Well then it's obvious PDA was trying to both appease the boss and make the team better. In the end, he was only able to appease the boss, right?
The point is that we simply don't know. Again, the assertion that the Kings tried to get another pick to acquire Payton could potentially indicate that the basketball operations folks were after Payton and were trying to rectify their owner's meddling, OR it could indicate that even though Stauskas was a higher target, they also valued Payton. Maybe they had been trying to line up a second pick in the draft since long before, knowing that there were two guys they were after. In fact, the latter would seem a bit more likely than this: "Gee boss, now that you overruled our desired selection of Payton, we're going to try to get another pick in the draft so we can get the guy we really wanted and fix your screw-up." I mean, that's not going to go over well.
The Kings employed Sim Freaking Bhullar. Vivek is running part of the show, at the very least.