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Sacramento Kings

The Sacramento Kings are an American professional basketball team based in Sacramento, California. The Kings compete in the National Basketball Association (NBA) as a member of the Pacific Division of the Western Conference. The Kings are the oldest team in the NBA, and the first team in the major professional North American sports leagues located in Sacramento. The team plays its home games at Golden 1 Center.

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. In 1948 they jumped with three other NBL teams to the Basketball Association of America, that later merged with the NBL to form the NBA. 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.

Before the 1972–73 season, the team relocated again, this time to Kansas City, Missouri, and renamed the Kansas City–Omaha Kings because it initially split its home games between Kansas City and Omaha, Nebraska; the nickname was changed to avoid confusion with the baseball team dubbed the Kansas City Royals. After three seasons, the team truncated to Kansas City Kings, but continued to play several home games per season in Omaha, through March 1978.

The franchise again failed to find success in its market and moved after the 1984–85 season to Sacramento. Their best seasons to date in the city were in the early 2000s, including a very successful 2001–02 season when they had the best record in the NBA at 61–21 (a winning percentage of .744). Between 2006 and 2022, the Kings had 16 consecutive losing seasons, the most in NBA history. The Kings also had the longest active postseason drought in the four major North American sports, which started in 2006 and lasted until 2023. Thanks to these periods of futility and their historic age, the franchise has the most losses in NBA history.

The basis of a purely-professional team in Rochester, New York, which came into existence in 1945, was two decades of a sponsored semi-professional team, the Rochester Seagrams. Canadian distiller Seagram was the team's main sponsor and received the bulk of what monies were made. During the 1932–33 season, the Seagrams actually played professionally in the District Basketball Association, while in the years 1933–36, they played in the District Basketball League instead. One of the team's early stars was Lester Harrison, a local high school star of some publicity before joining the team. Harrison later became the team's captain, coach, manager, and chief scout over the next two decades. Among visitors to Rochester to play the team were the Original Celtics, the New York Rens, and the Harlem Globetrotters.

With news that World War II was approaching its end, the National Basketball League (NBL) announced that it was expanding, and Harrison was approached for interest in a franchise. While the sponsored semi-professional team balked at additional expenses involved, Harrison and his brother Jack, a lawyer, jumped at the chance. They pooled money to meet the steep entry fee of $25,000 ($436,645 in 2024) and were granted an NBL franchise. Their team, the Rochester Royals, pushed the Seagrams out of their local facility, smallish Edgerton Park Arena.

The best players were the returning Navy and Army players now being released from the war. There was no draft for the league in the selection of new players. So, Harrison was able to scoop up several name stars for his new team, among them Bob Davies, Red Holzman and William "Fuzzy" Levane, as well as NBL free agents like George Glamack and Al Cervi. The result was a strong league champion in their first season of existence as the Royals during the 1945–46 season.

The team had two more seasons of success during their NBL years, which permitted the team to play non-league opponents. During all three years, 1945–1948, the team played over 300 total games, hosting most of them.

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