Return of the Kings

For me, at least.

I'm sitting here on my patio listening to the second game of the 2009/2010 season on my laptop. I'd be inside watching the game on the tube, but my housekeeper is in there doing her thing right now, so I figured I'd stay out of her way and enjoy some audio basketball. Besides...this way I can have a cigar while I do it.

As suggested in my previous blog entry, I did watch the opening game of this season for Sacramento's only claim to pro-sports fame. We don't have a football team in Sac. We have no MLB team. No hockey to be found. No, Sacramento is all about the basketball, and has been since 1985 when we got our first sports franchise. And for a magical handful of years at the start of this new century, our franchise was actually one of the elite in the league, an exciting, headline-making team that was a part of what many consider to be one of the best playoff showdowns of all time.

These days? Well, the season opener kind of defined where we are now.

I, once a Kings fanatic, fell away from not only the team, but the sport. It wasn't really a conscious choice. Like many of Sacramento's fans, I had my spirit crushed by the loss to the Lakers (which many of us still consider to be questionable...but don't get us started), but was back again for more the next season. But life changed for me with a lot more work hours, and my Kings euphoria turned to anger is management decided to start selling off my whole team, player by player, and eventually dumped my coach, too. It was no longer the team I knew so well, and while everyone talked about how good all these changes were for the team, I never bought it, and found myself regretfully vindicated as the team continued to decline until, last season, the once championship-ready team become the worst team in the NBA.

But I didn't have to witness this whole descent, as, due to the work thing, I didn't have the time to watch games anymore. I'd just catch the occasional headline, hear people talking (with shaking heads) at the office. I had left basketball, my greatest love, behind. There was a time when I could tell you what was going on with every team in the league, and probably tell you things about your own team that YOU didn't even know. The best weekend of my year was the NBA All-Star Weekend, where I'd stay glued to the set for all three days of festivities. I'd even take the day off work on the day of the NBA draft. I was a junkie. And yet, I didn't so much kick my monkey as let my monkey slip away from me.

This season, I told myself it was time to get the monkey back. Or least hang out with it more.

Not having a job means no excuses as far as time. And not having a winning team is no excuse to not be a fan. I've never seen myself as one of those fans. It was never about the final score for me. I was there for the joy of the game, to watch the passing, the rebounds, the defense. I knew every one of my Kings in complete detail back in my day, their strengths and their weaknesses - cheering when a player did something outside his normal skill set, groaning when another tried to take a shot that I knew (better, apparently, than that player) was just NOT his kind of shot. It was all in the details for me. If my guys were winning? So much the better. But I never booed them when they lost. I felt like I was in it with them.

And here I am now, returning to the Kings, and have come to realize in the past couple of days just how far I am from where I used to be. I had virtually no idea who was on our team anymore. I had to actually pull up a team roster online and check out and read about the players. And what I could find from my reading was that we now have a very young, very non-superstar team. While I still find myself wondering how we could have let that happen, I find that kind of exciting. It seems a good time for me to step back in, as it feels like I'm doing so at the very beginning of a new team area. This could be good news for them, as the team seemed to have stopped winning AFTER I stopped watching. Hoping to bring my mojo back for the boys.

What excites me most about the new team, though, is the new coach. When I first became a true basketball fan, I had just moved to Phoenix, and the coach of that great Suns team was Sac's latest coach, Paul Westphal. Westphal always impressed me not just for his skill, but because he always came off as such a genuinely nice guy. I've been a fan for years, and finding out that he was not only coming back to the NBA but to Sac put a big smile on my face, and raised some hopes for me that this team might have a chance after all.

I don't know the team well enough to discuss the players yet, but after one (very disappointing) opening game, I've already found a favorite player in one of our rookies - Omri Casspi, the first NBA player drafted out of Israel. I love the idea that his nation - like Turkey back when we had Hedo Turkoglu as one of our rooks - is staying up until 2:00 AM to watch Kings games and cheer their national treasure on. Omri, in an otherwise forgettable game, showed some serious skill and coolness under pressure. My eye is on him, for sure. We're going to need bench guys like him to step up, considering our best player - Garcia - is out with injury until mid-season. Some of his teammates are going to need to follow suit.

As for tonight? Things are looking (or, in my case, sounding) better. We're currently in the fourth quarter, and the game is all tied up. This sure beats the 20-point deficits of the opener. Woah! Let's call that a lead, thanks to a three from Nocioni, who's scored 14 points in his 16 minutes. Nice. The other standouts are Kevin Martin (18 points) and our big news rookie, Evans (15 points), and both Brockman and Thompson are lighting it up in their own way with 10 rebounds each. We've got us an exciting back-and-forth game going on between two teams that are each trying to not start their seasons at 0-2. Who will prevail? We'll know in six minutes and twenty-three seconds. I'd hang with you and let you know, but my laptop battery's going to leave you in suspense.

So I'm back with the Kings, and it's good to be home. Here's hoping for a season that'll buck the expectations we managed to set last year (we won 17 games. All season. Ouch). I'll be along the ride, either way. Go Kings.