Kings unveil strange new mascot

"Roy Al" appears to be a man with a basketball for a head and a king's crown. He's like the NBA version of Mr. Met, the New York Mets mascot who has a baseball for a head, as does his "wife," Mrs. Met.

The new mascot is based on a figure from the franchise's past incarnation as the Cincinnati Royals, which ended when the team moved to Kansas City in 1972 and became the Kings. He's based on a logo that used to be on the Royals' shorts, shorts that Roy himself now sports. 

Clearly, Roy Al is ready to hype up himself as well as the Kings. The Kings will be wearing the same uniform as Roy (or "Mr. Al") nine times this season.

The biggest issue is his name. While "Roy Al" is a nod to the team's past as the Royals, both in Cincinnati and in Rochester, a modern reader naturally reads the name as "Roy A.I." — as if he's the emodiment of artificial intelligence. There's a certain logic to it, as he does look like something an A.I. image generator might come up with when tasked with inputs like "basketball," "mascot," "king" and "nightmare fuel."

"A.I." clearly wasn't the Kings' intended meaning, especially since that might remind fans of All-Star De'Aaron Fox's failed NFT project, "SwipaTheFox," which brought in over a million dollars in investments before going belly-up. It's also a similar name to "Al G. Rhythm," Don Cheadle's villainous character from "Space Jam: A New Legacy."

While his face is clearly a basketball, Roy also looks like he has the head of a pumpkin, an unfortunate similarity, as the NBA season usually begins just a week or two before Halloween. Overall, the new mascot seems to fit in the pantheon of strange NBA mascots, which included the Nets' abandoned mascot, the BrooklyKnight, and former Dallas Mavericks mascot "Mavs Man," who appeared to have a muscular body made of basketballs.

The NBA's most unsettling mascot, though, is the New Orleans Pelicans' King Cake Baby.

The Kings don't seem to be moving on from their existing mascot, Slamson the Lion, nor Goldie, the canine mascot of the Kings' Golden 1 Center.

But as strange as Roy Al might be, every mascot is beautiful in its own unique way. There's absolutely no downside to having more NBA mascots, the weirder the better.