Bulding A Kingdom

By MARK HEISLER

Dec. 23, 1999 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

PHOENIX —

Is this any way to treat the darlings of the NBA?

Maybe the Phoenix Suns don’t know Jason Williams’ No. 55 jersey is the nation’s No. 1 seller, or that the Sacramento Kings, who once couldn’t get on network TV without holing up in a bank and taking hostages, are on 10 times this season.

Actually, the Suns don’t care. By halftime, they’re up by 27 points and Sacramento’s Fun Bunch, which is getting the tab for the price of its fame, isn’t having as much fun as it used to.

Gentleman’s Quarterly may have asked for--and not gotten--a five-hour shoot with Williams, who has shorn his hair and whose idea of leisure wear is Charles Woodson’s No. 24 Raider jersey, but there’s still work to do.

“We’re nothing special,” Chris Webber says. “Darlings of the NBA, Cinderellas, all that is thrown out the window, ‘cause if we’re all of that and we don’t win, that means nothing. We’ll be a bunch of cute little kids, cute guys for the next five or six years and it doesn’t matter. . . .

“We need to win.”

Not that the Kings are losing. They’re 14-9, No. 7 in the West.

Two years ago, when all their sodden history seemed to collapse on them, this would have sounded like a dream.

Now, it’s OK.

“I think it’s like anything,” personnel director Jerry Reynolds says. “Expectations change. . . . All the excitement, fun, all the surprises all happened last year, everyone was so pleased with it.

“And quite honestly, this year’s team is a good team. We don’t know how good, obviously, but the expectations are that it is good. So all of a sudden, winning is more expected. Of course, then losing becomes even more frustrating.”

It’s really frustrating when you surrender points in chunks, rank No. 1 in three-pointers attempted and No. 27 in three-point shooting percentage. Now Coach Rick Adelman, who gets to play the Grinch in this cast of Dr. Seuss characters, talks about defense (they’re No. 27) and decision-making (they like to live on the edge) and pleads for patience, all around.

“That’s the hard part, people talk about that [NBA darling label],” Adelman says, “and I think for us to become a better team and to be a good team, we have to defend better and we’ve got to rebound the ball better. And really a lot of times, our decision-making--if things are going good, you can be creative, do a lot of things. When things aren’t, you’ve got to be a little bit more disciplined.

“We’re struggling with that a little bit right now, but I think it’s going to come. This team’s only been together, the main guys, for 70 games. It’s a very young team. . . . With experience, they’re going to get much better.”

Of course, getting experience in the face of great expectations with a bunch of high-spirited young players isn’t always easy. . . .

Give Us Your Tired, Your Wretched . . .

Of course, after what they’ve been through, what’s wrong with growing pains?

For most of the Kings’ 14 years in Sacramento, and, indeed, all of the wandering franchise’s history, the problem has been more one of shrinkage. Try 35 years, making the playoffs seven times while going from Cincinnati to Kansas City to Sacramento, where they moved into Arco Arena, a huge edifice in the fields outside the city, like that lonely mansion in “Giant.”

However, if the market was small, the fans were devoted and long-suffering. Of course, the Kings put them to the test from the moment they arrived in 1985.

Anything that could go wrong did, as when they turned to that consummate winner, Bill Russell, who turned out to be as ineffectual as a general manager as he had been as a coach, or when they won the lottery in the 1989 draft and took Pervis Ellison, who was gone in a year.

Players came and went, often in relief. When Spud Webb walked into the dressing room in 1991, new teammate Bob Hansen greeted him with “Welcome to hell.”

But the fans kept coming, selling out every game, 497 in a row over 13 seasons until Nov. 7, 1997, when rising ticket prices, an 0-3 start, reports of Mitch Richmond’s unhappiness and the arrival of the Clippers ended the streak.

When the fans left, they went in droves, too. Attendance plummeted almost 3,000 a game that season.

“We’ve had bad teams,” Reynolds says, “but we’d never been in a situation where the fans had kind of given up. They got tired of it and really, with Mitch and his continuous pouting-type thing and wanting to be traded and things like that, it was just a very negative scene. It didn’t look optimistic at all.”

Nevertheless, there were opportunities on the horizon.

Vlade Divac, a Charlotte free agent, wanted to get back near his family in Pacific Palisades. Washington, drowning in disappointment, wanted to move Webber or Juwan Howard. On the draft circuit, the Kings spotted a flashy unknown from Florida with a bad reputation and an amazing handle.

Other teams were catching on too. On draft day, the Lakers’ Jerry West was frantically trying to move up in the draft for Williams, but King General Manager Geoff Petrie shocked the world and took him at No. 7.

Of course, if the draft were held today, Williams probably would go higher still, rough edges or no rough edges.

“We needed to take a risk,” Reynolds says. “Things were at a low ebb. I mean, how much lower can you get?

“And one of the reasons it’s been a bad team for a long time is the same reason most teams aren’t very good, you don’t have a good point guard, you don’t have a center. And Jason Williams was by far the best point guard available in the draft, something we really needed. So on that basis, it wasn’t really that big a risk. We knew he had the talent.

“We felt fairly confident we could get Vlade Divac through free agency, so that would be the best center, best point guard the franchise ever had. And we already had the trade for Webber. . . .

“The trade [Richmond for Webber], on balance, most basketball people would say, great trade. And yet once it was done, with everything that happened, with Chris not wanting to be there, you think, ‘Gee, when’s this ever going to work out for us?’

“It’s amazing, in a few months, everything did.”

Well, It Beats Being in Sofia

Not that Webber wasn’t honored that the Kings wanted him, but Italy was looking pretty good to him, or France, or maybe Bulgaria.

The young star, so gifted, handsome and articulate, and who was once considered among the best and brightest of the next generation, had just been traded for the second time. His star wasn’t merely tarnished, it had been shot down.

For months, he refused to acknowledge the trade. When he did, he said he’d play the last three seasons on his contract and leave, hoping to scare the Kings into trading him to the Lakers, but Petrie wasn’t going for it.

“I wanted to know if I could get out of my contract, go overseas,” Webber says. “But I had a good support system. I had people and family that didn’t care about my ego or what I’m going to think, who said, ‘You just need to buckle down, you need to go there and give it your all and just play and God’s going to take care of you.’

“I’ll tell you the truth, the plane ride--I didn’t even want to get off the plane, I couldn’t believe I was on the plane. I just said a little prayer like, ‘God, you know, this is in your hands.’

“And when I said that, I pretty much knew it was going to be a good year. I knew that, hey, just let it go and do what you can do and everything will work out. . . . Just be that person that you are and see what happens. I really felt positive about it, even though I did not like the situation.

“The first day of practice, playing with those guys, I kind of knew that it was something special. I’d always liked Vlade. He and I started off joking. Then Jason came in and the way he was playing. . . .

“So it was good I really attached myself to Vlade and Jason and Corliss [Williamson], because of their personalities and the way that they played and we got along. They accepted me and that was all that I could ask for. . . .

“It was kind of like the first day, we showed, hey, we want to play together. So it was like the first day, nobody really shot it, everybody wanted to pass--no, you shoot it, you shoot it. That’s the way it is now.”

Webber is now the player people thought he would be. He’s a smooth fit with the Kings, one of the greatest passing teams ever assembled, with the dazzling Williams and big men who handle the ball like guards. From their first practice, the ball hopped madly between them, even if it sometimes hopped into the stands after one player tried to outdo another.

They charmed everyone during the season, then lost that scintillating first-round series to Utah, after leading the best-of-five, 2-1.

But now it’s a new season, as Williams turns the ball over for the sixth time--in the first quarter--against the Suns.

The Kings wind up losing by 16, surrendering a tidy 119. Williams, who stood up to the press barrage graciously enough as a rookie, now often refuses to talk after games, and begs off this night too.

“I’ve got nothing positive to say,” he drawls. “Sorry.”

It would be sad, indeed, if the joy runs out of this traveling highlight show, but after a 9-2 start, reality is setting in. Reality says you can’t dribble up and fire from the arc--or three feet behind it--if you’re only making 27% of your three-pointers, as Williams is.

Not that the Kings see their solutions as folding their tent and going the way of grind-it-out Utah.

“Utah would be more fun if they could,” Webber says. “They don’t have the athletes that we have. If guys on their team could dunk, they would. . . .

“I think sometimes that [over-passing] could be a problem. But I don’t think other teams have the luxury of having good passers like we do. I think that being the Catch-22, I think teams would trade away their blandness for our flavor. Definitely.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Capitol Gang

The Royals/Kings have made the playoffs only seven times in their 35-year history going from Cincinnati to Kansas City to Sacramento, and only three times since coming to California in 1985. Their record in Sacramento (* made playoffs):

Year Wins-Losses

1999: *27-23

1997-98: 27-55

1996-97: 34-48

1995-96: *39-43

1994-95: 39-43

1993-94: 28-54

1992-93: 25-57

1991-92: 29-53

1990-91: 25-57

1989-90: 23-59

1988-89: 27-55