What About The Kansas City Kings?

The Sacramento Kings have officially broke their playoff dry spell with a stellar 7 game series with the Golden State Warriors. Until this 2022-2023 playoffs, the Kings hadn’t seen the NBA playoffs since going down 2-4 the first round to the San Antonio Spurs in the 2005-2006 season. Now 17 seasons later the Kings were hopeful to keep the momentum going but sadly fell to the Golden State Warriors in a packed 7 game series; going down 3-4. After spending the last 6 seasons as the associate head coach for the Golden State Warriors; it’s clear why Coach Mike Brown earned Coach of the year for this season’s phenomenal King’s performance. 

With all of this excitement around the success of the Sacramento Kings; some Kansas Citians felt a faint feeling of not only nostalgia but “what if”? What if the Kings had stayed in Kansas City. Have you heard about the Kansas City Kings? Yup – you read it right. Kansas City had its very own NBA team to root for. The Kings began in the NBA as the Rochester Royals later the Cincinnati Royals and became the Kansas City-Omaha Kings once arriving to Kansas City. 

The Kansas City-Omaha Kings (1972-1975)/ Kansas City Kings (1975-1985) was a small part in our KC sport history that Kansas City had an NBA team. As of recently the NBA has had talks of expansion and we’ve been pushing Mayor Lucas to bring us home another NBA team. The Kansas City Kings included Hall of Famers Nate Archibald (PG), Oscar Robertson (PG), and Bob Cousy (PG). These hall of farmers also were recently named to the NBAs historic top 75 list last year in 2022. 

While in Kansas City, the Kings had a few playoff runs. The playoff runs would include: 1974 – 1975 Kings going down 2-4 against the Chicago Bulls in the conference semifinals, 1978-1979 Kings advancing to the conference semifinals but losing to the Phoenix Suns 1-4, 1979-1980 season again going down to the Phoenix Sun first round, and finally making it to the western conference finals the 1980-1981 season but defeated by the Houston Rockets in a 5 game series (1-4). Since the Kings moved franchises to Sacramento the 1985 season; the Kings have had a few playoff runs but nothing too deep since the 2001-2002 season. With this new found success with the Sacramento Kings; it’s hard not to think of the “what if’s” of if the franchise stayed here in Kansas City.

For a winning city like ours, Kansas City deserves an NBA team.