The Sports Informant

The Sacramento Kings Dance Team came up short in NBA.com’s 2011 Dance Team Contest this week, finishing as the runner-up for the league’s title.

After squeaking by their NorCal neighbors the Warrior Girls with a voting percentage margin of 51 percent to 49 percent, the Kings Dance Team made it to the finals of the Dance Contest before voters overwhelmingly chose the Lady Cats, the dance team for the Charlotte Bobcats, to take the crown. Unlike its previous narrow margin, the finals were decided handedly with a 62 percent to 38 percent edge in favor of the Lady Cats.

Sacramento Kings Dance Team member Katie set up a Twitter account to help her team make it to the NBA.com dance contest finals. (Photo courtesy of Greg Ashman)

Fans in Sacramento will disagree with the results. They’ve seen the dance team put on thrilling shows despite some poor performances put forth by the Kings. There’s a reason the dance team made the finals in the first place, and it’s only partly because of the members’ good looks.

Dance team organizers believe it was mainly because of their efforts in social media to branch out and reach as many fans as possible.

“We ended up being the best in the west and I think that is due to social media and all the work Katie has done with Twitter,” said dancer and Sacramento Kings Dance Team Manager Jennifer. “We have fans all over the world through Facebook and Twitter.”

Katie, another dancer and choreographer, created a Twitter account to get people interested in the team’s endeavors, and uses Facebook to help promote the dance team’s website, too. The Twitter page recently reached the 3,000 followers mark.

“Most of the time was used using our Twitter fan page,” Katie said. “I just networked with all of our fans. I tried my best to get the word out and they retweeted my tweets. It just spread throughout the whole Internet and we got a lot of votes from it. It got us as far as we did.”

The dance team can be found on Twitter if searched for under SKDT, or here. The team can also be found on Facebook here. But fans looking for a deeper look at the team should look no further than the official website (previously here, and now here) which produces a photographic roster of the team, with biographies, wallpapers and some pretty impressive images.

A look at the team’s social media sites brought the fans in droves, giving the dance team the edge it needed to make it all the way to the competition’s finals.

The Sacramento Kings Dance Team may have come up short in the finals, but the exposure will undoubtedly keep the fans coming for the foreseeable future.

“If we already have them engaged in our brand and our team, we can just send them that information by using that one centralized channel,” Katie said. “It just gets them really involved.”

Sacramento Kings Dance Team Slideshow

Photos courtesy of Greg Ashman