‘Still together, win or lose’: Kings fans experience highs and lows at DoCo as season ends

Business was steady at Downtown Commons, or DoCo, on Friday night next to Golden 1 Center.

The scene was heavy on Kings fans checking out the action of the play-in tournament, their beloved team’s season on the line against the New Orleans Pelicans. Inside bars and restaurants, the brews and emotions flowed. Fans shook their bells. Many wore Kings jerseys of their favorite players. Some wore purple team-colored hard hats, bearing game-face expressions that this matchup would be a fight to the finish.

Backers yelled at TV screens to cheer on their hoops heroes — everyone certain that their voices were heard a thousand miles east in Louisiana.

“They hear us telepathically,” said Melody Purifoy, who caught the game with her friend Brittany Lewis inside Sauced BBQ & Spirits. “They can hear us and feel us.”

The fans did their part. They rooted for their guys but the Pelicans proved again too much. New Orleans won 105-98 to end the season for the Kings, who went 0-6 against the Pelicans when it was all said and done this season. New Orleans advanced to the NBA playoffs and will challenge the top-seeded Oklahoma City Thunder. The Kings now come home.

Lewis, wearing a De’Aaron Fox jersey, and often reaching for her bell to shake, said: “I’m a big fan, since 1985 when the Kings got here, when I was born. I was almost kicked out of Golden 1 twice for cheering too loud, calling out officials, getting into it.

“Normal die-hard stuff.”

Why be here? The scene, the moment, the works, fans said. The second-best thing to being at the game was being surrounded by like-minded supporters right outside the Kings home venue.

“We wanted to be here to feel the vibe, to be with other Kings fans,” Lewis said.

Said Purifoy of her pal: “Oh, she’s a riot. She’s a serious fan.”

At a nearby table, Kellie Haynes and her friend Julie Francisco caught the game on TNT. Both were decked in Kings garb. Haynes, a seventh-grade teacher in West Sacramento, wore her white “Feel the Roar” Kings shirt to school on Friday.

Teachers want to engage with students, right? There was plenty of that this week in her classroom, be it eliminating the Golden State Warriors in a play-in contest Tuesday night at Golden 1 to the do-or-die drama before tip-off.

“We talked in class about this,” Haynes said. “We have a lot of students who are Kings fans and some are Warriors fans, and we talked some smack.”

Haynes is a decades-long Kings fan since the early 2000s, when the Kings were championship contenders behind leading players such as Vlade Divac, Chris Webber, Peja Stojakovic, Doug Christie and Mike Bibby.

“I love the team, but I have to be honest,” she said, “I wasn’t a fan during the bad years. I love the fundamentals of the game, passing the ball. The Vlade teams had that, and this team has that.”

Another table over, Ricky Merrill and his wife of two years, Brittany, agonized over the game. There was more to cheer about in the first half and not so much in the final two quarters when New Orleans seized control.

“Born and raised a Kings fan, since the old Arco Arena days,” he said. “We love the positivity here. My wife wasn’t a Kings fan at first, though.”

Said she: “Now I am. Now I’m obsessed.”

Chris Espera and his girlfriend, Jasmin Portillo, nibbled nervously on their meal and washed it down with beer. Espera said he has been a Kings fan since 2001, so he has experienced the highs of playoff teams under coach Rick Adelman to a 16-year playoff drought to last season’s playoff showing that ended in a 7-game series loss to Golden State.

“It’s been a rough stretch,” Espera said. “The Warriors had their success with those championship teams and we had our downfall, so it was hard. To beat Golden State the other night meant a lot. Last year’s playoff success brought the city together.

“We’re still together, win or lose.”