East Bay Kings ABA Basketball Team Venue
My name is Lorenzo King. I have been a recording artist under the name "Renz Julian" and founder of "East Bay Kings". As a youth I bounced around numerous homes from Oakland to Antioch, Ca, surviving through homelessness, domestic violence, and drug addiction in my home. Street-life experiences from my teens have driven me to work hard so I never have to return to that trauma. Sports gave me an outlet initially as an NCAA football player at St. Mary's College, but after college the obstacles of survival intensified. Looking back I can only be thankful as I've become a successful entrepreneur, home owner, and father of 2. With "East Bay Kings", a family owned, black owned business, I will provide job opportunities, mentorship, and leadership to steer the younger generation away from the negative pitfalls that I almost fell to here in the east Bay Area.
East Bay Kings is a non-profit organization and professional basketball team in the American Basketball Association. The team plays in the Pacific division of the ABA, which was reformed in the year 2000 in partnership with the NBA. The ABA originally founded in 1967 with notable players such as Dr. J, Julius Erving, Moses Malone, & Rick Barry among other NBA greats has been going strong since its reformation. With 175+ teams the ABA is now the largest professional sports league in the world and is aggressively expanding. We serve our community in the East Bay Area giving them nightlife entertainment and provide jobs in underprivileged communities of Oakland, Richmond, Pittsburg, Concord, Antioch, California and the surrounding low income areas. We also host youth basketball and football camps, and provide personal training services. We are looking to launch a minority scholarship program for East Bay Area residents that are graduating college-bound seniors that have shown great triumph over adversity. Our goal is to inspire and motivate our local community through sports and entertainment, highlighting individuals that have persevered through difficult circumstances. Our game events will employ local talented performers as the entertainment during half-time and post game events. We also operate an audio and video production department that will tell the stories of these talented athletes and performers in our documentary movie series "East Bay Kings". Operating a sports franchise is challenging enough as is, but with the plans to create a unique entertainment division we will need additional funding. As an annual applicant to the TBT (The Basketball Tournament) in Dayton, OH, broadcast on ESPN, we'd utilize a portion of the funds for travel expenditures. This is a major event that will give our players great exposure to hopefully get scouted and signed to an NBA or lucrative overseas contract. If we can accomplish this we can give hope to an area decimated by the recent Covid-19, and bring light to the undiscovered talent that has fell through the cracks in this region of the Bay Area.
With the Covid-19 pandemic shutting down venues for the past year, we have been unable to earn money from ticket revenue with fans not being allowed in attendance. That also has made it difficult to obtain sponsors. We are looking to partner with local business owners to offer a permanent listing in our East Bay directory online at eastbaykings.com, with a minimum donation of $50. You will also get shouts out on our social media pages as a trusted local business. As we come out of this pandemic we are weighing the options of college gym rental, or ultimately partnering with an investor to build our own venue. There have been plans made by the ABA to launch their own venues with seat licensing, but those talks have slowed due to the pandemic. As a black owned business I think it would be phenomenal if we could have our own venue built and own it outright. We would host events year-round such as, concerts, boxing/mma, ABA & AAU basketball, etc. This franchise would create numerous jobs in our east bay community and be a positive example of business ownership and leadership for the disadvantaged minority communities in the east Bay Area.
