Sacramento Kings

TEAM HISTORY

The Sacramento Kings are an NBA basketball team based in Sacramento, California. The Kings compete as a member of the Western Conference Pacific Division. The Kings are the only team in the major professional North American sports leagues located in Sacramento. The team plays its home games at the Golden 1 Center. Their best seasons to date in the city were in the early 2000s, including the 2001–02 season when they had the best record in the NBA at 61–21 (a winning percentage of .744).

The franchise began with the Rochester Seagrams (a semi-professional team) from Rochester, New York, that formed in 1923 and hosted a number of teams there over the next 20 years. They joined the National Basketball League in 1945 as the renamed Rochester Royals, winning that league's championship in their first season, 1945–46. They later jumped with three other NBL teams to the Basketball Association of America, forerunner of the NBA, in 1948. As the Royals, the team was often successful on the court, winning the NBA championship in 1951. The team, however, found it increasingly difficult to turn a profit in the comparatively small market of Rochester and relocated to Cincinnati in 1957, becoming the Cincinnati Royals. In 1972 the team relocated again, this time to Kansas City, Missouri, and was renamed the Kansas City-Omaha Kings because it initially split its home games between Kansas City and Omaha, Nebraska. In 1975, the Kings ceased playing home games in Omaha and in 1977 simply became the Kansas City Kings. The team again failed to find success in its market and moved yet again to Sacramento in 1985, where they continue to reside today.