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Some teams are remembered for championships. Others are remembered for the way they played. The 2001-02 Sacramento Kings belong to that second, arguably rarer category — a team whose style, joy, and basketball brilliance made them beloved across the league and heartbreaking to their own fans in equal measure. At the center of it all was Chris Webber, the most gifted power forward of his generation and the most beloved player in Sacramento Kings history.
Webber's number 4 hangs in the rafters of Golden 1 Center not just as a tribute to one player's excellence, but as the franchise's way of preserving the memory of an era that came achingly close to producing the championship Sacramento still waits for. His retirement honors everything the early 2000s Kings meant to this city and this fan base.
Detroit, the Fab Five, and Coming to Sacramento
Christopher Webber was born March 1, 1973, in Detroit, Michigan — a basketball city that has produced some of the sport's most competitive players. At Country Day High School, he became one of the most recruited players in national history before choosing Michigan, where he became the centerpiece of the Fab Five: the legendary freshman class of Webber, Jalen Rose, Juwan Howard, Jimmy King, and Ray Jackson that reached the national championship game in both 1992 and 1993. Their black shorts, black socks, and relentless bravado transformed the aesthetics and culture of college basketball.
The Orlando Magic drafted Webber first overall in 1993 and immediately traded him to Golden State. After turbulent stints there and in Washington, Webber arrived in Sacramento and found his basketball home. Surrounded by Vlade Divac's passing, Peja Stojakovic's shooting, Mike Bibby's steadiness, and Bobby Jackson's energy, Webber became the engine of something magical.
The 2001-02 Kings: The Most Beautiful Team
The Sacramento Kings of 2001-02 finished with 61 wins and were considered by many observers to be the best basketball team in the world — a fast-moving, ball-sharing, analytically ahead-of-their-time unit that made the game look effortless. Webber averaged 24.5 points, 10.7 rebounds, and 5.0 assists that season while functioning as the hub of an offense that drew universal admiration.
The Western Conference Finals against the Los Angeles Lakers produced seven games of basketball that Sacramento fans still carry with them two decades later. The Kings led the series three games to two heading into Game 6. What happened next — officiating decisions that have been scrutinized, investigated, and debated ever since — resulted in a Game 7 loss and a Finals appearance that slipped through Sacramento's fingers. No moment in Kings history has left a deeper mark.
The Injuries and What Remained
Webber's Sacramento career was interrupted by devastating knee injuries, most significantly a torn ACL in 2001. He fought back and continued to be one of the league's best players in his healthy stretches, earning five total All-Star selections and multiple All-NBA designations over his career. He finished with 24,176 career points — numbers that placed him among the elite forwards of his generation.
He was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 2021, validation that arrived years after retirement but felt inevitable to everyone who watched him play. In retirement, Webber has worked as an NBA analyst, bringing the basketball intelligence that defined his playing career to broadcast work.
Why the Kings Retired #4
The Sacramento Kings retired Chris Webber's number 4 because he was, at his peak, the franchise's most complete player and the beating heart of the greatest team in Sacramento basketball history. He brought Hall of Fame talent to a city that embraced him completely, and the heartbreak of 2002 is inseparable from the love the Sacramento fan base will always have for what Webber and his teammates tried to build.
The number 4 in the rafters is not only a tribute to scoring averages and All-Star selections. It is a tribute to the joy of watching a 6-foot-10 power forward handle the ball like a guard, pass like a point guard, and compete like a player who understood that basketball at its best is a collective art form. That was Chris Webber. That is why #4 belongs in the rafters forever.
