The rise and fall of Arco Arena and the Sacramento Kings

My first assignment as an intern for NewsTalk 1530 KFBK was simple: Go to Kings media day, get sound, come back in one piece.

The simple instructions bestowed by my superiors quickly manifested into doubt and nerves inside my 18-year-old brain. A teenager walking in a field dominated by middle-aged adults tends to a little intimidating, especially when said teenager has been thrown to the wolves by his bosses.

Media day for the 2011-12 Sacramento Kings was a bit unusual compared to past years. A fierce lockout pushed the start of the season to December, forcing the players to cram a 66-game schedule into four months. The uncertainty of summer labor negotiations matched the uncertainty of the Kings’ fan base, who had seen the Maloof brothers, the team’s majority owners, flirting with the possibility of moving to Anaheim the previous spring. Even with the league dead set on stopping the move, the group made no secret about its desires for greener pastures elsewhere as winter approached.

Upon arrival into Sleep Train Arena (then hideously named Power Balance Pavilion), the young Kings seemed to be taking it stride. Second-year center DeMarcus Cousins ran around freely, jokingly telling anyone in his vicinity that he ate nothing but whole birthday cakes during the offseason. Shielded in the 21-year-old’s hijinks was an urge to bring a playoff berth to an arena that hadn’t seen one in half a decade.

The team moved into the building in 1988, when it was known as Arco Arena. For the first seven years of existence, it housed a loser as the Kings didn’t sniff the playoffs until 1995. The hiring of coach Rick Adelman, along with the additions of Chris Webber, Jason Williams and Vlade Divac in 1998, laid the foundation for the best era in franchise history. The team’s apex came in 2002, when the Kings pushed the eventual NBA champion Los Angeles Lakers to the brink, losing in seven games in one of the best (and most controversial) playoff series of all time. As the team’s star power ascended, so did Arco Arena’s reputation as the hardest place to play in the league.