Glenn
Hall of Famer
He's on a roll.
ESPN the Magazine article on Vivek: The Fast and the Curious
- Thread starter Tetsujin
- Start date
He's on a roll.
The Hammer
All-Star
He's been saving up. The FURY!!!
IfAt1st
Starter
There wasn't anything in the article that particularly alarmed me any more than I was already re: Vivek.
However, his insistence at continual lies is becoming grating.
Anyone who has followed this team highly suspects he is intimately involved in the basketball side. As has been astutely pointed out in this very article, Vivek is contradicting himself in his statements.
Let's talk personalities for a second:
* We have Vivek, who is an alpha-nerd who thinks he is a genius and god's gift to The People. He's a big-idea guy who's business approach is predicated on being a meddling influence. The Kings purchase was the highest-profile move he's done in his life - you can be damn sure he wants his name all over this legacy, so he's going to be involved. Yet, he's definitively stating now that he's not involved with the coaching decisions on the floor?
REALLY? This guy has taken obscene pride at taking over his daughter's team and "coaching outside of the box" and forcing his approach on the other teams. You don't think he got off on being perceived as "smarter" than these experienced ex-players who he beat?
From a psychological profile, this guy is SCREAMINGLY obvious that he would be meddling in the coaching decisions. He has directly refuted the statements reported in the landmark Yahoo article after Malone was fired which has proven to be on-point: http://sports.yahoo.com/news/the-do...kings-and-coach-michael-malone-175201188.html
IMO, when someone refutes believable, consistent, reasonable reports from multiple sources that match what everyone can see, he is a LIAR.
* Now let's look at Pete.
The guy is a toady.
He wouldn't come up with an aggressive gameplan if his family was being held hostage. It's just not in his lawyer, agent makeup. There is simply no way (from a psychological analysis standpoint) that he would have made that big play of firing Malone when there was zero basketball justification to do so.
Pete's a talker, not a do-er. He manipulates the message for his impact. He's not a decision-maker.
IMO, the chances that Pete is making the basketball decisions the FO is guilty of (vs. Vivek/Mullin) is close to 10%.
Pete's a paper-pusher - an accountant and salary cap/stats guy.
He's not the visionary who would change an entire team because of style/vision/pace.
That's quite clearly Vivek's personality, and something he would (and has!) done before.
So we get to our most-likely reality:
Vivek is an out-of-control, unrepentant liar and destroyer of this team's season.
Pete fell on the sword with that cockamamie story about flying down to Vegas and convincing Vivek to fire Malone. The fact that Mullin was also included in that lie means he doesn't have much influence here, either.
Vivek is the guy pulling all the strings here, and he was responsible for the delay with Karl - quite likely a personality clash issue. Vivek wanted to wait to get a toady coach - someone that would implement his "out of the box" ideas. The only reason why he hired Karl is because the entire fanbase (most importantly the season-ticket-holders) revolted and he got pressure from the minority owners.
Vivek had better watch it, because he's only one leaked damaging story away from being removed from ownership. He's on that thin of ice, I predict.
However, his insistence at continual lies is becoming grating.
Anyone who has followed this team highly suspects he is intimately involved in the basketball side. As has been astutely pointed out in this very article, Vivek is contradicting himself in his statements.
Let's talk personalities for a second:
* We have Vivek, who is an alpha-nerd who thinks he is a genius and god's gift to The People. He's a big-idea guy who's business approach is predicated on being a meddling influence. The Kings purchase was the highest-profile move he's done in his life - you can be damn sure he wants his name all over this legacy, so he's going to be involved. Yet, he's definitively stating now that he's not involved with the coaching decisions on the floor?
REALLY? This guy has taken obscene pride at taking over his daughter's team and "coaching outside of the box" and forcing his approach on the other teams. You don't think he got off on being perceived as "smarter" than these experienced ex-players who he beat?
From a psychological profile, this guy is SCREAMINGLY obvious that he would be meddling in the coaching decisions. He has directly refuted the statements reported in the landmark Yahoo article after Malone was fired which has proven to be on-point: http://sports.yahoo.com/news/the-do...kings-and-coach-michael-malone-175201188.html
IMO, when someone refutes believable, consistent, reasonable reports from multiple sources that match what everyone can see, he is a LIAR.
* Now let's look at Pete.
The guy is a toady.
He wouldn't come up with an aggressive gameplan if his family was being held hostage. It's just not in his lawyer, agent makeup. There is simply no way (from a psychological analysis standpoint) that he would have made that big play of firing Malone when there was zero basketball justification to do so.
Pete's a talker, not a do-er. He manipulates the message for his impact. He's not a decision-maker.
IMO, the chances that Pete is making the basketball decisions the FO is guilty of (vs. Vivek/Mullin) is close to 10%.
Pete's a paper-pusher - an accountant and salary cap/stats guy.
He's not the visionary who would change an entire team because of style/vision/pace.
That's quite clearly Vivek's personality, and something he would (and has!) done before.
So we get to our most-likely reality:
Vivek is an out-of-control, unrepentant liar and destroyer of this team's season.
Pete fell on the sword with that cockamamie story about flying down to Vegas and convincing Vivek to fire Malone. The fact that Mullin was also included in that lie means he doesn't have much influence here, either.
Vivek is the guy pulling all the strings here, and he was responsible for the delay with Karl - quite likely a personality clash issue. Vivek wanted to wait to get a toady coach - someone that would implement his "out of the box" ideas. The only reason why he hired Karl is because the entire fanbase (most importantly the season-ticket-holders) revolted and he got pressure from the minority owners.
Vivek had better watch it, because he's only one leaked damaging story away from being removed from ownership. He's on that thin of ice, I predict.
While I don't necessarily agree with everything you've said,. there is a certain frightening logic to your conclusions. I'm choosing to put my focus on the team, however, and do the classic Tim Duncan "finger in the ears" move on all the rest. I've had enough off-the-court drama from the Kings to last 5 lifetimes.
rhythmless
Starter
As for the article painting him as a prototypical mold of Silicon Valley/tech startup, it's not even true. Some of these things just sound like Vivek being an oddball and not reading the room/situation.
Honestly, Vivek reminds me of Michael Scott from The Office.
Honestly, Vivek reminds me of Michael Scott from The Office.
Padrino
All-Star
interesting piece on david arsenault jr, the reno bighorns, and vivek ranadive's "lab experiment":
140 points a game – but are the Reno Bighorns a basketball experiment too far?
140 points a game – but are the Reno Bighorns a basketball experiment too far?
The Guardian said:
Yet some people on here will still claim Vivek and co aren't obsessed with playing fast.
This is the part that really bothers me:
Those guys deserve better than what they're getting as being part of the Reno Bighorns right now. The skills they're "learning" have little to no chance of transitioning into a success in the NBA.
And the worst part is that it's based solely on an inexperienced, arrogant owners limited understanding of the game. The fastest teams in the league aren't the best nor even the most entertaining.
Enough about speed, pace, etc. Just let knowledgable basketball minds look at the talent we have and decide how best to utilize them.
Kingster
Hall of Famer
Let me put forth an optimistic scenario. Let's look at Vivek and his purchase of the Sacramento Kings. It was done efficiently, non-transparently when it was required, and brilliantly. He was clear, he was disciplined, he was targeted in his statements, he had a plan, and he carried out that plan masterfully. And with the new stadium, he expertly lobbied the politicians, was a master of the subject matter, and clearly in control. I don't think the word "eccentric" ever popped up during that process to characterize Vivek. Clearly, Vivek has it in him to be an outstanding owner.
It seems to me a question of how he views the team. If this season's chaos has matured him to the point where he views his team more as a business than a toy to be toyed with, he will be headed in the right direction. If his boyish tendencies to play with, toy with, and experiment with the team whenever he so chooses continue unabated, then more disasters loom ahead. It's up to him to determine who exactly he wants to be as owner - the brilliant adult businessman, or the boyish capricious meddler.
It seems to me a question of how he views the team. If this season's chaos has matured him to the point where he views his team more as a business than a toy to be toyed with, he will be headed in the right direction. If his boyish tendencies to play with, toy with, and experiment with the team whenever he so chooses continue unabated, then more disasters loom ahead. It's up to him to determine who exactly he wants to be as owner - the brilliant adult businessman, or the boyish capricious meddler.
Glenn
Hall of Famer
Unless the Kings begin to play the same style. Gack!
IfAt1st
Starter
"Boyish capricious meddler?!"
That's not what I see (in my psychological profile of him) at all.
I see something very different....
Bricklayer
Don't Make Me Use The Bat
That's just...upsetting. It really is.
Its just rather blatant that our owner has neither love nor respect for the game nor its denizens. He gamed the system once against 7th grade girls, and it appears that's his real obsession now. Its like a 13yr old ubergamer who just wants to see if he can break games by doing things the game can't handle or activating cheat codes.
I could see him getting bored and selling out in a few years if it turns out the NBA can't be gimmicked.
Larry David
Starter
Vivek didn’t revolutionize basketball with his 7th grade girls. He exploited the ignorant. Most 7th grade girls teams don’t work on a press break much, if at all. So when Vivek broke out his press, his team prevailed because they were applying a longstanding basketball play against a team that didn’t know what they were doing.
If the rest of the league spent their entire practice on press breaks, the games would boil down to some mix of talent and execution like every other game. I’m guessing that didn’t happen because most of the other coaches were non-a**holes or had some perspective.
The sweet irony of all this is that, because Vivek is either oblivious or indifferent to his ignorance, he’s now standing in the shoes of the 7th grade team that doesn’t know how to break a press and most of the teams in the league know what they are doing. And yet, he’s acting like he’s the smartest guy in the room and stands to reinvent the game he doesn’t even understand well.
If the rest of the league spent their entire practice on press breaks, the games would boil down to some mix of talent and execution like every other game. I’m guessing that didn’t happen because most of the other coaches were non-a**holes or had some perspective.
The sweet irony of all this is that, because Vivek is either oblivious or indifferent to his ignorance, he’s now standing in the shoes of the 7th grade team that doesn’t know how to break a press and most of the teams in the league know what they are doing. And yet, he’s acting like he’s the smartest guy in the room and stands to reinvent the game he doesn’t even understand well.
This is like the *brilliant* tactic that insecure, obsessive, win-at-all-costs U6 AYSO coaches employ, whereby on opponents' goal kicks, they line up four of their six players about ten feet away from the ball. They are capitalizing on the fact that many 5-year-old goalies can't kick the ball more than ten feet anyways, so these coaches lay their trap and then pat themselves on the back when their poachers "steel" the ball and score an easy goal. It is a ridiculous, immature tactic that does nothing to build basic soccer skills, but it can result in a (Pyrrhic) victory. Congratulations, geniuses!
Bricklayer
Don't Make Me Use The Bat
I think you need to read the article and focus on what it is saying.
Some bullet points:
-- he, meaning Vivek fairly directly, admits to using Reno as a living lab, complete with two legged lab rats
-- so he goes and instead of hiring a professional level coach, he hires a part time 28yr old Div III assistant who was earning $5,000 a year, and slaps him up as head of an NBA D-League franchise.
-- this 28 yr old assistant is hired solely because of a wild experimental system who his father designed some 20yrs before to get his academically oriented DIII students to think DIII basketball was worth the sacrifice in study time
-- his father, designer of the system, who is still alive and still the head coach there...has never even been contacted a single time by any member of the Kings. They hired away his 28yr old part time volunteer son to coach wacky ball at a professional level with players the like of which he has never seen and did not even talk to the guy who invented it.
-- highlights of the system include: only threes and layups as fast as the ball can be advanced, no 2s at all, all 4 non-shooting guys crash the board on every shot, if they miss, its a dunk the other way and the coach says he doesn't care and wish his guys didn't either
-- the D-League players who play in it are all concerned that NBA teams aren't taking their careers seriously because of the system
-- the coach is concerned that his professional players don't have the same enthusiasm as the DIII kids he was assisting his dad with
-- we slapped on a 7'3" 360lb center who can't run the system at all, just because our owner values his ethnicity
-- while the Kings themselves burn, the front office analytics department wastes its time making daily spreadsheets for the lab tech in charge of the Reno experiment to pour over to see how the experiment is working.
To say all of the above is completely unprofessional and disrespectful would be an understatement.
rainmaker
Hall of Famer
Spot on.
Other aspect of what he did is it's a disgraceful shortcut to winning by cheating the integrity of the game, much like what he's attempting to do in Reno. He has no concept or respect for fundamentals or the history of the game. At the 7th grade girls level, you're basically working on shell defense, a very basic motion offense, maybe a P&R here or there but really you just want to teach some fundamentals, give the girls an understanding of how the game is played and the common pathways to success, and have fun. At that age, fun and learning to work in a team environment is important. A full court press is a shortcut in that he didn't know enough to teach his girls the fundamentals of the game and instead decided to cheat the system. Even single coach can do a full court press at this level if he's enough of a d***head to do so. Yet only one decided to plaster that across his forehead and he's now our owner. The opposing coach could have told his girls to swing the ball through hard, elbows raised whenever pressed and broken a nose or two. That's what I was taught when defended hard. You put your face in there I'll make sure you don't put it there again. Of course, the opposing coach has a bit of class.
Then we look at Reno and it's more of the same. Ignore the fundamentals of winning basketball, ignore the history of the game, ignore the integrity of the purpose of the D-League and that these guys are hoping to be NBA/Euro pros one day and you're damaging their careers as you treat them like lab rats. What Vivek is at this moment in some respects, not all, in some, is a huge slap in the face to anyone who's ever taken this game seriously, player or fan.
The Hammer
All-Star
There's got to be a Greek myth about that scenario.
Bricklayer
Don't Make Me Use The Bat
Don't know about the Greeks on this one, but The Emperor's New Clothes is apt.
Chubbs
Starter
Karma.
Chupacabra
Starter
The hiring of Karl is a clear, loud sign that Vivek and co realizes that they need to back off. As far as on court play and use of personnel is concerned George Karl, at this point of his career, does whatever he wants. An FO with intentions to meddle with on court play doesn't go out and hire George Karl. To hire Karl is to hand over the keys.
If Reno is enough to satisfy Vivek's basketball experiment then so be it. I care far more about the Kings and feel very positively about a team that is led by Karl.
If Reno is enough to satisfy Vivek's basketball experiment then so be it. I care far more about the Kings and feel very positively about a team that is led by Karl.
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