" and $13 "loaded bacon cheese dog" served at another in-house spot, El Jefe, disappoint. The nachos feature Petaluma Creamery cheese and chunky, very fresh guacamole, but lack snap. The dog, covered in the same rich yet bland-tasting cheese sauce, makes a mess of your face when you bite into it...
It was a fitting cap to a night that never required us to make that other kind of concession so common to eating at sports venues. The one in which you settle for an arena hot dog or pizza slice because you lacked the time to grab a bite elsewhere before a game. Golden 1 Center is a legitimate dinner option.
Team History Displays. The Kings have a complicated history. They are the oldest franchise in the NBA (even if you count the Philadelphia/San Francisco/Golden State Warriors as the direct successor to the Philadelphia SPHAs), yet they have gone longer without winning a title than any other team, and their last title was 3 cities ago.
They began in 1923 -- at which point, there were only 16 current MLB franchises, 3 from the NFL, and 2 from the NHL -- as the Rochester Pros. At some point, they became the Rochester Royals, winning the championship of the Midwest-based National Basketball League in 1945. In 1948, they moved to the fledgling NBA (known for 1 more season as the Basketball Association of America), and in 1951 won the NBA Championship. That's 65 years, and they haven't even been back to the Finals since. (It's also, unless you count the 1955 NBA Champion Syracuse Nationals, the last time a team from Western New York won a World Championship.)
But, as with Syracuse and Fort Wayne, Rochester was not big enough to support a truly major league team (though their Red Wings baseball team and Americans hockey team are minor-league legends). So, in 1957, they moved, becoming the Cincinnati Royals. The closest they got to a title in Cincy was the 1963 and 1964 Eastern Division Finals.
In 1972, they moved to become the Kansas City-Omaha Kings. (They couldn't remain the Royals because Kansas City already had a baseball team with that name, and they didn't want to double-up like the NFL's Chicago Cardinals did upon moving to St. Louis.) After 3 years dividing between K.C. and their status as the only major league team the State of Nebraska has ever known, they played all home games in Kansas City from 1975 to 1985, but didn't like their arena deal, and moved to Sacramento in 1985. Until the Golden 1 Center deal was cut in 2014, their threats to move to Anaheim and Seattle were very real.
The Kings hang a banner for the Rochester Royals' NBA title of 1951, and also for their Division titles from 1979 (Kansas City), 2002 and 2003. The Kings reached the Western Conference Finals in Kansas City in 1981 and in Sacramento in 2002 -- in the latter, combining an epic choke against the Los Angeles Lakers with an equally epic screwing-over by the referees. (Ironically, it was Mitch Richmond, arguably the greatest player in Sacramento Kings history, who dribbled out the clock for the Lakers.) For this reason, the Lakers, not the much-closer Golden State Warriors, will remain the Kings' arch-rivals.
The Kings do. It makes sense that the NBA's oldest franchise would have so many retired numbers; in their case, 11. Number 11, guard Bob Davies, and Number 12, forward Maurice Stokes, played for them as the Rochester Royals. Number 14, guard Oscar Robertson, and Number 27, forward Jack Twyman, are honored for their time with the Cincinnati Royals. (Number 16, forward Jerry Lucas, has not been so honored, despite having been named to the Basketball Hall of Fame.
From the Kansas City Kings period, they honor Number 1, guard Nate "Tiny" Archibald, and Number 44, center Sam Lacey. And despite having had only 1 close call in their 31 years in Sacramento (2002), they have honored 4 players from this period: Number 2, guard Mitch Richmond; Number 4, forward Chris Webber; Number 16, forward Predrag "Peja" Stojaković; and Number 21, center Vlade Divac. The 2 Serbs are now both working in the team's front office.
And the Kings have recognized a long sellout streak that began with their arrival in 1985 and extended into their current Playoff drought (they haven't made it since 2006) by retiring Number 6 for the fans, "The Sixth Man."
The banners show the style of uniforms the players were wearing at the time, and the numbers go in reverse chronological order, from left to right: Stojakovic, Divac, Sixth Man, Richmond, Lacey, Archibald, Roertson, Twyman, Stokes, Davies.
Davies was named to the NBA's 25th Anniversary Team in 1971. Robertson was named to the NBA's 35th Anniversary Team in 1980. Robertson, Lucas and Archibald were named to the NBA's 50th Anniversary 50 Greatest Players.
The Monarchs won the WNBA title in 2005 and reached the Finals again in 2006. They have banners honoring general manager Jerry Reynolds, who previously worked in the Kings' front office, was their interim head coach in 1987 and official head coach from 1988 to 1990; and Number 6, Ruthie Bolton. Despite the team having been folded, their banners are still in the rafters.
Bolton was not named to the WNBA's 15th Anniversary 15 Greatest Players in 2012, or to the WNBA Top 20 at 20 in 2016 -- in the 20th Season, rather than at the 20th Anniversary -- but Yolanda Griffith and Ticha Penicheiro were named to both all-time teams.
It seems odd to leave up retired number banners
for a team that no longer exists.
Who's going to wear the numbers,
now that there's no team to issue them?
Stuff. The Kings have Official Kings Stores at the north end of the arena, at the Arden Fair Mall in Sacramento, and at the Westfield Galleria in Roseville.
Having had such a disjointed history, there are no official NBA videos about the Kings, but there are some good books about them. Zach Wyner wrote the Kings' edition of the NBA's On the Hardwood series. In 2005, Jerry Reynolds wrote a book about his 20 years of experiences with the Kings called Reynolds Remembers: Tales from the Sacramento Kings. And Jason Coldiron wrote of the now-successful struggle to save what is, for the moment, the only major league sports team in the area: Saving Sacramento: A Story of Fans, Sports & Politics.
During the Game. A November 13, 2014 article on DailyRotoHelp ranked the NBA teams' fan bases, and listed the Kings at 11th. The author said, "I still can't believe how many people come out and support the Kings. They somehow have a loyal fan base come out to games who are fully aware this team isn't even coming close to contending in the next 5 years. They are there day and night without complaint." Well, the big reason is that the Kings are all they've got: No pro football, lost their WNBA team, nearest pro hockey team is in Stockton, Triple-A in baseball, 3rd division in soccer.
While Sacramento, like most large California cities, has developed a problem with gang violence, the Golden 1 Center is downtown, with a large police presence. Kings fans will not treat Knicks or Nets fans with the same kind of contempt that they have for Laker fans. You (and, if you drove in, your car) will be safe.
This Friday's game against the Knicks is a "Flashback Friday" game. The Kings will be wearing 1980s-style baby blue uniforms.
Naturally, given their royal name, the King's mascot is a "king of the jungle," a lion named Slamson. (A play on "Samson" and "slam dunk.") Not only do the Kings hold auditions for singing the National Anthem instead of having a regular singer, but, with a purchase of 75 tickets and "performance approval," a group may sing it together. Their theme song is "Kings of the Court." But the biggest fan chant is, "SAC-ra-MEN-to! (clap, clap, clap-clap-clap)." At least they're cheering for their city, as much as for their team.
Slamson the Lion
After the Game. Win or lose, Kings fans will not bother you. Your safety will not be an issue. But if you came by public transportation, your best bet for a postgame meal will be to take the bus back downtown. If you drove, there are nearby options, although none that is a place where New York sports fans are known to gather.
With the Downtown Commons Mall being rebuilt alongside the Golden 1 Center (which was essentially built on the site of the previous mall), postgame dining options are currently limited. To the north: Perko's Farm Fresh Cafe is at 925 3rd Street, Lotus Thai Cuisine is at 425 J Street, Subway stores are at 428 and 731 J Street, Cilantro's Mexican Restaurant is at 705 J Street, La Bonne Soupe Cafe is at 920 8th Street, and a Starbucks is at 980 9th Street.
To the south: Il Fornaio Sacramento, an Italian restaurant, is at 400 Capitol Mall; Morton's The Steakhouse, if you feel like spending as much for your dinner as you did on your game ticket, is at 621 Capitol Mall; The Foundation Restaurant & Bar is at 400 L Street, and Frank Fat's, a Chinese restaurant, is at 806 L Street.
There's a lot more places to the west, along the riverfront, but you'll have to go under the elevated Interstate 5 to get there.
Pete's Restaurant & Brewhouse is supposedly a bar for fans of the football Giants. 2001 J Street, downtown. The Limelight Cardroom, also downtown, is supposedly a home for Jet fans. 1014 Alhambra Blvd. at J Street.
If your visit to Sacramento is during the European soccer season, which is currently underway, the California capital's top "football pub" is de Vere's Irish Pub, at 1521 L Street, 5 blocks east of the State House.
Sidelights. Aside from the Kings -- and a State government that might make California 1 of the 10 strongest nations in the world all by itself -- Sacramento is a minor-league town.
When the Kings arrived in 1985, a temporary arena was built, seating only 10,333, the smallest in the NBA at the time. Like its successor originally was, it was named the ARCO Arena, but was nicknamed the Madhouse on Market.
The 2nd ARCO Arena, which became the Power Balance Pavilion and is now the Sleep Train Arena, amed for a bedding store chain, was built n 1988. It has an address of One Sports Parkway. It's 5 miles north of downtown. Take the Number 11 bus to Truxel Road & Terracina Drive, and then a 15-minute walk west on Terracina, down "E Entrance."
No, that's not any kind of racetrack to the left.
The arena has hosted NCAA Tournament games, and is one of the leading West Coast sites for Ultimate Fighting. From 1997 until they folded in 2009, it was home to the WNBA's Sacramento Monarchs. (Why not "Queens" to go with "Kings"? Does "Monarchs" sound like they have more power? Or did they not use "Queens" because they were afraid of gay jokes?) There has been talk of reviving the Monarchs for the new arena.
The Sacramento River Cats, now a San Francisco Giants farm team, play at Raley Field, named for a locally-headquartered supermarket chain. It opened in 2000 with 10,624 seats. Counting lawn seating, they can have over 14,000 fans in the place, which is big for the minors, even Triple-A.
Charles C. Hughes Stadium, named for a school superintendent, opened in 1928, and seats 20,311. It hosts Sacramento City College football and high school football, hosted the Camellia Bowl from 1961 to 1980, and hosted a revival of the Sacramento Solons from 1974 to 1976, despite having a left field fence that was way too short. In 2014, it briefly hosted Sacramento Republic FC, a team in the United Soccer League, the 3rd tier of American soccer.
According to a September 5, 2014 article in The Atlantic, the San Francisco 49ers are easily the most popular NFL team in the Sacramento area, even though the Oakland Coliseum is a little closer to Sacramento than Candlestick Park was (87 miles to 91 -- Levi's Stadium is 114 miles away). The closest NHL team is the San Jose Sharks (120 miles).
The aforementioned Sacramento Republic FC play at Bonney Field. Built in 2014 and seating 11,442, it's just fine for lower-division soccer, but "The Quails" will need a larger stadium if they're to get promoted to Major League Soccer.
Major college football and basketball isn't all that close, either: If you live in or around Sacramento, and you don't want to go to games at Sac State, you're out of luck: Cal-Davis is 15 miles west, but it's FCS (formerly known as Division I-AA); and the University of the Pacific is 47 miles to the south, so you might as well go the distance to the Bay Area, all the way to Cal (79 miles) or Stanford (126 miles).
With its relatively low metropolitan population, Sacramento would rank 28th among MLB markets (ahead of only Kansas City, Cincinnati and Milwaukee), 25th in the NFL, and 22nd in the NHL.
The best-known museum in Sacramento is the California State Capitol Museum, under the dome at 1315 10th Street. The Crocker Art Museum is at 2nd & O Streets. The only Presidentially-related site in the area is the Governor's Mansion, where Ronald Reagan lived during his 1967-1974 Governorship. It's a State Historic Park, at 1526 H Street downtown. The tallest building in town is the Wells Fargo Center (same name as the Philadelphia arena currently has), 429 feet high, at Capitol Mall & 4th Street.
Elvis Presley never performed in Sacramento. Neither did the Beatles. Johnny Cash did, although his best-known concert in the Sacramento area was 25 miles to the northeast, at Folsom State Prison, namesake of his song "Folsom Prison Blues," on January 13, 1968. I wouldn't recommend going there (as a visitor or otherwise), but if you're that big of a fan of The Man In Black, it's at 300 Prison Road. It is reachable by public transit, sort of: Take the Gold Line light rail from Sacramento Valley station to Glenn station, nearly an hour; then transfer to Bus 30, to Natoma Street & Wales Drive, and then it's a 20-minute walk up Natoma Street and Prison Road. (That other California prison he's famous for having recorded a live album at, San Quentin, on February 24, 1969, is in Marin County, about 20 miles north of downtown San Francisco.)
The best-known TV shows set in Sacramento have been the late 1970s, early 1980s ABC comedy-drama Eight Is Enough, and the recent CBS crime drama The Mentalist. There haven't been many movies set or filmed there. Those that were include Clint Eastwood's 1989 Pink Cadillac, The Al Pacino & Michelle Pfeiffer movie Frankie & Johnny, John Travolta's Phenomenon, Kurt Russell's Breakdown, and Almost Famous, the film that made Cameron Crowe and Kate Hudson more than that.
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Sacramento is a bigger city than it seems to be, but not as big a city as it would like to be. If you're an NBA fan, and have to cross all 30 teams off your list, this should be a good guide for you.
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