Sacramento Treats Its New NBA Team Like . . . Well, Kings

Something unusual is going on here.

More than 8,000 people have bought season tickets for a basketball team that doesn’t officially exist, to see it play games in an arena that hasn’t been built.

What we obviously have here is not your standard National Basketball Assn. franchise city, only the most eager, and also the newest.

When the NBA Board of Governors votes Tuesday to approve the move of the Kansas City franchise to California’s capital, professional sports will have finally arrived in the land of John Sutter, who could never have imagined a gold mine such as this one.

In Kansas City, the Kings are dead. But they’re being reborn in a rice field at the intersection of two freeways that link Canada to Mexico and the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific.

It seems like the perfect place, and according to the Sacramento land developers who bought the struggling Kansas City franchise nearly two years ago, that’s just what it is.

But not quite yet. There are a couple of matters to clear up first, such as getting final approval from the league and winning a battle over zoning that threatens the Kings’ future here almost before they even have one.

Next season and the one after that, the Kings will play their home games in a 10,333-seat arena that seems certain to be sold out before the first game is ever played in it.

But unless by their third season the Kings can play in a larger arena that meets NBA standards--at least 15,000 seats--the league has the option to buy the team and move it where it wants.

To avoid that unpleasant happening, the Kings’ new owners are ready to build a 17,000-seat arena at their own expense on city-owned land, just as soon as the Sacramento City Council approves a zoning change from agricultural to commercial.

Chances are that a favorable vote on the zoning issue will prove to be as much a rubber stamp as the NBA’s final approval on the move of the franchise.

When it happens, the sports fans of Sacramento can stop worrying. The celebrating has already begun.

“We’ve got people excited, and they don’t even know what they’re excited about,” said Bob Whitsitt, the Kings’ vice president for marketing.

Last week, when the team was beginning a West Coast trip, the Kings’ players stopped by to look at their new city. A fleet of five white limousines carried them to a practice session, where 1,800 fans were packed inside a 1,200-seat gym.

All five local television stations were there, along with dozens of radio and newspaper reporters, who busily recorded every precious moment.

The players began practice by running wind sprints while the spectators clapped in unison. During shooting drills, the fans cheered wildly.

Afterward, there was an autograph session, which guard Reggie Theus interrupted when he had to go outside for some fresh air.

“They were coming over the tables at me,” Theus said.

That night, the lead story on the television newscasts was that the Kings had been in town for a day. Forward Eddie Johnson was interviewed as he took a helicopter ride over the city. Guards Larry Drew and Mike Woodson were interviewed as they dined at Burger King. LaSalle Thompson talked to a television reporter while he shopped for clothes.

“A monster has been created,” Whitsitt said.

It may be a very profitable monster. Already, deposits have been made on 8,097 season tickets for games in 1985-86. The rest of the tickets will be sold through mail orders on a per-game basis. Whitsitt said that he expects every game to be sold out by Oct. 1.

The Kings will play the next two seasons in their temporary arena, which will be converted into a three-story atrium-office building when a permanent arena is built.

Normal ticket prices will run from a top of $19.50 down to $6, but there are also rows of courtside seats at $35 and $25. The $35 seats cost $1,435 for a season, the $25 seats $1,025 and the $19.50 seats $799.50. Those prices compare favorably to the same types of season tickets at the Forum, where they can charge more because the Lakers are a better product than the Kings.

The highest-priced courtside seats in the Forum are $100 each, which over 42 games--the season-ticket package includes one exhibition game--comes to $4,200. The Forum’s costliest seat in the stands is $37.50, or $1,575 for a season ticket.

An agreement to carry King games on a 50,000-watt clear-channel radio station has been reached, and when a television deal is worked out, the Kings expect to bring in more than $1 million for the rights.

Whitsitt said the radio signal will carry from Alaska to Mexico, but right now, the Kings have a different geographical goal in mind.

“We want to be Northern California’s team,” he said.

That position currently belongs to the Golden State Warriors, who operate about 80 miles down the freeway in Oakland. The Kings want to be good neighbors with the Warriors, so they vow not to televise their road games in Oakland.

“This isn’t a Laker-Clipper situation,” Whitsitt said.

But there is one nagging problem still around, a political hot potato that hasn’t been resolved and won’t be for several months.

The area where the Kings’ permanent arena would be built, next to a proposed 70,000-seat stadium for football and baseball, is city-owned land zoned for agriculture.

For a sports complex to be built there, a majority of the nine-member city council would have to agree to change the zoning to commercial. That is where the Kings’ owners have run into trouble.

The site is a 1,400-acre tract of land about halfway between downtown Sacramento and Metropolitan Airport, in a 25-square-mile area called North Natomas.

Sacramento environmentalists want to maintain the area as one of the largest pieces of protected farmland within the boundary of a major U.S. city. To keep it that way, they suggest that North Natomas be made a national park dedicated to studying farming life.

But the Kings’ owners, a six-man group headed by land developers Joseph and Richard Benvenuti and Gregg Lukenbill, have other ideas for the land, none of which involve farming.

They envision a high-tech industrial park, office buildings and homes, and of course, the sports complex that would provide a permanent home for the Kings, as well as an attraction for major league baseball and the National Football League.

Although the sports complex would take up only 170 acres of the 1,400-acre North Natomas tract, it is the issue that has drawn all the attention in the zoning fight.

Environmentalists claim that 13 different crops could be grown on the North Natomas land. They also say that because the area is near the Sacramento and American rivers, it provides a habitat for migrating waterfowl.

In the meantime, as the temporary arena is under construction ahead of schedule, the King front office seems to have grown weary of the confrontation.

“I’m waiting for someone to tell us we have a snail darter on the wall and hit us with a lawsuit,” Whitsitt said.

According to the U.S. Soil Conservation Service, in a 1982 study of the acreage in the rezoning plan, it was found that nearly all of the land had limitations ranging from “some” to “severe” on the kinds of crops that could grow there.

There are indications, however, that the owners of the Kings have the necessary votes to change the zoning. The council has already voted, 7-2, to appropriate $1.5 million for an environmental impact report, and some believe the city wouldn’t have approved the costly study only to turn down the zoning request when it comes up for a vote.

The council’s final decision on the zoning issue is expected next January, and Michael D. Seward, executive vice president of the Sacramento Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce, said he believes the necessary votes to change the zoning have already been lined up.

“I don’t think it’s a real issue anymore,” said Seward, who has been active in his support of the Benvenuti-Lukenbill group since they bought the Kings in June 1983.

He projects an 8-1 vote in favor of rezoning and listed Mayor Anne Rudin as the one likely to cast the only dissenting ballot.

Rudin has walked a thin line on the zoning issue. On the one hand, she speaks to the environmentalists’ group, which calls itself SCOLD (Sacramento Coalition Opposing Leapfrog Development), while on the other, she welcomes the Kings to the city.

Rudin said any decision on a zoning change in the North Natomas area “must respond to the needs of the city” and has insisted that there are suitable tracts of city land already zoned for commercial use. The Kings and the Chamber say there really aren’t any others.

If the King owners win the zoning fight, as they expect to do, they point out that they will build the sports complex, worth $70 million to $100 million, at no cost to the city or to Sacramento taxpayers.

Seward estimates that the city would realize $10 million in new taxes as a result of the development.

In addition, the chamber estimates that the presence of the Kings in Sacramento would mean $30 million a year to the community through the creation of new jobs and the entertainment dollars that would be spent.

“Everyone would be a winner,” Seward said.

And winning, or at least creating that image, seems to be what having the Kings in town is all about.

More than 2.3 million people live within a 75-mile radius of Sacramento, which is the sixth-fastest growing city in the country and the 20th largest media market.

It is also the largest market in the country without professional sports.

There are two NCAA Division II schools close by, Cal State Sacramento and the University of California Davis, but no Division I school. The nearest is University of the Pacific, 45 miles away.

Portland, Milwaukee, Indianapolis, Phoenix and Salt Lake City are all smaller markets than Sacramento, but each of those cities has an NBA team and projects a major league image.

“The perception of those cities is that they’re all bigger markets than Sacramento because of the impact of having professional franchises,” Seward said.

“Outside of California, people might know we’re the state capital, but that’s about it. They don’t even know where we are.

“But now, for the first time, we as a community will have a major league sport. From a pride standpoint, you can’t imagine how important it is for the people of Sacramento to have that. People can feel they have something major to hold on to.”

Whether or not a professional basketball team is the proper measure of a city’s estimation of its own worth, there are certainly other factors that enhance the value of having one, such as free publicity for the city.

Sacramento residents have grown weary of their city being regarded as a branch-office town, said Seward, who believes the national media attention afforded a major league sports team would help attract more businesses to the city and thus create more jobs.

For the last week, the Sacramento Bee has run a color graphic on the front page of its sports section to accompany its coverage of the Kings. Above and below the Kings’ logo are the words Goodby Kansas City.

The Bee said hello to the Kings when the plan to move the team was announced. The newspaper ran its own unofficial poll of what the team’s name should be.

It was a tongue-in-cheek idea, said Stan Johnston, the Bee’s executive sports editor, since he knew the Kings weren’t going to change their name, anyway.

Among the 800 responses to the poll were some interesting ideas.

Most popular was Delta Kings, since the franchise is located in the San Joaquin Delta. But some others were a bit more unusual, such as the Capitol Offense.

Also nominated were Chips , since Sacramento is regarded as another potential Silicon Valley; Dukes , after Gov. Deukmejian; Illusions of Grandeur and Meadow Muffins, the reasons for which Johnston said no one could quite figure out.

One respondent said the team should continue to be called the Kansas City Kings. That way, if they continue to lose, they could be sent back.

Another person suggested the Incognitos because Sacramento has been undercover to professional sports. Still another offered the name Sodbusters, with the explanation that the name was consistent with Sacramento’s image as an overgrown hick town.

As the posters in the team offices say, THE KINGS ARE COMING! THE KINGS ARE COMING! And what will they do when they’re here? What if they continue to lose?

“Right now, it doesn’t matter,” Whitsitt said. “This is our honeymoon period. We are Sacramento’s major league sport.”

In that regard, the Kings are all that the city has. And for the present, with sellouts on the horizon in an arena that hasn’t been built for a team that isn’t here yet, that’s still more than enough to go around.