Vivek Ranadive goes the wrong way with Sacramento's revisionist history
Sacramento Kings fans just cannot win. They have a team in their beloved city, and because the faith is unyielding and their basketball knowledge is stronger than strong, they’ll keep coming back.
The team’s last two ownership groups, however, have made it impossibly hard to grit their way through the turnstiles. Especially when either the Maloof Brothers or the team’s current owner, Vivek Ranadive, go on record.
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Oh, the new arena is in place, the team will sell out both its home games and the dreams of its young followers by putting ads for almonds on its jerseys, and the local television revenues are as husky as Mike Peplowski, but the Kings still haven’t made the postseason since 2006, and new coach Dave Joerger will represent the team’s ninth lead man since that year.
One of those lead men, hauntingly for Kings fans, is current Denver Nuggets coach Michael Malone. Malone was fired shortly after Sacto’s best stretch of ball in ages all the way back in 2014-15, purportedly by then-general manager Pete D’Alessandro, only to be replaced by an enervating season and a half of Tyrone Corbin and George Karl running the club.
Malone had to go, though, according to Vivek. Because the coach and GM weren’t getting along. From a long talk with USA Today’s Sam Amick:
“These two guys (Malone and D’Alessandro), they never spoke. They hated each other. They hated each other’s guts. It was like one person would say one thing, and then the other person would say another thing. And they wanted to get rid of him very early on, and I was the one who said ‘No, no, let’s make it work. Let’s make it work.’”
I guess. I mean, Malone and D’Alessandro went on to “make it work” in Denver, where they’ve been plying their trade in the months since Malone was hired by the team to coach and D’Alessandro re-joined the Nuggets.
Not before costing the Kings a chance at Elfrid Payton, apparently. Despite heaps of on-camera evidence to the contrary.
You remember this, right-o?
Ranadive wants you to know that he was goaded into chanting. On camera:
“So what happened (in the 2014 draft in which ESPN cameras were allowed into the draft room), and again – these guys didn’t want me to talk about this. I’d had another player who had tried out for us that I had liked, and that I had thought was great. And by the way, I’ll tell you, it was (Orlando Magic point guard) Elfrid Payton. But everybody else wanted another player – (Nik) Stauskas (now of the Philadelphia 76ers). And so they told me to say (Stauskas), and obviously I’m not going to say that I wanted Payton but they picked Stauskas. I made a big deal of all-for-one and one-for-all, so ‘Whatever you guys decide, I’m going to say yeah to Stauskas.’ That got put on camera, but what was I going to say, that ‘Hey, I don’t agree with their choice?’
Well … yeah. You own the damn team.
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Payton, to this point, has turned out to be the better player – but teams whiff on draft choices all the time. Especially in the late lottery, where endless amounts of scouting work still somehow leaves teams teetering on the edge of a crapshoot (with greater pressure and ultimately fallout, due to the talent involved).
Still, you rarely see NBA owners willing to put themselves in the sort of embarrassing position Vivek Ranadive tossed himself into as his team steered toward Sauce Castillo. Just as outrageous is the attempt, years later, to try and disassociate yourself with the pick despite being caught on camera chanting Nik Stauskas’ bloody name.
(And, again, if Vivek is attempting to frame this as being pushed into a pick by the since-dismissed GM … you own the team, partner.)
Vivek Ranadive went on to absolve himself of blame when it came to the tactless and star-lapping move to bring Drake into a sullen Sacramento locker room following a loss to the San Antonio Spurs last season, while gifting his team’s fans absolutely no on-record responsibility for the disastrous hire of George Karl (who aligns with Ranadive in the sense that “it,” apparently, is never his fault) and what so far appears to be a rocky start to Vlade Divac’s career as a Sacramento Kings GM.
Ranadive did leave us with one nugget, no pun intended, that barely needed confirmation, however.
George Karl, working the Alexander Haig Phone, did try to go over his own job description to deal DeMarcus Cousins:
“George had tried to trade Cousins that whole summer, and there was not a lot of love between those two, and so there was tension there.”
That summation comes at the very end of Part II of Ranadive’s long interview. Buried where it belongs, as Vivek sees fit.
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Kelly Dwyer is an editor for Ball Don’t Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at KDonhoops@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter!