Only time will tell if Vlade Divac’s reported ascension to the top of the Sacramento Kings personnel food chain will be the best thing for this franchise. You know, just like how time has proven every other Sacramento Kings move over the last near-decade to be an absolute flop.
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On Wednesday, ESPN’s Marc Stein offered this:
Sources told ESPN.com that Divac, who was recently hired by the Kings under the seemingly broad title of vice president of basketball and franchise operations, is indeed regarded as the team's top basketball official by owner Vivek Ranadive after months of turbulence in Sacramento.
This would mean Divac, hired around the midseason mark and given a nebulous “vice president of basketball and franchise operations” title, has vaulted ahead of current general manager Pete D’Alessandro. It means he’s moved ahead of assistant GM Mike Bratz, ahead of top scout Dean Oliver, and all other manner of ex-Kings and somewhat famous people that Vivek Ranadive has hired for a front office that hasn’t even finished its second full season together.
Former D’Alessandro confidante Chris Mullin, you’ll recall, recently left the Kings to become head coach at St. John’s. Stein reports that the team is attempting to locate a more orthodox GM-type to take on a official role under Divac (who has only briefly worked in an NBA front office, under a mostly ceremonial title for a few months with the Lakers), which leaves D’Alessandro and Bratz’s contributions and continued employment up in the air.
Also, head coach George Karl (the third head coach in 2014-15 that the owner has hired and charged with running the team on a full-time basis until the end of the season) has never been shy about voicing his frustrations about front office moves, he’s asked for more personnel power at each of his NBA jobs and has clashed with ownership at each of his NBA stops.
The only constant is owner Vivek Ranadive, and the extent of center DeMarcus Cousins’ frustrations.
Cousins is in the first year of a five-year, $65.6 million contract extension signed months after Ranadive helped keep the team in Sacramento. After purchasing the team Ranadive almost immediately hired one of the more popular top assistants in the NBA, a respected coach in Michael Malone that Ranadive had watched while owning part of the Golden State Warriors. He then hired D’Alessandro away from his role as second in command with an emerging Nuggets squad, a group that Karl then-coached.
The Kings improved markedly in 2013-14, but teams featuring a GM that didn’t hire his own coach rarely continue with that arrangement.
Reportedly, Ranadive preferred the Mullin (who had no assistant nor head coaching experience) take over for Malone midseason. Mullin wanted to wait until the offseason, when he could choose his own assistants and run the first training camp of his coaching career, and turned the Kings down. Malone was fired anyway, with Cousins still recovering from viral meningitis and after an impressive 11-13 (these are the Kings we’re talking about, and this is the West) start to the season.
The firing came amid reports that Ranadive wanted his Kings to attempt a 4-on-5 cherry picking approach that apparently worked quite well during the owner’s time spent coaching youth basketball. Cousins wasn’t consulted about Malone’s firing, which he understandably resented, and had to find out about both the firing and Tyrone Corbin’s assurances as a full-time head coach to end 2014-15 via social media. The Kings made no commitments to Corbin beyond this season, however, which virtually guaranteed that the Kings’ players would treat Corbin like the lame duck he was, and the team’s play suffered.
Karl was brought in, rendering the front office’s promise of a year-end job for Corbin an absolute lie, and the squad has continued to struggle for various reasons. Had the longtime NBA coach been brought in soon after Malone’s firing, it’s possible the Kings could have made a competitive run this season. Instead, they’ll be in the middling ranks of the lottery once again, in all likelihood. Enjoy another year with single-digit lottery odds at the top overall pick again, Sacramento.
Cousins, who made the All-Star team this year in the crowded West, went on to call the season a “circus,” after reports leaked about D’Alessandro’s understandable unease with Vlade Divac’s rapid ascent. Meanwhile, Karl is already bitching about the mess he’s been left with. Understandably so.
Earlier in the season, we wondered if Ranadive’s initial missteps would right themselves eventually, as Mark Cuban’s first full (playoff) season did with the Mavs in spite of what should have been some embarrassing “frat boy got his own team now, sweet”-moves.
It hasn’t worked out. The Kings were widely mocked when the report about Divac surfaced, as well they should be. No amount of solid Twitter burns and the wonderfulness that is the Sauce Castillo story can make that go away.
Don’t think Kings fans are taking this lying down. From Greg Wissinger at Sactown Royalty:
Rebuilds aren't supposed to last a whole g-ddamn decade. And yet this one is going to extend beyond that. Imagine the best case scenario for this offseason. Are the Kings anywhere near being an honest contender? If the Kings land the first pick, and they get the best player available or trade the pick for an amazing talent, are they at all close? If they sign all the right free agents? If they make every right move, is this team actually a contender? I just can't see it, and I can't see all those things going right.
He’s not wrong. Cousins is an enviable talent, but the rest of this roster is pointless.
Rudy Gay is an above average player with faults that can be taken advantage of. Darren Collison is an above average player with the same mitigating factors in place. Ben McLemore and Nik Stauskas (the latter an embarrassing favorite of Ranadive’s) look like wasted draft picks. The Kings will have cap space and the best odds at the sixth pick this summer, but if they nail both the draft and the free agency run and fall just short of the playoffs next season their 2016 first-rounder (top ten protected) goes to the Chicago Bulls. And that would be their ceiling, even after kicking tail in the offseason.
George Karl can coach. And, for all we know, Vlade Divac (and the resident capologist and/or phone call-maker next to him) can turn things around. Perhaps he sees the ceiling the most of us see, and has been in Ranadive’s ear all along to break up what looks to be a mediocre at best core of players. Even with great health, and great coaching. Divac is intelligent, well-liked, and he’s proven to be a superb leader both within basketball ranks and outside of this silly, little industry. He could clean it up.
Or, this could be another bungle. If it’s any consolation for Kings fans, at least the team is packing its worrying moves in closer to each other, rather than spreading the misery out over a few seasons at a time. This very public embarrassments are now coming with alacrity.
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