Five years after ‘gut wrenching’ fight, Kings are going to Seattle – for one night only

The battles waged were bitter and fierce. Feelings were hurt. Grown men cried.

When the fight was over, the outcome was clear. Sacramento won. Seattle lost. Fans in the Pacific Northwest witnessed the unfortunate demise of the Seattle SuperSonics while Sacramento reveled in the rebirth of the Kings.

The tale of these two cities will be retold Friday night when the Kings face the Golden State Warriors in a preseason game at KeyArena in Seattle, the city that came so close to claiming Sacramento’s team as its own after the Sonics left town. Old wounds could be brushed open, but so, too, could a sense of hope for a city still desperate to see NBA basketball return a decade after the Sonics moved to Oklahoma City.

“Seattle is an amazing basketball market,” said “Carmichael Dave” Weiglein, a KHTK radio host who helped lead local efforts to keep the Kings in Sacramento. “It’s an absolute travesty that they don’t have a team in Seattle, but they can’t have ours.”

David Brown, a retired physician from Gig Harbor, Wash., is a former Sonics season-ticket holder who co-founded Bring Back Our Sonics, an online community dedicated to getting an NBA team back to Seattle. Brown and his son, Jeff, attended Sonics games for more than 20 years before the team left.

“I took him since he was really young,” Brown said. “When we had public hearings, my son emphasized, and I have, too, that it was such a great bonding time for us. Because I was a pretty busy physician at the time, I didn’t have a lot of time I could spend with him – just he and I – other than those games. That’s why it’s so emotional for us. That’s why we feel such a sense of loss.”

‘Save our Sonics’

In July 2006, Clay Bennett led an Oklahoma City-based ownership group that purchased the Sonics from Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz. Citing heavy financial losses, Schultz had tried for years to secure public funding for a new arena or an expansion of KeyArena.

The sale was approved by NBA owners three months later. The agreement required Bennett to “use good faith best efforts” for a period of 12 months to secure a new arena lease or venue in the Seattle area. Two days after that deadline passed, Bennett told the NBA he intended to move the team to Oklahoma City.

Opposition groups attempted to block the move, but their efforts failed.

“I cry when I think about it,” Lorin Sandretzky, Seattle’s most famous sports fan, once told NBA.com.

The Sonics spent 41 seasons in Seattle, winning six division titles, three conference championships and one NBA championship. They played their final game in Seattle on April 13, 2008, beating the Dallas Mavericks 99-95.

Brown and his son were there that night. So was Kevin Durant, who was named NBA Rookie of the Year while playing for the Sonics in 2007-08.

“It was a very emotional night,” said Jeff Brown, a 34-year-old software test engineer from Redmond, Wash. “I’ve gone back over the years and watched the YouTube videos of that night. It gives you chills when you see that.”

Brown remembers fans chanting “SAVE OUR SON-ICS” as Durant clapped and waved his hands, urging them to scream louder.

“It was indescribable, man,” Durant, now a member of the Warriors, recently told the San Jose Mercury News. “I can’t put into words the energy of the building and the amount of love. The support that was in that building was incredible.”

‘Love Song’

Kings fans were already suffering under persistent relocation threats of their own. The Maloof family, which owned the team from 1998 to 2013, courted a number of cities as potential suitors for the team.

The first real fears surfaced in 2011. There was a strong sense that the Kings would move the team to Southern California after NBA commissioner David Stern revealed that the Maloofs had discussed relocation with officials in Anaheim. The Maloofs trademarked the name Anaheim Royals and prepared to make a case for relocation to the NBA.

There was an uneasy mix of affection, anger, sadness and confusion inside Power Balance Pavilion when the Kings concluded the 2010-11 season with a 116-108 overtime loss to the Los Angeles Lakers. Some held out hope for a last-minute reprieve, but many feared it was the final time the Kings would ever play in Sacramento.

“It was gut wrenching,” said Gary Gerould, the team’s radio voice since 1985.

The television broadcast ended with a moving signoff. Grant Napear, a KHTK radio host and the team’s television play-by-play announcer, and Jerry Reynolds, who has served as the Kings’ coach, general manager and color commentator, fought back tears as they said goodbye.

“There’s a lot of uncertainty, as we all know, but the one thing that we do know is the love affair between this team and this city,” Napear said, his voice cracking with emotion, his eyes brimming with tears. “And tonight, we say so long with the music from Sacramento’s legendary rock band, Tesla, and iconic images from your Sacramento Kings. Folks, this is ‘Love Song.’”

The song was accompanied by a video montage that included footage of opening night at the original Arco Arena in 1985, the team’s first season in Sacramento. There were images of fans and players. There were highlights from the team’s most memorable moments.

Mike Bibby buried a jumper to beat the Los Angeles Lakers in Game 5 of the 2002 Western Conference finals. Tyreke Evans hit a half-court shot to defeat the Memphis Grizzlies.

Chris Webber smiled. A fan kissed Bobby Jackson on the forehead. Doug Christie punched Rick Fox in the face.

Fans held signs that read: “Here We Stay,” “This Is Our Team,” “We Believe,” and “We Love Our Kings.”

Reynolds remembers peering up at the ceiling, taking one last look at the retired jerseys and banners hanging from the rafters.

“That made me really sad,” Reynolds said. “Not only would the fans be deprived of the franchise, but the team would have changed its name and all that history would have been lost.”

‘This axe hanging over our neck’

The Maloofs ultimately relented on the idea of moving the Kings to Anaheim. But in January 2013, they reached an agreement to sell the team to a Seattle-based ownership group led by hedge fund manager Chris Hansen, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and two members of the Nordstrom family, pending approval from the NBA board of governors. The Hansen group planned to move the Kings to Seattle and rename them the SuperSonics.

“It was agonizing because I was right in the middle of it,” Napear said. “It was the most difficult thing I ever had to deal with. There were so many things going on rapidly, and yet everyday at 3 o’clock, I knew I had an enormous audience coming in to listen to what was going on.”

Reynolds was convinced the team was leaving Sacramento.

“It was a really tough time for me emotionally,” Reynolds said. “We really expected that the team was probably going to move, and I knew I probably wasn’t going to go. This is my home.”

Gerould felt the same way.

“I thought, ‘How in the world are we going to be able to get through the rest of the season with this axe hanging over our neck?’” Gerould said. “It was a tremendous challenge from a broadcast standpoint to be passionate about doing my job and not be swept up in depression.”

Here we stayed

In the month leading up to the team’s final game, Weiglein and his podcast co-host Sean Thomas hit the road with a documentary filmmaker in a 32-foot tour bus, visiting 22 NBA cities in 30 days to rally support for Sacramento. Groups such as Crown Downtown and Here We Stay organized rallies in Sacramento.

Then-Mayor Kevin Johnson lobbied the NBA, worked to secure public financing for a new arena and assembled investors who would attempt to purchase the team and keep the Kings in Sacramento. The Hansen group kept raising the stakes, but Sacramento kept rising to the challenge.

In the end, the NBA board of governors relocation committee – ironically headed by Bennett – and the NBA owners voted to reject the Kings’ relocation to Seattle. Those votes essentially ended the Hansen’s group efforts to purchase the team. That paved the way for a group led by Vivek Ranadive, Mark Mastrov, Kevin Nagle, Mark Friedman and Phil Oates to buy the team and build a new arena in Sacramento using public and private funding.

Weiglein and Napear attended a jubilant celebration at Firestone Public House near the state Capitol, where each of them raised their arms in triumph. Both had maintained hope publicly, but privately both wrestled with their doubts.

“There were two documentaries made on that fight, and in both of them I’m crying like a baby at different points,” Weiglein said. “It was all emotion. Anybody who says they never had a doubt didn’t have a firm grasp on what was going on.”

In 2016, the Kings played their first game at the Golden 1 Center, the team’s $558 million downtown arena. Fans remain frustrated after 12 consecutive losing seasons, but they refused to lose their team.

“We want to win,” Weiglein said. “But every once in a while, it’s OK to go up to 50,000 feet and look at it, and never forget what this city did. Really, when you look at the sports landscape and the history of teams that have moved, we did almost the impossible. That’s not a championship, but that’s certainly a win that nobody will ever be able to take away from us.”

NBA returns to Seattle

The Kings and Warriors will play the first NBA game at KeyArena since the Sonics left 10 years ago. The Warriors will be the “home” team. The Kings, to the eternal relief of their fans, will be there as visitors.

Warriors president Rick Welts, a Seattle native and former Sonics ballboy, has been planning this “celebration of the Sonics” for three years. Welts said the game sold out four hours after tickets were made available.

“I feel so badly for the Seattle fans and the fact that they’ve been left without a team for so many years now,” Gerould said. “I think it will be an electric atmosphere, very unusual, I think, for preseason.”

Some of the franchise’s all-time greats will be in attendance, including Gary Payton, Jack Sikma, “Downtown” Freddy Brown, Lenny Wilkins and former coach Bill Russell.

Durant will be there, too.

“Everybody in the basketball world and the NBA knows the Sonics need to be back in Seattle,” Durant told the Mercury News. “... It was very devastating how we up and left in the middle of the night. Those fans have been yearning for basketball for a long, long time. Even though it’s just a preseason game, and it’s one game, hopefully we can give them a nice little show.”

Earlier this week, the Seattle City Council voted to approve a $700 million renovation of KeyArena. The city hopes to attract an NHL team by 2020 and – maybe one day – bring an NBA franchise back to Seattle.

“I think it’s only a matter of time,” Napear said. “I think there will be an NBA team there within five years after that building opens. It’s a very wealthy market with Fortune 500 companies all over the place, and you know the fans want it.

“I know the pain the Seattle basketball fans went through because we went through that pain without actually losing our team. I hope that before I’m done announcing NBA basketball, I’m up there doing a game between the Sacramento Kings and the Seattle SuperSonics.”

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to correct when Grant Napear and Jerry Reynolds gave an emotional sign off during a Kings television broadcast. It was at the conclusion of the 2010-11 season, when it appeared the team would relocate to Anaheim.

This story was originally published October 4, 2018 at 6:53 PM.