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DeMarcus Cousins & Ashley

By | 21 Comments | Mar 30, 2023

Mar 25, 2023; Sacramento, California, USA; A beam from the roof of the arena after the game between the Sacramento Kings and the Utah Jazz at Golden 1 Center. Mandatory Credit: Darren Yamashita-USA TODAY Sports

I never really left Sacramento. I mean to a point that’s objectively true. I live in Los Angeles and am, depending on how loose you’re feeling at the Guy Fieri Highball Lounge at the Burbank Airport, 3-7 drinks away. My parents are still in Carmichael. And my brother currently lives next door to Golden One (still never seen the Beam but some of that may or may not be attributable to how loose I’d otherwise been feeling at the Guy Fieri Highball Lounge at the Burbank Airport or Sac Yard or the Yardhouse or Raven or Hilltop etc.). But subjectively it’s also true. I realized that a few weeks ago when I realized it didn’t really matter if I made it to a playoff game. I was at Game 5, I was at LeBron’s debut, I was at that wild double overtime game against the Timberwolves, let someone else make those memories. But what I did want was to be in town. Feeling loose at Sac Yard or Yardhouse or Raven or Hilltop or the parking lot of what used to be Tex Wasabi’s.

And I felt it again last night when my desire to share memories was less specific to moments at Arco/Power Balance/Golden One and more just a desire to share memories specific to Sacramento. Not because I don’t care about the Kings but because I care about them too much, because the two for me, the city and the team, for all of us, are inextricable, the Kings are Sacramento and Sacramento is the Kings.

During relocation one of the prevailing mottos was Bigger than Basketball, and in the context it was meant, that a stadium would be about more than just keeping the Kings, it made sense. But to me the Kings have always been smaller than basketball. In a way otherwise transcendent of professional sports. On paper the Kings are one of 30 professional basketball franchises, and while it in no way discredits any other fanbase, or the other teams Sacramentans champion (save the Giants, the Giants can eat it) there is no comparable relationship in sports between the Kings and the fans. And it’s what has made, of course, these interminable years in the desert so painfully parched.

The always excellent Patrick Redford tried to get to the bottom of this in his Defector post of the same topic this morning:

If Sacramento were a normal city and the Kings fanbase were a normal group of basketball fans, perhaps some critical part of their collective spirit would have been broken during the bad times. Not even close. Perhaps it’s because they’re the only team in town, perhaps it’s because they glimpsed the oblivion of relocation, or maybe it’s a simple matter of the Central Valley Inferiority Complex, but Kings fans have consistently, irrationally shown up for their team during the worst of times, which is part of what’s made this year so special.

While I think all of those are true to varying degrees I would offer one other. In Sacramento, and for those of us from Sacramento that live elsewhere but never really left, everyone fucking knows everyone else. And by and large, with a few notable exceptions, whatever intermittent grievances and annoyances and philosophical differences, everyone fucking likes, Christ loves, everyone else. Being a Sacramentan, whether here, there or elsewhere, conquers all. I have a half dozen or so new Sacramento friends in Los Angeles. And the reason those friends clicked so quickly and have lasted so long is even if I didn’t know those people, I knew those people. We all spoke the same shorthand, what we didn’t realize at the time was Beamish. Because Light the Beam has done what nothing else could, three elegant and easily transportable syllables that empathically define, whether at home or abroad, what it means to be from Sacramento. And as such the team remains the singular most unifying and explicit force of everything that being a Sacramentan means, of that love. Or at least until Barbie’s theatrical release.

For years, of course, that unifying force was collective misery, futility, rationalization. “Hey we’re just lucky we kept the team ,” “At least we have the stadium” “Buddy won the three point contest” “That one guy that’s always posting seem a little off?” etc. Tim commented recently that he was actually going to miss the misery a bit, and I agreed, and it reminded me of that old Swingers “You miss the pain for the same reason you miss them, because you lived with it for so long” bit of dialogue. And in a way of course misery makes you need people more. It does, after all, love company. It was and is a different kind of love from what we’re currently experiencing, but an equally necessary one. Because how the hell else and why the hell else are we otherwise still here?

But I can tell you today, having lived through that fateful Friday after the single most futile moment, for me, as a Kings fan, fumbling the Doncic draft, that this feels fucking substantially better, and every bit as cathartic in its unity. If, for no other reason, I get to revel in said unity just a little bit longer than I have in a decade and a half.

Love isn’t easy, and these last 16 years have not been easy, they’ve in fact been insanely, unassailably difficult, the fail dog humping vomit meme of sports fandom. It is a testament to all of you that we’re still here. That we never stopped caring, even if we found at times alternative coping methods. As a cynical, spiteful 43-year-old every now and then I am legally obligated to roll my eyes at some of the more garish enthusiasm. But then I hear Hobo Johnson and think about where we’re going and where we’ve been, the Flannery O’Connor of it all, and I start to tear up, and elegiacally offer up a Light the Beam to the God of Sacramento, the God that is all of us.

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SactownsNotSoFinest
March 30, 2023 1:11 pm

Light the Fucking Beam Robby

1951
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March 30, 2023 1:25 pm

When do we get to the Boogie part of the article? 😉

eddie41
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March 30, 2023 1:30 pm
Reply to  1951

Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor?

Want2win
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March 30, 2023 6:14 pm
Reply to  eddie41

It was the Italians.. try opening a book!

yokosolo
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March 31, 2023 5:23 pm
Reply to  Want2win

Forget it, he’s rolling.

GhostMalone
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March 30, 2023 1:38 pm

I’m not from Sacramento, I have lived most of my life in the foothills a couple hours south east. But the Kings’ community and all the contributors to this site and its predecessor have made me feel a part of it.

I’m a poor graduate student and can in no way afford a playoff ticket, but I plan on driving down and watching the first playoff game in bar. I don’t know what else to do, I don’t particularly share this fandom with any of my friends or family, and Sacramento seems like the only appropriate place to be for it. Going to surround myself with strangers and share the joy, reflect on the pain.

It’s silly, there are so much more important things in life. But if you have chosen to remain a Kings fan the last 16 years, it says something about you. In the grand scheme it is a small something, but something I like regardless.

Here’s to the Kings, and to us.
Light the beam.

JackassCentral916
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March 30, 2023 2:50 pm
Reply to  GhostMalone

Beautifully said. I can’t really afford to buy a playoff ticket, but may go into credit card debt and do it anyway. Normally, I like watching important games at home, where i can be anxious and not be bothered by people saying dumb things during the game. Now, for these playoffs, I want to be in a bar downtown for every game, surrounded by kings fans. I want to lose myself and merge with the crowd. The pain of the last 16 years has been so isolating, because I really only ever felt comfortable talking (mostly lurking) about the Kangz with y’all here. A normal human couldn’t have understood my thoughts on the Kings, or why I still cared, or felt indignant. I’m excited for the magic and the LOUDNESS of being inside a Kings arena during a big game is going to overflow out of G1C and into the city itself.

SlamsonsRollerskates
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March 30, 2023 1:42 pm

I can finally stop calling Ann Phoong.

andy_sims
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March 30, 2023 1:55 pm

why is she married or something

andy_sims
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March 30, 2023 1:51 pm

Thanks for another great essay, Robby. It’s always good to see your thoughts in print.

Except on Twitter, where you’re just terrible. Even Dennis Miller’s references were occasionally recognizable by another human being.

Marty
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March 30, 2023 2:16 pm

Clicking the Hobart Jackson link is five seconds I’ll never get back.

yokosolo
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March 31, 2023 5:24 pm
Reply to  Marty

Please don’t boo

Kingsguru21
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March 30, 2023 4:34 pm

As a cynical, spiteful 43-year-old every now and then I am legally obligated to roll my eyes at some of the more garish enthusiasm.

You do not have monopoly on this. But I’ll allow you to have it for today. Tomorrow? I cannot guarantee.

Want2win
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March 30, 2023 5:33 pm

Love this great piece!!

UpgradedToQuestionable
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March 30, 2023 7:29 pm

A Robby Biegler commentary on The King’s Herald?

Now I finally get that the Kings are in the playoffs sh8t is REAL.

Miss your stuff! Happy to see you sharing words here.

KingsFanKrish
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March 30, 2023 8:45 pm

I grew up in Sacramento but haven’t lived in Sacramento for 32 years. Yet, 50% of my best friends are from Sacramento. My wife who I met 20 years after leaving Sacramento is from Sacramento. I speak fluent Beamish!

KingOfTheMonsters
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March 31, 2023 10:40 am

When I was in college, a buddy of mine says, “Hey, you got to meet this guy. He’s from Sacramento, too. He was standing in the dining room (of our student co-op) and I just knew from looking at him that he was from Sacramento.”
“How did you know that he was from Sacramento.”
“He dresses and talks just like you.”
I still don’t know what that means, but he was right. Turns out the guy was from Curtis Park. I was from South Sac, off of Meadowview. We became good friends.

yokosolo
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March 31, 2023 5:25 pm

Dreams really do come true.

ajonez81
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March 31, 2023 7:09 pm

Is Ashley the super hot chick that used to be on TV in Sac?

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