But seriously, since just about everybody here feels the need to incessantly insult the front office, why not make up some sort of nifty nickname for your on-court concerns - say #vivekball or something - instead of co-opting and mis-using a phrase like NBA 3.0 that describes front office efforts that we really should all be behind and really have nothing to do with what you're actually upset about?
i tend to refer to it as "junkball," as do a few others around these parts. however, i do think it's fair to co-opt the "nba 3.0" phrase as a way of criticizing the new regime's efforts in building a winning team. while i'm as excited for the new arena as everybody else (for reasons that go far beyond the nba's presence in sacramento), and while i also appreciate the push to modernize and globalize the franchise, on-court performance is still where this ownership group and front office will
always be judged most harshly...
for most of the kings' 30 years in sacramento, they've been managed and coached by incompetents. there was a glorious stretch of genius in the late-90's/early-00's; we could call it an-all-too-brief "golden age," but even that ended in catastrophe. so, if nba 3.0 is about everything
except delivering a competitive product
on the court, well, then that says something about the new regime's priorities...
personally, though, i don't view vivek ranadive as any kind of egoist or madman or saboteur who would intentionally squash his franchise's opportunity to build a winning team; i view him as a helplessly green owner who will eventually tire of being the butt of jokes and will eventually hire exceptional nba basketball minds to operate his franchise. unfortunately, because his actual experience with the inner-workings of the game of basketball barely extends past his daughter's high school team, i don't think that he
knows what constitutes an exceptional nba basketball mind, at this point...
i believe vivek when he says that he prefers to surround himself with others who are smarter than himself, but again, in this particular field, i don't think he
knows how to identify those "smarter than himself." more to the point, i think he was an 11th hour pick to front kevin johnson's proposed ownership group, and with little time and few resources at his disposal, i think he got stuck with very few viable options to fill both his general manager vacancy and his head coaching vacancy. it was simply
not a good time to be looking for a gm
and a head coach, and we were all so overwhelmed by the realization that the kings were staying in sacramento that i think we tend to forget just how dried-up the field was for those two positions...
i mean, hell, kings fans were tossing names like mike dunleavy around as vivek began conducting his gm search, so i don't really blame him for hiring pete d'allesandro to be his gm. and though i
despised the move when it occurred, i don't even really blame vivek for bringing in chris mullin as an adviser, because of the prior familiarity that existed between them. and i was actually a fan of the michael malone hire, though i foresaw the very tension that eventually developed between malone and d'allesandro. that said, i
do blame vivek for the malone firing, and i
will blame vivek if the trust he's placed in PDA and mullin turns out to be as misguided as i believe it to be. if they're right and i'm wrong, i will gleefully
sprint to the front of the line to eat my fair share of crow, but i'm not holding my breath for the
on-court representation of "nba 3.0" to yield a winning culture, particularly given the needs of a roster that falls woefully short of the front office's prescribed "vision"...
