Unappreciated Kings are NBA’s ultimate nomads

Remember not that long ago when the Maloof brothers were the toast of two towns?

When they would sit courtside at Arco Arena (before the mattress people changed the name) in Sacramento and dress Mark Cuban-casual and cheer the Kings' success, when the Kings were successful, at least for a little while?

When they would make videos with Lil Wayne and Ludacris and sponsor racecars in the Indianapolis 500, when they owned all of the Palms, instead of just 2 percent?

When they would show up fashionably late at some uber cocktail lounge to hear a tight horn band play Blood, Sweat & Tears, and you'd see them with Playboy bunnies on both arms?

Remember, too, when it was going to be only a matter of time before they moved the Kings to Las Vegas, and then we would become an NBA city, and everybody except the cocktail waitresses and bartenders - it was proven over All-Star Weekend in 2007 that the NBA is a lousy tipper - would hail them as basketball soothsayers and messiahs?

Well, unless a full-court heave from the City of Sacramento that would keep the franchise there somehow finds the bottom of the net before NBA owners meet in April, the Kings will be bypassing Las Vegas, which has no plans to build a downtown arena, for Seattle, which does.

Let that be a lesson to Las Vegas - and also to people who are lousy tippers.

As for the Maloofs, well, as a unit, they've become the biggest persona non grata in the California capital since Arnold Schwarzenegger confessed to Maria Shriver that he had sex with the maid.

It's worse than that. People in Sacramento hate the Maloofs; to read some of these chat room rants, they are evil incarnate, even more despised than Dick Bavetta and Bob Delaney and Ted Bernhardt, the zebras who gave the Lakers all the calls in Game 6 in 2002.

One even suggested the Maloofs are more despicable than Mussolini, that their lifeless forms should be hung from meat hooks in Old Sac, down by the river. Hell hath no fury as a sports fan scorned by relocation.

The NBA specializes in scornification. As mournful as all this is for popcorn vendors and parking lot attendants and Jimmer Fredette's dozens of fans in Northern California, it's not like it's the first time it has happened.

Exactly half of the NBA's 30 franchises were relocated from other cities, and that's a much higher percentage than what Jimmer shoots from the field.

This also explains the crazy nicknames. Jazz, in Utah?

(According to the license plates, there are 10,000 lakes in Minnesota, from whence the Lakers came. According to fishingworks.com, there are 107 lakes in Los Angeles County, a fact of which Paula Abdul probably was not aware during her Laker Girl days.)

Next to Larry Brown (10 coaching stops) and Otis Thorpe (traded seven times) and Don MacLean (traded eight times), the Kings are the poster child of NBA relocation. They have made it into an art form.

They began as the Rochester Royals, in 1945. Then they became the Cincinnati Royals. Then they were the Kansas City-Omaha Kings. That's right, the Kings were so unappreciated it took two cities to try to sustain them.

Despite the best efforts of Tiny Archibald and Sam Lacey, Omaha tired of the Kings. So they dropped the hyphen and became the Kansas City Kings.

Only once during the Kansas City years did they average 10,000 spectators, which, combined with Reggie Theus' talent, blew the roof off Kemper Arena. Actually, it was a storm that did it; still, it wouldn't be long before the Kings moved even farther west, to Sacramento.

When the Maloofs purchased controlling interest, they signed Vlade Divac and a couple of other guys who could play, and then there was that magical season, 2001-02, when the Kings went 61-21 and lost to the Lakers in seven games in the Western Conference finals.

Now, people don't go to the games anymore, and the Kings have dropped from No. 4 in ESPN's Ultimate Team Rankings to No. 121 (out of 122 pro sports franchises). The Maloofs are ranked last among owners, one spot behind the woman who owned the Charlestown Chiefs and refused to move them to Florida.

But owning a pro sports franchise is a business - their business - and if you haven't noticed, the Maloof brothers are on this Michael Jackson-Kim Basinger run of bad investments. So they sold to the highest bidder, which usually is what astute businessmen do. And whereas I don't think the Maloofs will purchase the remains of the Elephant Man or some small town in Georgia and turn it into "Vladewood," at least they can pay back the NBA and the City of Sacramento with some of their record $525 million windfall.

Somewhere out in the hinterlands, i.e., where the Kings play their games, there's this little kid with sad eyes and a big No. 7 on his authentic jersey that costs $255.95 in the Kings team store that wants Jimmer to say it ain't so.

Somewhere in Kansas City, or Omaha, there’s this old guy washing his car with a Kings T-shirt who still feels his pain.

Las Vegas Review-Journal sports columnist Ron Kantowski can be reached at rkantowski@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0352. Follow him on Twitter: @ronkantowski.