Getting nostalgic as Kings close down Sleep Train Arena

Saying goodbye to the last NBA arena from bygone era

POSTED: Apr 10, 2016 10:44 AM ET

SACRAMENTO, Calif — Farewell to Sleep Train Arena and the crowd noise and the leaky roof that caused a rain delay during an indoor basketball game and the small closet that visiting teams opened to learn it was actually their locker room and the cowbells and the college-fieldhouse feel and the previous final game and the other names.

Farewell to the last of its kind.

The NBA's old barns are officially all gone now, gyms replaced by massive structures with roofs that bump against the clouds, homey joints lost to time and the necessity of greater revenue through luxury suites. The Kings played in Sleep Train for the final time on a nostalgic Saturday night, and the entire league turned a page.

It was some wake. Dozens of former players, coaches and executives were brought back for the goodbye game, a 114-112 victory over the Thunder, before the 32-48 Kings close another embarrassing season at Phoenix and Houston. The two greatest players of the Sacramento era, Chris Webber and Mitch Richmond, did not show, and the popular Jason Williams skipped as well, but the list of attendees was long and impressive: Mike Bibby, Spud Webb, Doug Christie, Reggie Theus, Vinny Del Negro, Kenny Smith, Brian Grant, Scot Pollard, Geoff Petrie, Rick Adelman, Peja Stojakovic and Vlade Divac and many others.

In a classy move by the franchise, Danielle Tisdale represented her late father Wayman, the joyful, soulful Tiz who should never be forgotten, on this or any other night. She was showered with applause. Adelman received what was probably the loudest ovation as every former King and Sacramento Monarch, the defunct WNBA team, in attendance was introduced at halftime. Former assistant coach Pete Carril, now 85, a Hall of Famer from his time as the Princeton head coach, shuffled back into the spotlight.

All the other old-school arenas had disappeared from the NBA landscape long ago, replaced by structures, some still loaded with charm and some just big, antiseptic and too often without personality beyond the enormity. Not that it was ever meant to be this way. Arco Arena, as it is best known, before becoming Power Balance Pavilion, before becoming Sleep Train Arena, was the last one standing not by choice, but because past generations of local leaders kept finding ways to bungle attempts for a replacement building.

The inability to close a deal nearly cost the city its only major league franchise in 2013, when the Kings' owners, the Maloof family, sold to a group that would have moved the team to Seattle. The Earth started to shake in ways that could have changed NBA history: There is a good chance Phil Jackson would have become head of basketball operations for the new 

The final night of that season, 2012-13, fans milled around after the game under the heavy gloom of uncertainty. Maybe they could be part of greatest fourth-quarter comeback in basketball history and convince the league the Kings should stay, but there was every reason to be nervous as the crowd stayed long after the final buzzer, some in the stands and many on the court with the approval of management. The Board of Governors had never turned down a decision from a fellow owner to sell without a problem with finances or the background check, and there definitely was none of that with the Seattle group or market.

The Kings would have been gone long before if commissioner David Stern had not laid himself on the tracks, and it was Stern who saved the city again in 2013. He counseled Mayor Kevin Johnson, the former All-Star point guard, on finding a new owner and, most importantly, an arena deal. Another power broker, Jerry Colangelo, the former Suns owner during KJ's years in Phoenix and essentially an extension of Stern, likewise went over the playbook with Johnson.

Johnson got the new ownership group, headed by Vivek Ranadive, and the new arena. The Board of Governors kept the team in Sacramento.

The resulting Golden 1 Center eight miles down Interstate 5 from Sleep Train is scheduled to open with concerts in late-summer and be ready for the start of the Kings exhibition schedule in October. It is part of the move toward massive -- it will be nearly twice the size of the old place even with about the same seating capacity, and the overhead videoboard will stretch baseline to baseline in what the team says will be the largest in the world for an indoor arena. There will be five hangar doors that will open at one end when the weather is nice, maybe even during games, depending how trial runs go in preseason and with the high school and college contests that will be played there.

The roof is going to be so much higher that fans can make the same amount of noise as in Sleep Train and it won't rattle eardrums like before. The days of games being played in a cauldron over a high flame, as in the 2002 Western Conference finals against the Lakers as emotions ricocheted everywhere, or just with the old wall of sound crashing down are gone.

But the NCAA tournament is coming back to Sacramento in March. Saturday against the Thunder was about the memories in the old gym, but the start of 2016-17 will be about the new beginning with invitations extended to Stern and Adam Silver. The Kings are hoping to bid to host the 2019 All-Star game, even while realistic they aren't close to the number of hotel rooms that would be required, making it a long-shot attempt and prompting the consideration of every idea from having some visitors stay in the Wine Country some 60 miles to the southwest or bringing cruise ships up the Sacramento River.

The fans milled around long after the final home game, the real final home game this time, with approximately 3,000 people still in the stands and on the court about an hour after the buzzer, allowed to shoot and hang out. The mood Saturday was anything but 2013, and for good measure the team brought out carts loaded with boxes of sparkling apple cider and plastic cups for the 500 or so still around two hours after the buzzer. This was a celebration of what comes next in the fall, because the surreal is actually happening after about a dozen years of talk and disappointment, and also a farewell to a friend. A farewell to the last of its kind.

Scott Howard-Cooper has covered the NBA since 1988. You can e-mail himhere and follow him on Twitter.

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