‘It feels like Christmas.’ Daughter and dad celebrate the Sacramento Kings again

Lauren LeBov remembers begging her parents to take her to the Roseville Automall to see Mike Bibby and ask him to sign her jersey. This was around 2005 – near the end of the golden years for the Sacramento Kings – and Bibby, the Kings’ point guard, wore No. 10. His team ruled.

The weather was terrible that day. Rain poured outside, and the family would have to drive 40 minutes from its home in Land Park. But Lauren’s dad, basketball insider and former NBA scout Ray LeBov, knew how important this was to his only child.

So, they went.

“It was so special, you know, for a little girl to see these players that we watch on TV, that we see on the court,” Lauren said. She was only 11 years old.

On Saturday afternoon, instead of her signed, youth-medium Bibby jersey, Lauren wore her vintage “FEEL THE ROAR” T-shirt from the Kings’ 2003 playoff games in Arco Arena.

Under a cloudless Sacramento sky, she and her dad made their way toward the northwest entrance of the Golden 1 Center along with thousands of other Kings loyalists. They have seats waiting in section 126.

“It feels like Christmas,” Lauren said. “I woke up this morning and I thought, ‘Is it 5:30 yet?’”

Die-hard Kings fandom

Before she was a Kings fan, Lauren fell in love with Sacramento’s now-defunct WNBA team, the Monarchs. She attended nearly every game, because the family had season tickets.

Even though she wasn’t great at basketball, Lauren participated in Monarch’s camp and gave her best effort on the court. When the Monarchs finally folded in 2009, Lauren fully embraced the die-hard Kings fandom.

“I just loved, you know, the way that basketball – and the Kings especially – brings everyone together,” Lauren said. “I feel like Sacramento is such a special city because it’s such a uniting team.”

Lauren credits her father with cultivating her love for the sport. Ray, a basketball junkie in his own right, worked briefly as an NBA scout. He even dropped out of Yale for a year to cover the nearby NBA teams for various sports periodicals.

Today, now that he’s retired from the state’s Judicial Council, Ray produces various NBA-focused publications including an insider newsletter called Basketball Intelligence. Although he tries to stay somewhat objective, he can’t help but hope for a Kings victory – for Lauren’s sake, if nothing else.

“I didn’t have a close relationship with my father,” Ray said, “I knew just instinctively that I wanted to have a much better relationship with my daughter than my dad had with me.”

The basketball bond

Their basketball bond helped them stay connected when Lauren went off to college at Seattle University. At the time, the Kings’ owners were on the brink of relocating the team up north to the Emerald City. She couldn’t bear the thought of her hometown losing their only professional sports team.

“I would wear my Kings gear around, and people would say to me, ‘Oh, that’s gonna be our team soon,’” Lauren said. “And I was just like, ‘Please, don’t take them from us.’ It was just so emotional.”

Returning home from Seattle for winter break, she would make it her mission to go to as many Kings games as possible. Sometimes they would have as many as six games when she was home – and she’d go to all of them.

Lauren didn’t know if she would come back to Sacramento after graduating. Her love of basketball had drawn her to an internship with the Seattle Storm the summer before her senior year in college, and she was on the hunt for a job with a major team.

But as she was finishing up her degree, the stars aligned and she found a job with the Kings in their social responsibility department.

“It was like a dream come true,” she said. “A full circle moment.”

Since moving back, Lauren has called East Sacramento home for seven years. Her favorite memory from this historic season was when the Kings blew out the Brooklyn Nets 153 to 121 in the only game that was nationally televised on TNT this year.

“This is exactly what this team is about,” she said. “The one chance we had to be on national TV, and we completely blow out this team.

“There was no mercy,” she added. “The arena was so electric, and it honestly felt like a playoff game.”

Now, Lauren and Ray will get to experience their first Kings playoff game together. They hope the team will pull out a win – especially because Lauren is obsessed with the victory beam.

But win or lose, just getting to experience the game together is a gift.

“Watching basketball together is our thing,” Lauren said. “To watch our hometown team compete at this level, and to get to share it with my dad, it’s just so special.”