• Earlier this week, Sam Amick of USA Today posted a two part interview with Sacramento Kings owner Vivek Ranadive in which he spoke about his first few years with the Kings, talking about the challenges that he faced and attempting to explain some of the decisions that have been questioned during his tenure. (For reference, here are the links to part one and part two of that interview.)

    Doing the interview and speaking about past mistakes was not necessarily a bad idea.  It should be noted that being the owner of an NBA franchise is not easy, and for that reason some mistakes are expected.

    With the team committing to Vlade Divac and Dave Joerger, the goal should be to convince fans that the team is heading toward stability.  Much has been made of Sacramento’s inability to stick to a direction, whether that be with the front office or the coaching staff, so coming out and recognizing where they’ve gone wrong while also mentioning the steps that have been taken to improve could have been a good move for the organization.

    Unfortunately, this isn’t the direction that Ranadive took during the interview.  He assessed blame, and very rarely took responsibility for his role in the dysfunction.  Considering the number of people that were involved in the situations discussed in the interview, it wasn’t surprising that somebody spoke up to respond to his comments.

    Geoff Petrie was the first to respond to some of the claims.  Petrie was the general manger of the team during the sale, and was involved for a short period of time after Randive took over.  During his interview with Amick, Ranadive had this to say about that time period:

    “Look, you’ve got to hire the GM and then the coach. But I also went to some – and I don’t want to name them – but I went to some very smart people for advice, and they said, ‘Hey, Malone is great. We like Malone.’ Sam, that practice facility was empty. I had the draft was going to start, and players were going to come in for tryouts. There was nobody there. I needed somebody to go and actually work out the players. Nobody wanted to there. (incumbent general manager) Geoff (Petrie) didn’t want to be there. The coach (Keith Smart) didn’t want to be there. There was nobody there.”

    He certainly didn’t hold back with his comments.  Ranadive was criticized heavily for hiring Michael Malone before hiring a general manager, and this quote was an attempt to explain that decision.  In Ranadive’s version of the story, the team needed help leading up to the draft, which fueled the Malone hiring.  This makes sense if the current front office wasn’t willing to be involved in the process.

    This part of the interview clearly angered Petrie.  In a separate interview with Kevin Draper of Deadspin, Geoff Petrie spoke about his time with the team after the sale. Petrie began by saying that Ranadive wasn’t exactly honest in his retelling:

    “The main reason I reached out, [the interview] is long and covered a lot of territory, but when it comes to some of the representations about myself and Keith Smart and the management group that was there at that time, it was basically totally untrue, what was represented there.”

    This doesn’t look good at all.  Lying about past mistakes only adds fuel to the fire, and Ranadive certainly hasn’t earned the benefit of the doubt here. Petrie then offered his version of what happened:

    “we had a group of people there that had been there, and we had worked together for a long time and were part of the best heritage that the Kings have ever had in Sacramento. I brought everybody together at different occasions and said, “Look, we’re going to be professional here, we’re going to continue to work like we’d work any other year, we’ll prepare for the draft like we would every other year, and ultimately we will assist any new people that may come in here and try and make them comfortable and get them situated.”

    This is certainly not the way that Ranadive describes the situation, and makes it seem like the team could have been patient in their search for a new general manager.  According to Petrie, they could have been even more patient when looking for a coach:

    “The way it came across in the article is like [Ranadivé] came in there and there was nobody there, nobody wanted to be there. Keith Smart wanted to be there! He had a year left on his contract. He didn’t get a discussion or an interview, he got a 90-second phone call in his car that they weren’t going to keep him.”

    The idea that Keith Smart wasn’t interested in continuing as the head coach didn’t sound right in the first place, and this seems to be a more likely scenario. Head coaching jobs aren’t easy to come by, and the fact that Smart was willing to be involved during the Maloof era would suggest that he would’ve been open to giving the new group a chance.

    This may not be the final response.  Many people were discussed during the interview, and some of them may follow in Petrie’s footsteps. Ranadive may even choose to comment again, especially considering the harsh nature of Petrie’s words.  Ranadive was discussing some sensitive topics, so it will be interesting to see how this story develops.

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