Moak came to the forefront of the Kings in-game announcing during the 2002-03 season. Since that time, Moak has established himself as one of the very best in the business. You'll never hear that from The Voice himself, but the players don't hesitate to confirm their appreciation for Scott.

"I think that he is a great announcer and that he has a nice voice," Kings swingman Francisco Garcia said.

Genuine and quick to smile, Moak is one of the most engaging people a person could ever meet.

"Scott is cool," Kings forward Ron Artest said, smiling. "Before every game - he makes you feel comfortable and he makes you feel a little bit more relaxed. It's always good to see his face before the game."

Since the day Artest arrived in Sacramento, he and Moak have had a particular pregame ritual. Before tip-off, Artest steps on the Slip-Not (which every NBA team places on the sideline at center court to remove the dust off player's shoes) near center court after Kevin Martin. Artest then extends his left hand in the form of a fist to Moak who gives him some dap with his extended fist. Prior to Artest, Moak didn't have a pre-game ritual with any of the players. But he now enjoys the exchange of mutual respect with Ron Ron.

As I sat and spoke with Moak at a Natomas café, it instantly became clear that he loves what he does. However, even with this obvious passion and success as King's PA, he still is not wholly comfortable talking about his announcing abilities unless they are in a joking fashion.

"They come up to me and say 'You're the announcer guy?' and I say 'Yeah,' " Moak said chuckling, recalling the common occurrence when fans seek him out for an autograph. "Will you sign my 'whatever', they ask. And I usually tell them that my signature usually devalues the price of the paper!"

Looking across the table, I can tell that Moak enjoys the interaction with his young fans, but his penchant for poking fun at himself is clearly from the mindset that he is just another guy.

"It's cool when people come up to me and say they really appreciate the way I announce," Moak added. "No one ever says 'I love your voice.' They'll say 'Hey you do a really good job. I really appreciate it.' "

That sentiment alone keeps Moak humbled.

By day, Moak is the Director of Family Services at the Mutual Assistance Network of Del Paso Heights.

"I'm responsible for all of our community based home visitation programs that work with families and kids in the Del Paso Heights community," Moak said. "Programs like Birth & Beyond, Black Infant Health, Differential Response and our School Readiness Project."

By night, he becomes the booming voice of "YOUR SACRAMENTTTTTTTTTTO KINGS!"

While the very thought of announcing in front of 17, 317 fans may bring anxiety to most, Moak says that his night gig is actually a release.

"About midway through the third quarter of almost every game I start to become a little melancholy that the game is almost over because it is so much fun," Moak said. "Once the nervousness and the anxiety from being new and worrying about doing a good job went away – it became amazing fun. I don't know if you have this similar feeling. If you just have that moment of wow! I trip out sometimes during mid-game! Maybe I'm naïve, but I can't imagine the day where that's not going to be the case. I get so fired up!"

On his Voice123.com profile, Moak had no choice but to try and define his announcing voice. So, his profile asserts that he has an energetic, hip and edgy voice. Listening to him during games it fits his in-game persona, but it's hard not to at least crack a smile as hip is used as one of the adjectives that define his delivery style.

Announcing is fascinating because it is such an integral part of sports. Great announcers become legends in their own right, while annoying announcers can actually ruin the viewer's ability to enjoy the game.

"Well one of my own personal criteria," Moak said, discussing the intricacies of his approach to announcing. "This is probably from the Gary Gerald School of Broadcasting, if you've ever listened to him, which I have thousands of times. If Kenny Thomas 'grabbed a rebound in the first quarter.' By the fourth quarter I can almost bet that he will not have said, 'Grabbed a rebound' again. He'll have said things like 'snatched a board' or 'ripped it off the glass.' He'll have 15 different ways of saying the same thing, which is an absolutely amazing art that he has mastered and that I strive towards. I strive towards that by trying to make it so that each name sounds a little bit different. One of my pet peeves is hearing names that all sound the same, so I just try to vary it."

"It just kind of happens," Moak affirms, regarding varying the sounds of player names. "I don't think about (how each individual name sounds). The first time I said Quincy Douby's name - I did kind of make a promise to myself that wouldn't say ‘DOUUUUUUUUUUUU-BY’ and then I found myself doing that because everyone else was. I think the art of it is just to try and blend into the arena."

With his father being a high school baseball coach, Moak has heard his fare share of one liners while being a player and a spectator at his dad's games. To keep his game duty in perspective Moak references one of his pop's most memorable interactions with an umpire.

"And by the way... No one's here to watch you umpire!" Moak said, beaming as he called out his dad's memorable line. "I think I was probably a junior on the team at the time. I thought that was a good point. No one is there to watch that guy umpire. Other than maybe three people in the building per night – my mom, my dad, or Stacy my fiancée – no one is there to hear me announce. They're all there to watch the game. And so my announcing being in the way of that would just be horrible."

Fortunately, Moak's talent keeps Kings fans famously energized. The ARCO Arena crowd has been regarded as arguably the loudest crowd in the NBA, and Moak is an instigator of the festive atmosphere. Of course, Moak doesn't think that way.

"There's my attempt at trying to make my job sound like it's actually a job," Moak said, once again slighting his significance. "Job implies that it's hard and that it's work. Mine is neither. It's my hobby."

While it's clear that he views his profession as play, it took a lot of luck, hard work and volunteering his time to land his position with the Kings.

Moak broke into the business on a whim. He agreed to help out a friend on a memorable March Madness four-hour show. He had so much fun that Saturday afternoon that he joined his buddy for the remainder of that year. From there, Moak went on to two seasons as color commentary analyst for the UC Davis football team with the same friend who got him to host the March Madness show. That friends is Eric Hasseltine, the current play-by-play announcer for the Memphis Grizzlies.

Although he loved announcing, Moak decided to take a route of more certainty and went on to get his Masters and went into the field, which currently makes up his day job. It seemed announcing wasn't done with Moak yet, because he was soon offered and accepted a job as the public address announcer for an American River College women's basketball tournament.

"That tournament was my first foray into publicly addressing hoops," Moak said, fondly recalling the experience. "Then it just snowballed – literally."

Countless hours of volunteering men's football, women's volleyball and baseball comprised Moak's life for the next several years. And as the saying goes, the rest is history!

Considering Moak's upbringing as a baseball coach's son and a collegiate baseball player himself, before I let him go I had to ask if there were any more rituals he partake in before every Kings game.

"Yeah from my seven car garage – spinners are Thursday night games!" Moak kidded, after adding that he has several rituals he has including walking the same route into the arena, as well as rituals that he goes through with Kings Director of Facility Operations and Team Security Joe Nolan among others.

After our waitress came looking for the paid bill for the third time, we figured it was probably time to leave, but not before Moak could add one last thought.

"You know one thing I did before I made my first season as the Kings announcer," Moak reflected. "A friend of mine sent me a chain E-mail. It was something about getting to know your friends better with 60 various questions. One of the questions was ‘What's your dream job?’ And at the time I answered the E-mail, I wrote ‘coaching baseball with my dad and brother, or being the PA Guy for the Sacramento Kings.’ That was before I got the job. It was probably five or six years later that my friend sent me that back and said, ‘Hey, look at what you answered and look at what you're doing now.’

"It's pretty crazy."