The Sacramento Kings’ new rallying cry has officially gone mainstream.
The Kings are currently having one of their better seasons in years, going 14-12 to start (including a stretch of seven straight wins in November). After every Kings victory this season, four purple lasers sitting atop their home arena, the Golden One Center, light up the Sacramento skyline. That has led to a popular new slogan for the team and their fanbase — “Light the beam.”
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But on Tuesday, the Kings got hit with an Uno reverse card. Playing the 76ers in Philadelphia, they lost in a 123-103 laugher. After the game, the 76ers took to Twitter to troll the Kings.
“LIGHT THE BEAM!” the 76ers wrote, along with a Photoshopped image of a blue laser lighting up the sky from the Wells Fargo Center.
LIGHT THE BEAM! pic.twitter.com/cZCahjhS8x
— Philadelphia 76ers (@sixers) December 14, 2022
While Sacramento’s beam remained dark on Tuesday, there is still plenty of reason for optimism. The historically-crummy Kings surprisingly have the third-highest scoring offense in the NBA this season, playing with passion and energy under new coach Mike Brown. De’Aaron Fox and Domantas Sabonis are having All-Star-caliber years, while snipers Kevin Huerter and Malik Monk have looked like two of the better acquisitions of the offseason.
But unfortunately, a slogan as popular now as theirs is opens the Kings up to ridicule whenever they lose. We saw something similar last season when the NBA’s rallying cry of 2021 (the New York Knicks’ immortal “Bing Bong”) got thrown back into their faces by opponents.
