Sacramento Kings Retrospective: Letting Go

(Note: With the Sacramento Kings having one foot out of the door of Sacramento and to Anaheim and with the season and the team's tenure running out I'm going to write a series of retrospective posts on the Kings tenure in Sacramento. If you wish to follow the on-going battle to fight this move, please read SacTown Royalty)

The Kubler-Ross model, otherwise known as The Five Stages of Grief, states that a person will go through a series of emotional points of their life after a life-changing situation. You might go through this grief after the death of a loved one or when you don't receive a promotion from your job.

The Kubler-Ross model also states that you may not go through the different stages, denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance, chronologically. This is what has happened to me recently with the Sacramento Kings threatening to leave for Anaheim.


When the report first broke during All-Star Weekend back in February that the Kings were threatening to leave Sacramento for Anaheim, I began my Five Stages of Grief by deny everything. "They're not moving." "This is a ploy to sucker Sacramento out of tax dollars to build a new arena."

I went through this stage for about two weeks. I tried to con myself into thinking this wasn't possible. Trust me when I say this, when one of your teams is threatening to move you'll go through the denial process. (Sonics fans shake their heads in agreement.) I even wrote this post where I kind of accepted the Kings are moving, but not really.

I eventually moved on to anger. "Fuck the Maloffs! They're spoiled brats who were given everything by their father and when times get rough, they decide to bail." "Fuck the politicians of Sacramento! They only care about votes and not sports." At this point I completely tuned out the Kings and quit watching their games for about a week. Why should I care about them when obviously they don't care about me?

I next went to the bargaining stage. Reports and fluttered out that there's a small chance of hope the Kings could stay in Sacramento. They might meet with the Taylor group who are working on an arena plan. There might be local investors who might buy the Kings. I hated this stage because it gave myself hope and I hate hope because it's so meaningless and you're just setting yourself up for more heartbreak. That's why I never bought into the Hope & Change Obama campaign back in 2008. Hope is a meaningless word and it doesn't change anything (unless you live in Oz or some other fairy tale land). Hope isn't going to prevent the Kings from leaving Sacramento.



I skipped over depression because my sporting life is pretty good right now. The San Francisco Giants are world champions, the San Jose Sharks are a perennial playoff team, and the San Francisco 49ers are............never mind. Either way my sporting life is pretty good. Maybe if the Sharks were a mediocre franchise and the Giants were continuing their World Series drought I would be more depressed.

I'm finally in the acceptance stage of grief. While the Maloofs and Sacramento city officials trade barbs between each other in the newspapers, I'm moving on and accepting the fact that the Kings are headed to Anaheim. I'm going to enjoy the last few times I get to watch them as the Sacramento Kings and reminiscent about the good times I had watching the Kings.

While I admire the Here We Stay people for putting up a fight and showing their support for the Sacramento Kings, it's a big waste of time. Unless one of them has enough money to buyout the Kings from the Maloofs, that movement does nothing but provide that word I hate, hope. As I said before, I'm done with hope. The time has come from me to accept the fact the Kings are moving on. It's time for me to move on as well.



This doesn't mean I don't care that the Kings are moving or that it's not painful, I'm just letting go. Of course it's painful to watch the Kings leave Sacramento and there isn't a thing I can do to prevent it. It's time to let go though and look back at the past.

And that's what I'm going to do. I'm going to reminiscent about the Sacramento Kings. Remember the good times. Even if there's a slightest chance that the Kings could stay in Sacramento, I'm still going to remember the past. I prefer looking back every once in a while and remembering the good times.

So I hope you will enjoy my Sacramento Kings retrospective. I'll be looking back at the Sacramento Kings that I remember (Basically from 1992 to 2011) and conjure up the moments and people that were important figures in the history of the Sacramento Kings.