Game No. 82.
For the Lakers, it’s just another ordinary Wednesday night. It’s the last game of the season, that just-so-happens to end on the second night of a back-to-back against the Sacramento Kings. No thrills, no frills and no fuss.
The Lakers will more than likely cement their status as the No. 2 seed in the Western Conference win or lose. While the Lakers await the results of an MRI scheduled for Andrew Bynum, the Kings await an entirely different fate. They’ll wait to see if they’ll be playing in a different arena, in front of a new audience and under a different moniker for the 2011-12’ season.
Hard to believe what a difference a span of a few years makes.
What were once two teams at the cusp of an intense rivalry are now only connected because they play in the same division. Every so often the Kings may catch the Lakers off guard and steal a few games, but overall the match-up between the two teams has lost its luster.
Next: The Lakers/Kings rivalry may have been born in the playoffs, but never fully developed
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The Kings and Lakers might as well be night and day at this point. The rivalry that almost was, perhaps never will be. It seems inevitable that the Kings will move from their home in Sacramento to Anaheim, but the proximity in geographic area will do little to ignite any old rivalries. It may just end up burying it once and for all.
The great rivalries are born in the playoffs. They’re then cultivated over the years by the successful efforts of general managers and owners who care enough about the team and their fans to sign great players and surround them with talent. They’re legitimized when each team has drawn their fair share of blood—meaning they’ve beat each other at least once, 4-out-of-7 times in a series.
Regular season wins are nice, but everyone knows the real battles happen in the playoffs. Win a series and you’re a proven winner. Continuously lose year after year and how many games you’ve won in the regular season hardly matters. In that regard, perhaps the Lakers/Kings rivalry in the early 2000’s was never fully realized. It may not be considered a legitimate rivalry, but if you lived through it or even remember it in the slightest, you know it sure felt like one.
I’m not one to take trips down memory lane, but considering how favorable the outcome was for the Lakers, it wouldn’t hurt to conjure up some nostalgia.
Note: This might be the time to skip a few paragraphs if you’re a Kings fan.
Next: The Lakers/Kings rivalry in a nutshell
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It began in 2000, when the 8th seeded Kings took the top seeded Lakers to a five-game series in the first round. No one thought they could push the Lakers to the limit, but still the Lakers prevailed. In 2001 the Kings were able to advance to the west semifinals where they met the Lakers once again. Sacramento was said to have an insurmountable home court advantage, but the Lakers easily beat them, sweeping the series 4-0.
Defeated and deflated, their championship hopes in shambles, the Kings’ players admitted they didn’t have enough heart to overcome the Lakers. With an additional chip on their shoulders to match the first one the Lakers chiseled the year prior and the promise of their superstar Chris Webber signing an extension, the Kings were poised to churn out their best regular season outcome to-date. The Kings would finish the 2001-02’ season with a record of 61-21, winning all but five games at home. They won the Pacific Division title by posting a better record than the two-time defending champion Lakers and raised the banner up in Arco Arena rafters. The Kings watched proudly as they hoisted the banner, but the reality was the Lakers could wallpaper the ceiling at Staples with all the division titles they’d won over the years.
The Lakers and Kings were on a collision course to the Western Conference Finals, a seven-game series that most considered the equivalent to the Finals that year. Peja Stojakovic got hurt, Kobe Bryant got food-poisoning from a bay area hotel. Games one and three went to the Lakers, games two and four to the Kings. Mike Bibby hit a game winner and Robert Horry followed by hitting a game winner to send the game back to Arco Arena for a pivotal game seven. The series lived up to the hype, it morphed what otherwise would’ve been a ridiculously dominant three-peat run for the Lakers into an all-out brawl from start to finish and it was the series David Stern had been praying for on his knees since Michael Jordan bowed out in 1998.
In short, it was epic.
That was just the on-court action. There was a whole other series of verbal jabs going on off-court between games to the tune of the Kings complaining that the referees decided a few games in favor of the Lakers and Phil Jackson referring to Sacramento as an “old cow town.” It didn’t just end once the Lakers were victorious after game seven. Mike Bibby and Vlade Divac called the Lakers undeserving champions while Shaquille O’Neal called the Kings the “Sacramento Queens,” and declared Los Angeles as the new capital of California during the Lakers’ championship parade.
Next: A fight broke out on the court, the Kings were never a threat to the Lakers again
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If the climax was the Lakers knocking the Kings out of contention for the third-straight time, then the dismantling of the rivalry began after punches were exchanged between Lakers forward Rick Fox and Kings forward Doug Christie during a pre-season game.
The Kings were never quite the same after that, key players moved on, Webber had major knee surgery and lost some of his quickness and athleticism. Attempts the Kings made to stay in contention failed and it’s all led up to the cowbell-clunking Sacramento crowd having to say goodbye to their beloved franchise.
So it appears that destiny would have the Lakers matched up against the Kings on their last night of existence in Sacramento.
It’s anyone’s guess how the Kings will bow out of the season and essentially out of the arena that was once considered the loudest and toughest to play in on the road. The truth is, even if the players do come out and play hard against the Lakers will it even matter? For the players it probably won’t, but for the fans who’ll no longer get to see another Lakers/Kings match-up at Arco Arena it might.
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