Sacramento Kings

The Sacramento Kings are a professional basketball team based in Sacramento, California, United States. The Kings are members of the National Basketball Association (NBA).

The franchise that would become the Sacramento Kings initially started in the city of Rochester, New York, as the Rochester Royals of the National Basketball League.

At the conclusion of World War II, the United States lacked a major professional basketball league. The National Basketball League decided to fill that void by stepping up from a regional semi-pro league into the nation's premier professional basketball loop. One of the top professional teams in the country was the Rochester Pros, an independent barnstorming team run by Lester Harrison. They were invited to join the NBL for the 1945–46 season. The team, which had long been known as the Seagrams before briefly adopting the nickname "Pros", held a name-the-team contest. The winner was 15-year old Richard Paeth for his entry, the "Royals."

Success for the Royals was almost immediate. Founded in 1945 by owner/coach/general manager Les Harrison (Hall of Famer) and his brother and co-owner/business manager Jack Harrison, the team won the NBL championship in 1945–46. The team was led by Bob Davies, Al Cervi, George Glamack, and Otto Graham, a future NFL Hall of Famer, who, in his only season in professional basketball, won a league championship before moving on to football and leading the Cleveland Browns to ten straight championship games, winning seven.

The following season, NBL Governors voted that the regular season "Pennant Winner" would be declared as the official NBL Champion, and the post-season would consist of a separate, non-championship tournament. The Royals finished 31–13 (.705), capturing their second NBL Championship in as many years, but lost in the post-season tournament finals to the Chicago American Gears.

The following season the NBL scrapped their one-year "pennant" experiment, and from that point forward the post-season playoffs would determine the NBL Champion. The Royals again finished with the league's best overall record at 44–16, but lost to George Mikan's Minneapolis Lakers 3 games to 1 in the NBL Finals.