The Sacramento Kings are getting a new look next season, and the design reaches deep into the franchise’s past. Sacramento is one of eight NBA teams set to wear the league’s new “Specter” jerseys, a collection built around each club’s history, city roots and fan culture.
For the Kings, the jersey comes in black with a purple gradient shaped like a crown, a nod to the team’s 2014 logo. It will be worn alongside the return of the old 2020-21 city jersey, giving Sacramento two uniforms in the rotation that connect back to the franchise’s identity.
That identity runs a long way back. The Kings are tied with the Los Angeles Lakers and Detroit Pistons as the league’s second-oldest team, dating to the 1948-49 season.
They began as the Rochester Royals, spent eight seasons in New York, then moved to Cincinnati in 1957 for 14 seasons. After that came 12 years in Kansas City before the final move to Sacramento.
Sacramento’s early years also came with a near miss in the 1985 draft. With the seventh pick, the Kings selected center Joe Kleine out of Arkansas, while the Golden State Warriors took Chris Mullins one pick later. Kleine had just finished a senior season at Arkansas averaging 22.1 points and 8.4 rebounds in 35 games, and he helped deepen the Kings’ frontcourt entering the 1985-86 season alongside LaSelle Thompson and Rich Kelley.
Kleine stayed with the Kings for four seasons and made steady progress early in his career. He started 18 games as a rookie, 31 in his second season and a career-high 60 in the 1987-88 campaign, when he also averaged 9.8 points.
Even without landing a future Hall of Famer, Sacramento still found its best stretch much later. Under Hall of Fame coach Rick Adelman, the Kings reached the playoffs eight straight times, and their deepest run came in 2002, when they advanced to the Western Conference Finals and pushed the then-back-to-back champion Lakers to seven games.
Game 7 delivered the kind of drama fans remember. Mike Bibby, the team’s leading scorer with 29 points, made the game-tying free throws to force overtime.
Since Adelman’s exit, Sacramento has had far less success and is now in a rebuild, with another Arkansas prospect in Darius Acuff Jr. The new “Specter” jersey is meant to reflect that long franchise line, honoring the Kings as one of the NBA’s oldest teams while giving the fan base another piece of the story to wear.
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The Kings have continued to reshape Doug Christies staff, adding Brendan Suhr and Jason Maxiell as assistant coaches to bolster the bench around their new head coach. Suhr arrives with more than 25 years of coaching and executive experience across the NBA and college basketball, giving Sacramento a seasoned voice with a long track record in the game.
Maxiells promotion from the Kings G League affiliate adds a different layer, bringing a former nine-season NBA player into a bigger role after he had already been in the organizations development pipeline. Together, the hires suggest Christie is leaning into a staff built on both experience and internal continuity, with Sacramento clearly working to strengthen the coaching personnel behind the scenes. [Read more 🡒]
Kings Rebuild Depends On Fixing An Offense Problem That Starts At The Rim
The Kings spent much of last season fighting uphill on offense, and the numbers told an obvious story. Sacramento finished with just 22 wins and sat near the bottom of the league in several key scoring categories, including three-point shooting and attempts at the rim. The encouraging part was what happened when the ball actually got into the restricted area, where the Kings shot well enough to hint at a cleaner offensive base than the overall results suggested.
The bigger issue was simply getting there often enough, something the team missed when Domantas Sabonis was out of the lineup after leading Sacramento in restricted-area attempts. As the rebuild moves forward, the front office is clearly hoping a mix of added interior size and shooting can change that profile, with Darius Acuff Jr. joining rookies Maxime Raynaud and Dylan Cardwell as part of the effort to create more balance around the paint and beyond the arc. [Read more 🡒]
Kings Buzz Around Jalen Duren Suddenly Feels Worth Watching
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There have also been whispers tying Duren and Sabonis together in possible trade discussions, which is exactly the kind of wrinkle that makes this worth monitoring even before anything concrete develops. For now, nothing official has been confirmed, and that keeps the whole situation in the speculative stage. Still, when a player with Durens profile is linked to Sacramento, and the Kings own top decision-maker is part of the equation, it is a storyline that suddenly feels a lot more real than background noise. [Read more 🡒]