Are upstart Sacramento Kings winning the hearts of basketball fans in Modesto? | Opinion

Are NBA fans in the Modesto area sticking with the Golden State Warriors, or drifting to the Sacramento Kings?

We’re about the same distance from each. Both are good this year, finally. And their series, currently tied at two games each, has been heart-pumpingly fun to watch.

Seriously, which side are you on?

Tried and true, or young and upcoming?

Is the magnetic pull stronger from 580, or 99?

Or are you something of a Warring? You know, rooting for the Warriors but fine with the thought that these exciting, upstart Kings at long last are seeing some success?

Me, I might be a Warring, a Warriors fan first but also enjoying the Kings’ run. To see them battle each other is a thrill that I only hope stretches over seven games.

I was born and raised in Sacramento County. Although I wasn’t a rabid basketball fan, it was a big deal when the Kings moved there from Kansas City in 1985. Sacramento was so proud to finally have a real pro franchise, and the entire region celebrated the Reggie Theus-led squad.

We moved to Stanislaus County only two years after that, and really paid attention when Mike Bibby, Chris Webber, Vlade Divac and their crew came close to a championship berth in 2002. Those were heady days, even if I never acquired a purple Kings T-shirt.

So it did not make sense now to my wife that I wasn’t in the Kings’ corner when the playoffs began April 15. Why aren’t you rooting for your hometown team? she puzzled.

Well, it’s like this: Several years ago, when the Kings were really bad, the Warriors became really good.

When the Kings were NBA doormats, the Warriors were going to the NBA finals — six times in eight years. When the Kings couldn’t find a basket in a laundromat, the Warriors were winning it all — four times in those six finals, including last year. When the Kings could not muster a winning season for 16 straight years, the Warriors were putting the Splash Brothers and KD on the floor, changing the game, draining threes year after year.

The Dubs knew how to make you look until you couldn’t look away, and soon enough, you were hooked. When Kevin Durant went off in search of a team he could call his own, the Dubs persisted, and three years later repeated the magic, with some of the same faces from those years before: Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson, Kevon Looney and Draymond Green — evil incarnate, to opposing fans, without whom the Warriors would have won none of those championships.

What defines a fair weather fan?

Does that migration from Sacramento to the Bay Area make me a fair weather fan? If so, I have plenty of company out there.

The guy who watches an uber-entertaining championship team for eight years, then abandons them when his hometown team suddenly starts winning — that’s the essence of a fair weather fan.

Any sports team deserves fan loyalty when owners are loyal to fans. For a time, the Kings were not. When they failed to put a competitive product on the floor, year after year, they lost me and a bunch of others to a nearby franchise that did bother to invest in a winning product.

From my interactions, I’m guessing the Modesto area retains a 60-40 preference for Golden State over Sacramento. Am I right?

I’ll admit, it’s terrific to see Sacramento energetically embrace its heroes. In the Sacramento media market, as we are, Modesto is constantly exposed to sports newscasts swooning over De’Aaron Fox, Harrison Barnes and Domantas Sabonis. Although the fever slipped a bit when the Kings’ two-games-to-none lead evaporated, I’m still loving the good-vibe party atmosphere going on in the place I used to call home.

Just not enough to put away my Warriors T-shirt on game day.