On Monday, December 16th, 2019, the Sactown Royalty staff received an email from The Powers That Be at SB Nation revealing their plans to effectively end StR as we knew it.
I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that receiving this news 9 days before Christmas didn’t weigh on me over the holiday break, but to the credit of our diligent staff and the motivation from our Sacramento community, it didn’t take us long to get working on what would ultimately be Our Next Chapter The Kings Herald.
But The Kings Herald wasn’t always The Kings Herald. It was a lot of different names depending on what stage we were in its development, and I thought it would be fun to pull back the curtain and take you on a little adventure detailing how we got here.
The first step was figuring out the best way to communicate with each other in real time. Greg Wissinger gave birth to SlackTown Royalty, a temporary Slack channel where we could bitch about SB Nation and brainstorm ideas for the new site.
From inside the depths of SlackTown Royalty, someone, maybe Akis? Threw out the name SacTown Loyalty for the new site. This made all the sense in the world at the time. Loyalty is a huge trademark of the Sacramento community, and StL would make us easily identifiable as the new website from the former staff at Sactown Royalty.
The buzz around Sactown Loyalty didn’t last more than a few days. Ultimately we determined that it would be better for us if we made a clean break from Sactown Royalty the website and the name. We didn’t want our work confused with whatever SB Nation had planned for StR after we left, and this was our chance to try something new. Looking at what Sactown Royalty has become with the absence of a local writing staff, it’s clear that this was the right call.
I don’t remember who came up with the next name in our timeline, but I’m going to give an educated guess that it was Omer Khan’s creation; Kings Landing.
The Kings Herald was Kings Landing for a long time, but the saga to secure that domain was a nightmare.
If you go to KingsLanding.com right now, you’ll find an online store offering American Art Pottery for sale that hasn’t been updated since 2011. We did a little digging and found out that the man who owned this domain had passed away several years ago.
We probably should have abandoned the Kings Landing dream there. Instead, we started developing a plan where we would track down his elderly widow, let’s call her Paula, who probably had no idea that she owned a very valuable domain thanks to the popularity of Game of Thrones, and attempt to acquire it from her for our Kings project. Some might call it a digital heist.
I want to say we sent out an email or two, and decided that our legal team at the time (Omer) would reach out to her personally, but this is basically where the Kings Landing dream died. We never heard back on any of our inquiries, and other easier-to-secure names started gaining some traction.
We wasted hours upon hours debating this. Everyone was making name pitches with varying degrees of sincerity. I distinctly remember suggesting Kings Hut as a joke, but with the lines blurred and everyone playfully frustrated, I’m pretty sure Slacktown Royalty thought I was being serious.
In no particular order, the following ideas had some support from various staff members:
916th Man
Here We Reign
Reigning Threes
Here We Stayed
The 916
The Nine One Six
Nine One Six
Kings Landing Blog
Kings Landing
The Kings Landing
City of Threes
The Kings Post
Kings Post
916th
Kings Blog
Kings Daily
The Sacramento Independent
The Sacramento Gazette
Anything Kings related Gazette
Basketball Hell
Lion Kings
Purple Reign
City of Treys
The Royal Standard
The Kings Herald
Kings Herald
The conversation got derailed on several occasions. Brad Geiser developed a fetish for newspaper sounding’ names like The Sacramento Gazette that would give us the creative freedom to write about food or movies in addition to the Kings. With no basketball to write about for the foreseeable future, that might happen anyway.
Greg created and then argued vehemently against 916th Man despite that name generating a ton of support among the group.
At some point as we were narrowing down the bigger list of names into a shorter list of top selections we could then take a vote on, Bryant West stormed into SlackTown Royalty demanding that we secure a .Net instead of a .Com after consulting with his fiancé. That was a short-lived, albeit passionate, argument.
Tim Maxwell forced us to vote on these names in several ambiguous polls that only made the process more confusing and less effective. He also hid the results until everyone had voted so we argued over that for a while. I can’t say a single significant development happened via polling despite how often we voted on this.
Everything got really messy once the braintrust inside SlackTown Royalty started impersonating each other by changing their profile picture and display name to someone else in the room. Suddenly Brad was TJ, Greg was Tim, Kevin was Bryant, Will was Akis, and so on. It was deeply unproductive. I blame Brad.
We started to get back on track once our website dad Blake Ellington entered the chat. Blake, Richard, and Kimani actually have to use our name on press credentials and inside the Sacramento Kings locker room, so despite how funny Blake Ellington, Basketball Hell sounds, that probably wasn’t going to work for him. This is where Will suggested Kings Herald, a name that some loved and nobody hated.
Kings Post and Kings Herald were our two more official sounding finalists, with 916th Man in the running as a staff favorite. 916th Man was finally eliminated for being too wordy and difficult to pronounce clearly if you’re someone in Blake’s position.
Tim forced more rounds of voting, more aimless polls, more debating, but it eventually became clear that Kings Herald had the most support.
Admittedly, It wasn’t my first choice at the time. I’m still partial to Kings Landing, but Kings Herald has really grown on me over the last several weeks. I think it hits all the right notes we were looking for.
It sounds somewhat serious, but it’s also got some wordplay (despite Brad’s inability to acknowledge it) that I suppose you’re looking for in a Sports Blog. We always knew we would be able to do some fun stuff with a Kings Herald logo, and I’m really happy with how that turned out. Most importantly, the domain was available, and the name wasn’t taken on our most important social platforms. The Kings Herald simply checked the most boxes.
We briefly considered opening up a suggestion box so the community could help us out with a new name, and I’m sure there is an incredible pun out there that none of us thought of yet, but we didn’t want to ruin the surprise of an announcement.
Welcome to the Kings Herald.
I like the name, but feel you missed a logo opportunity. How is the logo not a cartoonified Harold Pressley? That way the mascot could be the Kings’ original Harold. I wonder how much would those licensing rights cost?
The Royal Picayune was taken?
Am I the only one who sees a cross-eyed frog with a crown waiting to be kissed?
I only see that when I look for it. The lion features override the potential for the ears to become frog eyes.
The 916th Man is strong, but The Kings Herald is still an outstanding pick. Bravo to your staff for sticking with it. We out here in the Kingdom appreciate what you are doing.
Kings Herald is perfect. Glad to have a place to read all things Kings again. Thank you!
My polls were integral to the formation of this site and I won’t hear otherwise.
Strong disagree.
Basketball Hell was the name we deserved.
Nine One 6th Man will be my favorite, even if Basketball Hell is the proper spiritual successor
I’m surprised that Rob didn’t propose Section 916
Kings Platonic feels about right to me.
I like City of Treys. Or Kings Ransom.
I quite like the name. Though basketballhell.com would have been epic.
The Kings Herald is perfect, but “basketball hell” got an audible chuckle out of me as I was scrolling through
I liked The Kings Post due to the duality of basketball and newspaper references with the word Post.
Kings Herald is solid too.
Would have been awesome to name the site Basketball Hell. Blake goes to do an interview …
Blake Ellington, Basketball Hell. What was the game plan for the final shot?
Am just glad to see the old guys back from Sactown Royalty. It’s gotten a bit lonely back there.
Hmm…could have been Herald of Hell!
https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2FHerald-Hell-mystery-Medieval-Athelstan%2Fdp%2F1780295634&psig=AOvVaw16dyqc9mBPEupL3zT8-Te-&ust=1587603058564000&source=images&cd=vfe&ved=0CAIQjRxqFwoTCNDA7sDo-ugCFQAAAAAdAAAAABAJ
Very thankful Greg chimed in on his own mistake. Although a clever and funny name, it would get tired and couldn’t stand the test of time. Kings Herald is great, well done! Have fun with it.
Agreed. KingsHerald is not my favorite of that list, but the more I say it the more I love it. it is the most professional and as you said, it wont get old.
Visitor form Canis Hoopus. Glad to see you guys back at it, even if we don’t have basketball to talk about.
One thing, though. I think basketball hell belongs to the Wolves. 🙂
sounds like unless Towns and Russell are magically an amazing combo, things look pretty bleak over there.
I liked several names and I’m happy with Kings Herald, but my fav was Purple Reign.
We all loved Purple Reign, but it was taken.
Speaking of things that should be purple. How about a nice purple font for people’s names? or the reply button? or maybe both? Are we able to purple posts like on the old site?
I am glad the 916th man didn’t get chosen over Kings Herald.
Please do let us know which member of the brain trust came up with “The Sacramento Independent.” Good Lord. That is the Joey Jo-Jo Junior Shabadoo of possible names.
The Sacramento Bee-Ball is what 1st occurred to me
I like The Kings Herald
The Royal Standard is fire.
Badge Legend