The Hoops Loop

The Origin of the First NBA Team

Have you ever wondered what the first team was in NBA history?

Well the answer, believe it or not, is the Sacramento Kings. They were the first team to be established among the current 30 NBA teams. The franchise was not established as the same team as you know them today but played under a different title in a different city as the Rochester Seagrams, based in Rochester, New York; 2,630 miles away from where the team resides today.

The Transition Phase

The Rochester Seagrams team was established as a semi-professional basketball club in New York in 1923. However, under ambitious leadership of Les Harrison and with the development and growth of the club over 20 years, Les and his brother would transition them into a professional sporting franchise in the year 1945 by joining the National Basketball League (U.S). As a result, the team name was adapted for the first time from the ‘Rochester Seagrams’ to the ‘Rochester Royals’.

The NBL was formed in 1937 and consisted of a great talent pool of players across smaller cities and towns within the country, primarily around the great lakes region.

The Rochester Royals during the small three-year tenure within the NBL would prove to be a successful club despite being a new entrant in the league. The Royals would appear in the finals all three years that they participated in the league and even won in their first championship appearance in 1946.

After their third finals appearance in the NBL, the Royals would move on to the play within the NBL’s rival league, the Basketball Association of America (BAA) in 1946. This move would prove to be null as the two leagues eventually merged in 1949 to form what is now known as the National Basketball Association (NBA).

Despite the constant instability and continual logistic changes, the team would continue their established success from the NBL into the newly formed NBA and would go on to defeat the intra-state rival, the New York Knicks 4-3, led by noneother than coach, Les Harrison. The championship won in 1951 would become their first and last in franchise history since they have joined the BAA/NBA; a 72 year drought for the franchise.

Unfortunately, the Royals were forced to move the franchise away from its founding city to a larger market in Cincinnati, Ohio. This was due to the financial limitations of playing in the small market of Rochester. In turn, the team name would once again be changed from the ‘Rochester Royals’ to the ‘Cincinnati Royals’ from 1957 until 1972.

During the new Cincinnati era for the team, they would go on to battle injuries, struggle to maintain roster stability with high turnover and would even lose a player to military service. However, the franchise did find diamond in the rough by drafting the Hall of Fame legend, Oscar Roberston in the 1960 NBA draft. Robertson famously averaged a triple-double for an entire season and would win the highest individual honour, the MVP award during his tenure with the Royals.

The Cincinnati era for the Royals would be shortened due to the devastating trades of the Royals two star players in Jerry Lucas and Oscar Robertson. The trades caused fan interest to wane and the franchise experienced financial hardship as a result. Thus, the team decided to relocate once again. The new city of choice was Kansas City. The initial issue however, was that another pro team was called the Kansas City Royals, meaning the team had to alter the name for the first time since joining the NBA. The new name the organisation settled on was the ‘Kansas City-Omaha Kings’, this would eventually be shortened to the ‘Kansas City Kings’.

The move to Kansas City occurred in 1972. The new team would mirror the previous actions and occurrences of the Cincinnati team and history would repeat itself. The Kansas City Kings drafted a budding guard superstar in Nate Archibald and would build the team around him. But, in spite of this, the surrounding talent around Nate Archibald was taken away from the team with rivals luring them away with large contract offers in free agency. Additionally, the Kings would experience an unfortunate occurrence and the roof of the home stadium would collapse due to wild weather. As a result, the team were forced to play in suboptimal conditions, including having to play in a smaller venue. Subsequently, ticket sales, and overall attendance were hampered by this and the reoccurring issue of financial difficulties that had followed the franchise wherever they moved to had reared it’s ugly head once again.

The ownership group did not see a future for the franchise in Kansas City, which garnered less interest than the cities college basketball teams. Therefore, the owners decided to part ways with the franchise and sell the Kings for $10.5 million. The new ownership group remained in Kansas for an additional two seasons before making their final and lasting move to Sacramento in 1985.

Modern Day

As mentioned above, in 1985, the Kansas City Kings were purchased for $10.5 million and would once again transfer to another city in the wake of poor fan engagement and troubling financial woes whilst playing in Kansas City. The ‘Kansas City Kings’ then formally became known as the ‘Sacramento Kings’.

An interesting element of this significant move is that the NBA mandated that the Kings were to pay the Golden State Warriors a stifling fee of $850,000 as a result of moving the franchise to Sacramento as the city was considered a part of the Warriors franchise market/territory.

Since the beginning of the modern era for the Kings franchise in 1985, they have only gone as far the Western Conference Finals in the 2001-02 season. On top of that, the franchise established a record for most seasons to consecutively miss the postseason from 2006-2023. This infamous streak is the longest among the four major North American sporting codes, further emphasising how poorly functioning the franchise was during that timespan.

Nevertheless, more history is to be written for the Kings franchise going into the future, however, I am not so sure that a championship winning season to end the 70+ year drought is looming for them with their roster as currently constructed; time will tell.