http://www.sacbee.com/content/sports/basketball/kings/story/14129389p-14958346c.html
Mark Kreidler: Overstepping their bounds?
Maloofs upsetting balance that made Kings great
By Mark Kreidler -- Bee Columnist
Published 2:15 am PST Sunday, January 29, 2006
For the longest time, what the Maloof brothers brought to the Kings was an almost exquisite understanding of the difference between having money and having wisdom. It was an understanding that brokered a franchise revival.
Things hummed along, actually. Geoff Petrie and his basketball advisers handled the acquisition of talent. Rick Adelman put the talent to use in a system designed to accommodate specific types of athletes. The players themselves were more or less left to their own devices, allowed wide latitude as individuals and eccentrics.
And Joe and Gavin Maloof did what they do best: They brought their enthusiasm, their business savvy and their bank account. They front-loaded their investment in salary and upgrades to the physical plant at and around Arco Arena. They showed up constantly. They cheer-led. They radiated positive vibes.
Significantly, the Maloofs also seemed instinctively to understand what not to do. They didn't pretend to possess some vast and intricate basketball knowledge. They weren't Mark Cuban in Dallas. They gave Petrie a wide berth to do his thing, and supported him with virtually no conditions. Most important, they never allowed any voice but Petrie's on hoops matters.
It was, upon reflection, a golden era in the franchise's history.
And, increasingly, it appears to be over.
The Maloofs' gaffe on ESPNews last week, in which they all but announced the Ron Artest trade before speaking with either Artest or Peja Stojakovic, capped a year in which the brothers (and, by extension, the family) have become more actively involved - seldom to the good - in the areas of the Kings' operations they once avoided.
Twice now, that involvement has led directly to embarrassment, first when the Maloofs allowed the Kings to be played for fools in the Phil Jackson coaching escapade and then again when the Artest deal blew up, leaving hurt feelings and ill will scattered in the aftermath.
Stojakovic mostly took the high road about not being contacted by Kings management while the deal was going down, but in a couple of interviews, notably one with ESPN.com, he made it clear he didn't appreciate being treated like chattel after more than seven years of organizational service. He was dead right about that. It was, for lack of a better word, unprofessional.
The Kings came off looking disorganized and desperate, almost the film negative of the careful, considered (and usually successful) image Petrie spent years cultivating. It wasn't what the Maloofs intended. But that's the downside of going where you don't belong.
The most difficult thing in sports, for most front-office executives, is figuring out how to gently keep ownership at arm's length on personnel decisions. The list of owners who actually have a deep enough knowledge of the sport and its dynamics to have a positive effect on personnel, at this point, is pretty much restricted to Cuban - and he's a freak, in the sense that he actually spends the majority of his time being an NBA owner.
The Maloofs have gone the other way in recent years. They've added a recording company and a film/television production company to their résumés, in addition to their growing beer and liquor distributorships and their Las Vegas hotel and casino.
They've almost got more pies than they have fingers to stick in them.
At the same time, though, they've become selectively more involved in certain Kings matters. Or, to put it another way, they come blasting through the door when it's least expected - and, so far, least helpful.
Whether this has put a strain on their relationship with Petrie is an open question. Those close to the executive say Petrie genuinely likes both brothers and is inclined to give them a pass on any mistakes of "enthusiasm," and there is no question that their time together with the Kings has produced more radiant moments than clunkers.
On the other hand, the Artest deal was troublesome if it signaled a new level of upfront involvement by the Maloofs, an attempt by them to essentially reconfigure the roster themselves. That's a path to ruin that is already strewn with the carcasses of failed sports owners past, no matter how fanatical any of them considered themselves when it came to their teams.
"Our working relationship has been great on all this kind of thing," Petrie said last week on the day the Artest trade finally came through. "We work together.
"We haven't ever done anything (like this) when there wasn't a true consensus at the end. It has always been a very collective process, and this one wasn't any different."
For their part, the Maloofs spent much of Wednesday reasserting Petrie's authority as the general manager after undermining that very authority with their TV appearance Tuesday. The brothers may have turned down some national interviews, but judging by their appearances on ESPN (twice), Fox Sports and TNT, in addition to their pregame session with the mass media in New York, you'd be hard-pressed to say which.
Generally, Joe and Gavin want it known that Geoff is the basketball guy. Problem is, they've twice now made Petrie look like a person along for the ride.
The Phil Jackson episode was so odd that it probably deserves its own asterisk. The Kings' season had just ended with a disappointing first-round playoff loss to Seattle, and Petrie had just undergone an angioplasty procedure and was laid up in the hospital when all the action occurred.
But it's still instructive. The Maloofs contacted Jackson's agent mostly after listening to people whisper in their ear that Jackson would seriously consider coming to Sacramento (one of the brothers' charms is also one of their potential pitfalls: they earnestly solicit advice from all over, and much of it isn't worth the time it takes to repeat). They didn't wait to speak to Petrie. They pounded ahead.
Veteran sports logic suggests that any agent playing the field for his client is going to make such a contact public, and, sure enough, the Maloof connection became known almost immediately. It didn't help that the Maloofs, with Petrie unavailable to them, went to a newspaper writer to secure the agent's phone number. Did they think they had a secret?
The story broke, yet even after it did, the Maloofs failed to contact Adelman, an ordinary courtesy. Adelman was left twisting in the wind, a horrible public image for the coach who had just taken the franchise to its fifth consecutive 50-victory season.
And, in the end, it was a shell game. Jackson never considered Sacramento a destination. He wrote an entire chapter's epilogue to his book "The Last Season" in which he discussed his decision to return to coaching the Lakers, and he mentioned only the New York Knicks as a serious other contender for his services.
Petrie shrugged off the Jackson debacle as unique, and he reminded anyone who asked him that the owners have every right to inquire about a potential coach. But the Artest deal also seems to have the Maloofs' fingerprints on it.
Donnie Walsh, the Pacers' top basketball executive, suggested this in an ESPN interview, saying Petrie had told him the Maloofs "were big fans of Artest" and wanted to explore a trade.
Petrie, while discussing the anatomy of the deal only in the vaguest of terms, did allow that the Maloofs' involvement "doesn't always happen as early as it did" in this case. And even if it's impossible to believe Petrie would make a trade he didn't want (and while acknowledging that dealing Stojakovic makes sense on any number of levels), there is no question that the impetus on Artest did not come from Petrie. That was a Maloof production.
It is also, historically speaking, a descending elevator. The book on heavily involved owners who actually do good on behalf of active rosters is remarkably slender.
Petrie knows that. He also knows, as the Maloofs know, that the best years of their Kings' tenure came with Petrie controlling virtually all of the basketball decisions and Joe and Gavin minding the bigger picture - their overall salary commitment, infrastructure, marketing and promotions, fan satisfaction.
Of course, that was then, when every move seemed to work and winning seasons followed one after the other. Now the water has gone choppier, and the Maloofs have people whispering in their ears louder than ever before. To whom they ultimately listen is the question.
Whether the Artest-Stojakovic trade proves out one way or the other, the overt involvement of the Kings' owners in it opens a new chapter in their relationship with the basketball executive who made their money and passion amount to wins and attention. It may be Geoff Petrie's greatest challenge yet: trying to persuade his owners, in a time of franchise transition, that the old way is still the right one.
About the writer: Reach Mark Kreidler at (916) 321-1149 or mkreidler@sacbee.com
Mark Kreidler: Overstepping their bounds?
Maloofs upsetting balance that made Kings great
By Mark Kreidler -- Bee Columnist
Published 2:15 am PST Sunday, January 29, 2006
For the longest time, what the Maloof brothers brought to the Kings was an almost exquisite understanding of the difference between having money and having wisdom. It was an understanding that brokered a franchise revival.
Things hummed along, actually. Geoff Petrie and his basketball advisers handled the acquisition of talent. Rick Adelman put the talent to use in a system designed to accommodate specific types of athletes. The players themselves were more or less left to their own devices, allowed wide latitude as individuals and eccentrics.
And Joe and Gavin Maloof did what they do best: They brought their enthusiasm, their business savvy and their bank account. They front-loaded their investment in salary and upgrades to the physical plant at and around Arco Arena. They showed up constantly. They cheer-led. They radiated positive vibes.
Significantly, the Maloofs also seemed instinctively to understand what not to do. They didn't pretend to possess some vast and intricate basketball knowledge. They weren't Mark Cuban in Dallas. They gave Petrie a wide berth to do his thing, and supported him with virtually no conditions. Most important, they never allowed any voice but Petrie's on hoops matters.
It was, upon reflection, a golden era in the franchise's history.
And, increasingly, it appears to be over.
The Maloofs' gaffe on ESPNews last week, in which they all but announced the Ron Artest trade before speaking with either Artest or Peja Stojakovic, capped a year in which the brothers (and, by extension, the family) have become more actively involved - seldom to the good - in the areas of the Kings' operations they once avoided.
Twice now, that involvement has led directly to embarrassment, first when the Maloofs allowed the Kings to be played for fools in the Phil Jackson coaching escapade and then again when the Artest deal blew up, leaving hurt feelings and ill will scattered in the aftermath.
Stojakovic mostly took the high road about not being contacted by Kings management while the deal was going down, but in a couple of interviews, notably one with ESPN.com, he made it clear he didn't appreciate being treated like chattel after more than seven years of organizational service. He was dead right about that. It was, for lack of a better word, unprofessional.
The Kings came off looking disorganized and desperate, almost the film negative of the careful, considered (and usually successful) image Petrie spent years cultivating. It wasn't what the Maloofs intended. But that's the downside of going where you don't belong.
The most difficult thing in sports, for most front-office executives, is figuring out how to gently keep ownership at arm's length on personnel decisions. The list of owners who actually have a deep enough knowledge of the sport and its dynamics to have a positive effect on personnel, at this point, is pretty much restricted to Cuban - and he's a freak, in the sense that he actually spends the majority of his time being an NBA owner.
The Maloofs have gone the other way in recent years. They've added a recording company and a film/television production company to their résumés, in addition to their growing beer and liquor distributorships and their Las Vegas hotel and casino.
They've almost got more pies than they have fingers to stick in them.
At the same time, though, they've become selectively more involved in certain Kings matters. Or, to put it another way, they come blasting through the door when it's least expected - and, so far, least helpful.
Whether this has put a strain on their relationship with Petrie is an open question. Those close to the executive say Petrie genuinely likes both brothers and is inclined to give them a pass on any mistakes of "enthusiasm," and there is no question that their time together with the Kings has produced more radiant moments than clunkers.
On the other hand, the Artest deal was troublesome if it signaled a new level of upfront involvement by the Maloofs, an attempt by them to essentially reconfigure the roster themselves. That's a path to ruin that is already strewn with the carcasses of failed sports owners past, no matter how fanatical any of them considered themselves when it came to their teams.
"Our working relationship has been great on all this kind of thing," Petrie said last week on the day the Artest trade finally came through. "We work together.
"We haven't ever done anything (like this) when there wasn't a true consensus at the end. It has always been a very collective process, and this one wasn't any different."
For their part, the Maloofs spent much of Wednesday reasserting Petrie's authority as the general manager after undermining that very authority with their TV appearance Tuesday. The brothers may have turned down some national interviews, but judging by their appearances on ESPN (twice), Fox Sports and TNT, in addition to their pregame session with the mass media in New York, you'd be hard-pressed to say which.
Generally, Joe and Gavin want it known that Geoff is the basketball guy. Problem is, they've twice now made Petrie look like a person along for the ride.
The Phil Jackson episode was so odd that it probably deserves its own asterisk. The Kings' season had just ended with a disappointing first-round playoff loss to Seattle, and Petrie had just undergone an angioplasty procedure and was laid up in the hospital when all the action occurred.
But it's still instructive. The Maloofs contacted Jackson's agent mostly after listening to people whisper in their ear that Jackson would seriously consider coming to Sacramento (one of the brothers' charms is also one of their potential pitfalls: they earnestly solicit advice from all over, and much of it isn't worth the time it takes to repeat). They didn't wait to speak to Petrie. They pounded ahead.
Veteran sports logic suggests that any agent playing the field for his client is going to make such a contact public, and, sure enough, the Maloof connection became known almost immediately. It didn't help that the Maloofs, with Petrie unavailable to them, went to a newspaper writer to secure the agent's phone number. Did they think they had a secret?
The story broke, yet even after it did, the Maloofs failed to contact Adelman, an ordinary courtesy. Adelman was left twisting in the wind, a horrible public image for the coach who had just taken the franchise to its fifth consecutive 50-victory season.
And, in the end, it was a shell game. Jackson never considered Sacramento a destination. He wrote an entire chapter's epilogue to his book "The Last Season" in which he discussed his decision to return to coaching the Lakers, and he mentioned only the New York Knicks as a serious other contender for his services.
Petrie shrugged off the Jackson debacle as unique, and he reminded anyone who asked him that the owners have every right to inquire about a potential coach. But the Artest deal also seems to have the Maloofs' fingerprints on it.
Donnie Walsh, the Pacers' top basketball executive, suggested this in an ESPN interview, saying Petrie had told him the Maloofs "were big fans of Artest" and wanted to explore a trade.
Petrie, while discussing the anatomy of the deal only in the vaguest of terms, did allow that the Maloofs' involvement "doesn't always happen as early as it did" in this case. And even if it's impossible to believe Petrie would make a trade he didn't want (and while acknowledging that dealing Stojakovic makes sense on any number of levels), there is no question that the impetus on Artest did not come from Petrie. That was a Maloof production.
It is also, historically speaking, a descending elevator. The book on heavily involved owners who actually do good on behalf of active rosters is remarkably slender.
Petrie knows that. He also knows, as the Maloofs know, that the best years of their Kings' tenure came with Petrie controlling virtually all of the basketball decisions and Joe and Gavin minding the bigger picture - their overall salary commitment, infrastructure, marketing and promotions, fan satisfaction.
Of course, that was then, when every move seemed to work and winning seasons followed one after the other. Now the water has gone choppier, and the Maloofs have people whispering in their ears louder than ever before. To whom they ultimately listen is the question.
Whether the Artest-Stojakovic trade proves out one way or the other, the overt involvement of the Kings' owners in it opens a new chapter in their relationship with the basketball executive who made their money and passion amount to wins and attention. It may be Geoff Petrie's greatest challenge yet: trying to persuade his owners, in a time of franchise transition, that the old way is still the right one.
About the writer: Reach Mark Kreidler at (916) 321-1149 or mkreidler@sacbee.com
