The Kansas City Knights basketball team is now officially defunct, being booted from the ABA early this morning. This marks the (hopefully temporary) end of professional basketball in Kansas City.
The Knights were the first team established when the ABA re-formed back in 2000 and by the end of the 2004-2005 season were the only charter team still in the league.
In their inaugural season they played at Kemper Arena under coach Kevin Pritchard, had a fairly good following, and sent many players to the NBA. During the playoffs (which were held in KC) they were defeated in the second round in a controversial game, controversial because after the scoresheets had been signed an error was discovered in which the game should have gone into overtime. The Knights accepted the loss gracefully and vowed to win fair and square the next season.
And win they did. In 2001-2002 the league shattered the record for longest winning streak by any professional sports team in Kansas City history. They went on to the playoffs in Las Vegas and a small contingent of fans (myself included) followed to root them on. The final games were exciting and intense and the Knights secured the championship trophy. Several players from this team also went on to the NBA.
In 2003-2003 the league suspended operations to re-organize. When the league re-opened for 2003-2004, the Knights move across the parking lot to Hale Arena. Hale was a better fit for the team in terms of size, but something was lost in the move... likely the bleacher seats and the poorer acoustics made it seem a little less professional. Despite the best efforts of the new coach, Scott Wedman, the team faltered and lost most of its games in the opening weeks. The team did recover and ended with a winning record but were eliminated in the playoffs.
The 2004-2005 season began oddly. Under new management (but the same owner), the team decided they needed to make the dance team a little more sexy so they hired pole dancers. At the home opener, scantily-clad girls danced erotically along the sidelines during the timeouts. Responding to audience outrage (and, purportedly, a phone call from the league commissioner after a shocked fan telephoned him), the dance team was disbanded halfway through the game. The Knights played the next several weeks without a dance team of any kind before finding a handful of girls to provide tame entertainment. Now under coach Bob Sundvold, the Knights performed somewhat better this season but lacked the standout players that had built fan interest in earlier seasons. With a month remaining in the season, the Knights left Hale for JCCC. In the opinion of many this move is what killed the team, as it became a diversion isolated to southern Overland Park rather than a team representing the entire metro area. Fan interest had already diminished to tepid at best, and now that the games were no longer centrally-located, fans outside of southern JoCo just weren't interested enough to drive the extra distance. On top of that, now that they were playing at a community college, the image of a "professional" team was further eroded.
The JCCC move had been intended to be temporary, as the Knights had planned to become tenants of the proposed Overland Park Arena. (A project I had been opposed to, as KC already has a surplus of existing/planned arena space and doesn't need to diffuse it any further.) However the Overland Park city government is also a fiscally responsible government and refused to give the project the tax breaks developers demanded after their studies showed that the arena would not generate a return on the investment. This effectively killed the arena and left the Knights without a permanant home in their future.
When the 2005-2006 started the struggling team was unable to get off the ground and kept delaying its home opener. Two road games have been played at Lincoln (one on November 26 wherethey lost 132 to 144 and one on December 1 where they lost 90 to 167), but rumor has it the team consisted of players borrowed from other ABA teams. Finally this morning, December 6, 2005, the Knights were de-listed from the ABA's Web site.
Goodbye, Knights.
2000-2005. RIP
