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<p>They were certainly the most fun team to follow!</p>
<p>Well they could always go back to their Rochester roots:</p>
<p>The Kings trace their origins to a local semi-professional team based in Rochester, New York in the early 1920s, making them one of the oldest basketball clubs still in existence. The team joined the National Basketball League (NBL) in 1945 as the Rochester Royals. The Royals defected to the NBL’s rival, the Basketball Association of America, in 1948. In 1949, as a result of that year’s merger between the NBL and BAA, the Royals became members of the newly-formed NBA. Though the Royals were often successful on the court, they had trouble turning a profit in the comparatively small market of Rochester, and relocated to Cincinnati, Ohio in 1957, becoming the Cincinnati Royals. In 1972, the team relocated to Kansas City, Missouri, initially splitting its games between Kansas City and Omaha, Nebraska, and taking up the name Kansas City Kings. The team again failed to find success in its market, and moved to Sacramento in 1985.</p>
<p>Western NY lost a Buffalo NBA team too.</p>
<p>It’s true, the Royals/Kings have been the nomads of the NBA. They’ve been here for 26 years, so we thought (hoped) they’d settled on a permanent home.</p>
<p>Have they been successful here? It depends on how you define it. On the court, they’ve been middling-to-poor, except for one notable period in the late 90’s to early 00’s. But that hasn’t hurt their success in terms of fan support: the Kings have sold out every game in 17 of their 26 seasons here, and own 2 of the 5 longest sellout streaks in league history. The big problem here is our decrepit Arco Arena. There have been multiple attempts over the last 10 years to put together an arena deal, and all have fallen apart. </p>
<p>The root of the problem for small-market teams like Sacto is the way the NBA shares revenue, or rather doesn’t share revenue. In the NFL, smaller-market teams can survive and thrive because they are on a more level playing field with their big-market rivals, financially speaking. But when a Sacramento needs a new barn to play in, we simply don’t have the population/tax base to build it, and we need not look to the NBA for help.</p>