"Horry...for the win! YES!"
I wanted to stab Marv Albert in the throat. The Sacramento Kings were seconds away from taking a commanding three games to one lead over the Los Angeles Lakers in the 2002 Western Conference Finals before Robert Horry's buzzer-beater ruined everything. I took a deep breath and told myself to stay calm. And then ... CRACK! My parents ran into the room to see what had just happened, and found shards of broken glass littered on my bedroom floor. I'd thrown the remote at the TV and smashed the screen into tiny pieces. It still pains me to think about that moment. Man, how I loved that TV. Oh, and the Kings.
I've never been to Sacramento. The closest I've come is Las Vegas, and I'd rather not talk about that right now (or ever). I grew up in Springfield, New Jersey, a five-square-mile town that's best known for being the residence of The Simpsons (at least, according to the locals). Bored out of our minds, my friends and I discovered the joy of bursting open packs of Hoops and Fleer basketball cards in middle school. While everyone was hoping to land a Jordan or some hologram insert, one of my best friends only cared about finding cards of one player — Larry Johnson (the former Knick and Hornet with five children by four women, not the Kansas City Chiefs running back who assaults women in nightclubs). I decided to go the same route and focus my collection on a single player. I wish I could say that I immediately thought of Mitch Richmond, one of the most underrated players in the league who received little attention by virtue of playing in Sacramento. The truth is, when I flipped through my box of cards, I found nine different Richmond's, by far the most I'd had of any single player. And that's how a guy from a tiny New Jersey suburb became a die-hard Kings fan in 1994.
Before the days of the ESPN Bottomline and instantly-updated online box scores, finding Kings scores was no easy task. The newspapers would publish the late game results on a one-day delay, oftentimes neglecting to even mention Sacramento. I'd rely on checking if the "L" column in the standings had gone up the last two days. Once in a while, I'd be treated to a quick game recap, something along the lines of "Kings Off to Worst Start in Franchise History," which I'd clip and store in a binder along with my cards. I'd set my alarm for 7:50 each Saturday to catch the last ten minutes of the only morning SportsCenter and see the Kings/Nuggets score flash across the screen for a few seconds. One time, the announcer described how Richmond banked in an incredible buzzer-beater against the Warriors, but by that time, I knew there would be no highlights. It didn't matter. I'd put the stats into my bootleg PDA (I think it was Kasio) and go back to sleep.
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