Remembering the Kansas City Kings, OBM

            Tim Donohoo and I were in his bedroom studying The NBA Guide. We were trying to find out who the statistical leaders were for the Cincinnati Royals for the 1971-72 season, their last in Cincinnati. In other words, who was good on this team? We we’re hungry to know because the Royals were moving to Kansas City. This was the most exciting present we could have been given short of the Chiefs winning another Super Bowl.

            Nate Archibald was clearly the best player on the team, but we already knew that. Tom Van Arsdale was second in scoring to Archibald. Most of the players on the team we’d never heard of.

            My father, a”h, would take Tim and I to games, which were played at the old Memorial Auditorium, downtown. The city was building a new arena for the Kings, but it wouldn’t be ready until the team’s third season.

            Not too long after we started going to games with my Dad, Tim and I made an earthshaking discovery: The ushers in the lower section would leave their posts at halftime and not return for the second half. We gathered our courage and hopped over the wall separating the lower section from the floor. Orienting ourselves to our new surroundings, we spotted a ballboy and a few other kids sitting under the basket while the game proceeded. Actually, they were sitting on a tarp that covered the bottom of the goal and stretched back beyond the court, maybe 15 feet.

            We sat on the tarp facing away from the court and watched the game over our shoulders. Not quite believing we were getting away with watching an NBA game 15 feet in front of us, we didn’t want some official to come by and tell us we couldn’t be there. Looking straight at the game would have been like gazing directly at the Burning Bush.

            But one night, for a moment, we pushed through our inhibitions and went a little crazy. The Kings were playing our main rival, the Chicago Bulls. It might have even been a playoff game. There was some commotion at the far end of the court. Fans had thrown something on the court, or maybe there was a fight. Play had stopped. I really wanted to know what was going over there. I said to Tim, “Let’s go down there and see what’s happening.” We started running down the middle of the court. Before we reached the Kings logo at midcourt, a referee yelled at us to go back; we did.

            The Kansas City-Omaha Kings definitely improved on their Ohio forbears. With Tiny Nate Archibald (in 72-73, the only player ever to lead the league in both scoring and assists in the same season) at the helm, they made the playoffs in their third year, losing to the Bulls in six games.

            Kansas City shared billing with Omaha, a hick town, because old Municipal Auditorium wasn’t available for all 41 home games. Instead, the Kings played 12-15 games a year in Ohama. So the likes of the Ice Capades and the circus were responsible for Omaha, Neb., being associated briefly with Wilt the Stilt and the Celtics Dynasty – until the Kings moved into Kemper Arena and shed “Omaha” like a cornhusk.

            Being a Kings fan assumed an interest in basketball. Although I had learned to play roundball in Tim’s driveway, I honed my skills at the Jewish Community Center. By now the JCC basketball league felt familiar, like a loose board on a wooden court: the chlorine smell of the nearby indoor pool, the reused uniforms, the white locker room towels with their peculiar scent. Then Kings starting small forward Nate Williams came to the JCC for a basketball clinic during winter break; it was like Superman landed in my backyard.

            There were about 10 of us on the JCC court, all around 12 years old, facing Nate Williams. He must have towered over us, but I don’t remember that. He related to us. He asked each of us our name. I was too nervous to remember.

The next day he brought Sam Lacey, the Kings 6-foot, 10-inch center, with him. Lacey wasn’t there as a guest instructor. He just took shots at one of the side baskets while Williams talked to us on the main court. But as he introduced the subject of the pick-and-roll, Nate nodded in Lacey’s direction and said, “See that man over there. If it wasn’t for him, I wouldn’t have a job. He sets the picks that let me shoot jump shots.”

Despite hitting enough of those jumpers to be the second leading scorer on the team, Williams would be playing the next year in New Orleans, as the Kings made changes needed to stay competitive. By the time I was in high school, the Nate Archibald Kings – including Nate Archibald – were yesterday’s press guide.

The Kings made some astute draft picks and found themselves back in the playoffs for three seasons from 1978 to 1981. The first two years they lost in the first round to the Phoenix Suns.

I liked that Kings team, but the Suns were a little better than us at each position: Paul Westphal over Phil Ford at point guard; Alvin Adams over Sam Lacey at center; Walter Davis over Scott Wedman at small forward; Truck Robinson over Bill Robinzine at power forward. The only advantage we had was at shooting guard, where Otis Birdsong battled some white guy.

I went to one of those playoff games with my impudent friend Scott McClain. We were courtside for some reason, returning to our seats (in the upper section, not under the basket) before the second half started. Scott, wearing his trademark baseball cap, stopped off at the Kings bench where the players had returned for the second half and instructed Phil Ford, “You need to put more arc on your shot.”

To Scott and I and my other basketball-loving friends, the Kings were our secret. At a time when football was king, and Kansas City had two more popular teams, pro basketball, particularly the Kings, were cosa nostra.

The Kings actually made it to the Western Conference Finals in ’81. Chalk it up to random chance, or G-d’s whim, or both. Both of our all-star guards, Ford and Birdsong, went down with injuries early in the playoffs. Reserve Ernie Grunfeld rose from the bench and emerged as the surprising star. That’s right. The team was so riddled with injuries they turned to a Jewish athlete to lift them up. We got beat in five games in the Conference Finals by another team that wasn’t supposed to be there, the Houston Rockets, featuring an MVP named Moses.

That turned out to be the team’s last hurrah. After that we chucked it up with mediocre draft picks in a league made tougher by slick imports from the ABA, which had merged with the NBA. The Kings of the ’80s recorded more than 39 wins only once. Funny, though, that was my favorite Kings team.

For a time we had a good little guard from the University of Missouri bringing up the ball, Larry Drew. Forward Eddie Johnson floated his jump shot to the tune of 20 points a game. Steve Johnson had promise at center, as did LaSalle Thompson.

I’d go to games when I was home from college. My grandfather, a”h, had free tickets. Dave Herron, his second wife’s son (stepson-in-law?) was divorced, and my grandfather took care of his three children. Dave worked on the sidelines at Kings games (He kept track of fouls or something like that.) Out of gratitude he left my grandfather tickets at Kemper.

At first my friends and I would take my grandfather to the game and he’d pick up the tickets at the will call window. Later the guys and I would do our own will call pick up.

The crowd at the games in Kemper Arena had dwindled. It got to the point where you were more likely to win a Big Mac if the Kings scored 110 points than you were to see the Kings win. One night I ran into my friend Mark Pelofsky at the game with his girlfriend Lisa. I told him about our will call tickets. He told me they got their tickets through some promo.

“Nobody pays to get in anymore,” Mark said with a laugh.

The Kings bottomed out in 1984-85, averaging 6,400 fans per game. They moved to Sacramento, of all places, before the next season. The Kings have thrived there for 41 years, longer than all the time spent in the three previous cities, beginning in Rochester, N.Y., in 1948.

But they called Kansas City home for 13 years: longer than the Beatles were together; longer than Seinfeld; longer than the Obama administration. They had their Bar Mitzvah in KC, but they were the ones giving gifts: Nate Archibald in his prime, “Scotty stops, pops, jumper, good!”; the KC Marching Cobras playing at halftime; disappearing ushers; the will call window; Big Macs.

Thirteen years of majesty. Long live the Kings.