From an ABA press release to a parked domain

The ABA of that era announced teams by press release, and the Monterey release is the only outside document of the club's founding that survives in a searchable form. It quoted league CEO Joe Newman on the new owner and gave Stallworth's background in some detail: drafted into the Army in March 1969, retired in January 1993 after 24 years, a player in the service from 1969 and a coach from 1973, with championships on Army teams including a stint coaching in Hanau, Germany, then assistant coaching stops at Salinas High School, Hartnell College and Monterey Peninsula College. He said in the release that owning a professional team had been a dream of his, and named the other California ABA markets he had been watching: San Francisco, the East Bay, Modesto, Fresno, Los Angeles, Maywood, San Diego.

The first website went up in 2009 under the name Seaside Sea-Kings, with an office at 2160 California Avenue in Sand City and a message from the owner setting out the club's aims, among them recruiting most of its staff locally and winning an ABA title. By January 2010 the site listed a run of dated items: on September 24, 2009 an outside marketing firm was hired for public relations; on October 1, 2009 the club held a press conference at the Embassy Suites in Seaside to introduce its head coach, staff and roster; the coach was Ruby Richman, hired for the inaugural season; open tryouts were photographed on October 3, 2009. That is the whole documented start. No opening-night result appears anywhere the record reaches.

What the archive holds for 2010 through 2016 is thin, and it should be described as thin rather than padded. The club's blog, which it later migrated into a WordPress site, carried four community entries between November 2010 and January 2011: a charity fundraiser at Toro Park, Thanksgiving baskets assembled with the Military Order of the Purple Heart, a YMCA camp visit where players ran a skills clinic for children, and a photo gallery from Castroville headed Sea-Kings Victory. After that the dated posts stop until 2017, and the only window on the middle years is the home page itself, which by January 2013 had a new footer address on Broadway Avenue in Seaside, a link to what it called ABA NOCAL Division information, a document titled Seaside Sports Complex Executive Summary, and a news line announcing that the team was starting fresh under a new head coach and general manager, Wallace Bryant, described as seven foot one. Bryant is the coach Wikipedia still lists. The page did not change between the 2013 and 2015 captures, which tells you something about how the club was run in those seasons: a small operation, a Flash site nobody updated, a fan club called the Fast Break Club, and games that were played and not written down anywhere the Wayback Machine could reach. A season in the ABA West of that decade did not require much more than a gym lease, a roster, insurance and a will to drive to Stockton, and the Sea-Kings kept doing it.

On May 22, 2017 the club announced from Marina, California that it had opened a corporate office there and launched a new website, social accounts and an online store. The new site is the one most of this record comes from. Its posts through the 2017-2018 season read like a team on a run. On November 4, 2017 the club said it would play the season as an official Purple Heart sports team and be honored at the November 12 home game against the Oakland Bayhawks. On January 7, 2018 it reported a 142-134 win over the San Diego Surf for a 7-0 start, with a road game next at Stockton Arena against Team Trouble. A March 2 post reported a loss to Team Trouble, with the club calling itself the ABA's sixth-ranked team. Two home wins over a visiting team called the Shizuoka GymRats closed the regular season at what the club reported as 14-2.

That record earned an invitation to the ABA Final 8 tournament, played in early April 2018 in Kyle and Austin, Texas. The club's posts record a 120-100 win over the Port City Tornados of Mobile, Alabama in the opening game and a next matchup against the host Austin Bats. The result of that second game was never posted; the season's last item is a thank-you to fans dated April 6, 2018. Every number in this section is the club's own reporting. The ABA did not publish standings that survive in a form this site could check, so treat 14-2 and the rankings as claims, not certified results.

The ABA's 2019-2020 season ended early. Wikipedia's account of the league says it was cut short and the playoffs cancelled because of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the Sea-Kings' own schedule, which had listed Far West Division playoff dates for March 1 and March 7, 2020 and an Elite 8 in Binghamton, New York for March 14 and April 2-5, never got a result posted against any of them. When the club's home page was captured in January 2021 the schedule widget read No posts found.

The next move came from a different league. On November 23, 2020 The Basketball League announced from Indianapolis that Seaside, California had been awarded a franchise, the California Sea-Kings, calling it the league's 30th market and the 18th added since the pandemic began. The release quoted the club's president, Vic Goodwin, on why the club chose the TBL: livestreamed games, published statistics, minimum venue sizes, uniform and scheduling standards. It also said the club was entering its eleventh season as an organization, and it laid out the format, a 24-game schedule starting in March 2021 with a champion crowned in June.

Eleven ABA seasons, two TBL seasons, and a 20-4 year the club's own site never mentioned.

The 2021 season is the first for which an outside standings table exists. On March 13, 2021 the club announced its first draft pick, a guard named Jashon Lewis taken 20th in the first round. On May 11 it named Access Media Production as its broadcast partner for home games. On June 2 it reported a sixth straight win, 101-95 over Flint United in Michigan, with Josh Allen scoring 25, and noted a home game at Silicon Valley Sports in San Jose. Wikipedia's page for the 2021 TBL season has the club third in the West Conference at 9-11 over 20 games, behind the San Diego Guardians and the Vegas Ballers, with a first-round playoff bye as the second seed and a 2-0 loss to San Diego in the conference semifinal.

The club came back for 2022, and Wikipedia's table for that TBL season is the best page in its whole record: 20-4 in 24 games, first in the West Division ahead of the Salem Capitals at 17-7 and the SoCal Moguls at 16-8. In the playoffs the Sea-Kings swept Salem 2-0 in the round of 16, then lost 1-2 to the Moguls in the quarterfinals. That is the last competitive result on the record. None of it appears on the club's own site, which had stopped posting the previous June, so the strongest season the team ever played is one it never wrote about. From 2023 the league's Wikipedia page carries the Sea-Kings under former teams.

Nothing was posted after June 2, 2021. The 2021 site, built for the club by an outside agency, kept serving those same four news items through captures in January, March, May and August 2022. A capture from October 2022 returned a redirect. By December 27, 2022 and again on January 1, 2023 the address showed a Sedo parking page with the line that the domain had expired and would be available soon. From September 2023 onward the captures are a generic 404 page a few hundred bytes long. Wikipedia's page on the league now lists the club under former teams, without a date or a reason, so whether the Sea-Kings formally withdrew after the 2022 playoffs or were dropped is not something the record answers.

• No shutdown announcement from the club or either league has been found.
• The 2022 TBL season, 20-4 and a division title, exists only in league records; the club's site never mentioned it.
• No league-published ABA standings for any Sea-Kings season could be located; the 2021 and 2022 TBL tables are the only outside records.
• The 2009 site's Champions page returned a 404 even in 2010, so no title claim was ever posted there.