Kings Try to Restore Luster to Golden Age

The dynasty teeters.

Not that dynasty. Everyone already knows the Lakers are on the brink of something momentous, be it glorious or terminal or both.

The Sacramento Kings’ future also is at stake today, when they meet the Lakers in as big a game as the regular season offers, both teams fighting to preserve the world as they know it. This one isn’t merely life or death.

The Kings aren’t actually an NBA dynasty, because they’ve never won a title (thanks, Rick Fox, for all the reminders). They’re more like a Pacific Division dynasty, having won it the last two seasons and led it most of this one.

Nevertheless, after all those years when they could barely imagine mediocrity, much less excellence, the last six seasons represent a golden age in which the Kings became an elite team with the game’s most entertaining offense.

Of course, like the Lakers, the Kings can tell you it’s not easy being great.

For their first 13 years here, the Kings ruled, at least locally. They never had a winning record, averaging 30 wins, and never had an empty seat because fans embraced players such as Wayman Tisdale and Lionel Simmons.

“The thing everybody forgets, people talk about our 220-game sellout streak,” personnel director Jerry Reynolds said. “We once had 500 in a row [497 actually] and we weren’t any good.”

The Kings’ current sellout streak is the league’s longest. Their 13-year streak is the fourth longest in NBA history.

Their fortunes turned in 1999 when Chris Webber and Vlade Divac arrived. Since the start of the 2000-2001 season, they’ve won 229 games, tying them for the league’s best with the San Antonio Spurs, ahead of the Lakers’ 217.

Talk about your success stories. The Kings now have real stars and fans who are jaded enough that they no longer just target outsiders like their archenemy, Phil Jackson.

Which is unfortunate for Webber.

He blew out a knee last spring and missed the season’s first 58 games, 43 of which the Kings won. The team’s success led to discussions about whether the Kings’ were better without him. This kept talk radio busy but meant nothing to King brass, which plugged Webber back into the lineup as soon as he was ready.

The Kings went 5-1 with him, looking like the best team going. On March 11, they led the Pacific by six games and the West by 3 1/2.

Webber wasn’t bad, but he wasn’t his old self, either. He was reluctant to go inside and eager to find his game so he kept shooting. The Kings lost nine of 15 and the Timberwolves, Lakers and Spurs were driving to topple them.

“His explosiveness and lateral movement are not there,” Houston’s Jim Jackson, a former teammate, said of Webber. “It’s going to take time. But you can’t take away the intangibles like his scoring and rebounding. He can still do that.”

Well, sometimes he could. In a March 9 win over the Golden State Warriors in Arco, Webber shot two for 21 and fans began booing.

Webber, who’s nothing if not sensitive, said he felt “more than betrayed.” The Sacramento Bee’s Scott Howard-Cooper reported he vented privately about demanding a trade. Webber responded by saying, “You know, we have the playoffs coming up and I’m trying to win a championship. That’s not something that I’m even concerned with right now.”

Notice the “right now” and the failure to note this was just bad stuff that comes with being a big guy.

The Lakers know all about that, having heard that they’re Kobe Bryant’s “first preference,” but nothing more definitive, so the story continues to hang over them.

There are more similarities. Like Bryant, Webber seemed to have every advantage, coming from a solid family, arriving not only gifted but smart and movie star handsome.

Like Bryant, Webber also arrived young -- he had just turned 20 when he was drafted -- and got into more trouble than anyone would have thought possible.

Webber is a perennial All-Star but is dogged by a reputation as a bad money player. He just emerged from a two-year prosecution for obstruction of justice, stemming from a Michigan booster’s claim he paid Webber and his family $280,000. A federal district attorney hauled Webber’s father and his aunt into court and charged them too.

The case was dropped after Webber pleaded guilty to contempt for telling a grand jury he’d taken no money at all.

This added up to a difficult preseason, and becoming Public Enemy No. 1 in his comeback did nothing for Webber’s frame of mind.

Normally the most available and quotable of the stars, he turned inward. It wasn’t a good time for any of the Kings, capped by their 115-91 bombing by the Lakers when Webber drew a second-half technical, looking as if he was trying to get two so he could say good-night.

After losses in Dallas and San Antonio, reserve Tony Massenburg said, “The soft label has come back, deservedly so, because people have been pounding us in the middle. And we weren’t labeled soft earlier this year. We were playing all our big guys, blowing people out by 25 or 30 points.”

Yes, Massenburg was in the rotation earlier this year when the Kings were playing all their big guys and blowing out people by 25 or 30 points, but fell out when Webber returned.

This just shows losing is bad for all concerned, so it wasn’t good for the Kings to open the fourth quarter in Thursday’s home game with an eight-point lead over the Timberwolves then get outscored, 33-17.

Then the Kings lost in Phoenix and got more bad news: Bobby Jackson, who’d just tried to come back after missing 24 games with an abdominal pull, was out again.

Unlike the Lakers, the Kings have their core players secured. If Webber mews about wanting out, they can tell him he’ll just have to deal with it.

Both teams have seen happier days. For at least one, things will get worse before they get better.

Faces and Figures

So much for the honeymoon. The Hornets are pulling their traditional fade, but now they’re in New Orleans, which isn’t used to it. Attendance ranks 28th in the league and next season the Hornets go West, where they’re not likely to be a playoff team. (They were 11-17 vs. West teams and now will play them 54 times, rather than 28.)

Owner George Shinn said he’d evaluate the performance, not only of new Coach Tim Floyd but of old General Manager Bob Bass.

“The ownership will not stand by and let nothing happen,” Hornet Vice President Jack Capella said. “They are going to make sure winning is the first priority. You want to have a team that is winning and have excitement in the building. That’s what we’ve got to be able to provide them.”

With the Houston Rockets struggling down the stretch, Coach Jeff Van Gundy, who’s taking them back to the playoffs for the first time since 1999, sounds as if he’s ready to reconfigure them too.

“I want to get in, but we have set our standards so low here,” Van Gundy said. “The culture is such that we just want to breathe a sigh of relief that we made the playoffs, like that is some magnificent accomplishment in the NBA, just making it.

“My point to the team from Day 1 is that that’s the lowest form of accomplishment in the NBA, just making it. I want to have a disciplined, sound, hard-playing team that competes for a championship.”

Meanwhile, Steve Francis, the former Stevie Franchise who’s trying to become a post-feeding, Van Gundy-style point guard, says Van Gundy’s attitude is a problem.

“Of course our coach is very intense,” Francis said after Golden State had upset the Rockets. “Nobody wants to be wrong. That’s where you get a lot of mistakes. Sometimes guys that don’t normally play 40 minutes play real tentative. For us as starters it’s important that we at least come out and set a tone.... Everybody is pretty much on edge and anxious, playing not to make a mistake.”

Van Gundy, asked about his brother, Stan, Miami’s coach and a late-arriving coach-of-the-year candidate: “If you’re still employed, you’re coach of the year this year. We’re all coach of the year.”