Vivek's concerning (or not) Rudy Gay press conference

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Well if anyone watched the press conference for Rudy Gay today things got really interesting pretty quick. 3 secs into the clip Vivek says "When I hired Petey the first thing I DID... was tell him to get Rudy Gay".

LOL!!!!!! ohhhhh man...... good to know that our owner is the reason this happened at all in the first place... So the first thing our owner did after hiring a GM was tell the GM what to do... well alright!

Now this wouldn't be as concerning if not for that Grantland piece that followed our front office during the last draft. Now famously (mocked by Bill Simmons) Vivek did something unusual... He had everyone in the room vote on who we should take with.......non other than Vivek ...THE BOSS AKA THE WRITER OF ALL YOUR CHECKS leading the way with HIS vote "STAUSKAS!" ...What followed was a shocking unanimous "STAUSKAS!!!" chant.....

Now Stauskas could end up being a good player. Its just waaaaaaaay too early to tell... but..... Vivek's influence is starting to worry me .... OR IS PETEY MORE WORRISOME? LOL! hard to tell who we want running the team. LOL!
 
Was there anything more worrisome than that?

It is perhaps a bit illuminative, just in that I have mentioned repeatedly the multiple cooks explaining some of our front office schizophrenia. And it makes sense in that things like this and Derrick Williams seemed to follow Vivek's "positionless basketball" ideas.
 
I was listening to Grant's show with PDA on yesterday while stuck in traffic and Rudy came up. What PDA said was that he always wanted Rudy and it actually was a topic in his interview for the job here. He didn't say the exact context in which it came up in the interview but he did make clear he was the one who talked about Rudy when campaigning for the job.

As concerned as I am about Vivek's potential meddling, I don't see it here.
 
rainmaker said:
I was listening to Grant's show with PDA on yesterday while stuck in traffic and Rudy came up. What PDA said was that he always wanted Rudy and it actually was a topic in his interview for the job here. He didn't say the exact context in which it came up in the interview but he did make clear he was the one who talked about Rudy when campaigning for the job.

As concerned as I am about Vivek's potential meddling, I don't see it here.
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Well if the first thing your boss tells you is that HE wants Rudy... Its probably good that Pete "always" wanted Rudy too. LOL!

Vivek's side of the story is not exactly the same
 
sactownfan said:
Well if the first thing your boss tells you is that HE wants Rudy... Its probably good that Pete "always" wanted Rudy too. LOL!

Vivek's side of the story is not exactly the same
Click to expand...

Alternately, if in your interview for the job you stress that you think Rudy Gay would be a great pickup and sell your future boos in it, he might very well tell you upon hiring you, ok, go get him.
 
I generally take any statement like that as a stretching of the truth for PR reasons.

My first thought upon hearing it was about Josh Smith and whether he was another player they had long discussed.
 
sactownfan said:
http://www.nba.com/kings/kings-livestream-coverage

Well if anyone watched the press conference for Rudy Gay today things got really interesting pretty quick. 3 secs into the clip Vivek says "When I hired Petey the first thing I DID... was tell him to get Rudy Gay".

LOL!!!!!! ohhhhh man...... good to know that our owner is the reason this happened at all in the first place... So the first thing our owner did after hiring a GM was tell the GM what to do... well alright!

Now this wouldn't be as concerning if not for that Grantland piece that followed our front office during the last draft. Now famously (mocked by Bill Simmons) Vivek did something unusual... He had everyone in the room vote on who we should take with.......non other than Vivek ...THE BOSS AKA THE WRITER OF ALL YOUR CHECKS leading the way with HIS vote "STAUSKAS!" ...What followed was a shocking unanimous "STAUSKAS!!!" chant.....

Now Stauskas could end up being a good player. Its just waaaaaaaay too early to tell... but..... Vivek's influence is starting to worry me .... OR IS PETEY MORE WORRISOME? LOL! hard to tell who we want running the team. LOL!
Click to expand...

LOL! What are you worried about? As long as the Kings continue to make good pick ups who cares who had the most to do with it?

I like our improved team and look forward to continued improvement.
 
I know it's kind of popular to worry about whether Vivek has his nose too deep in personnel decisions, but like Brick said, this is perfectly consistent with the following:

PDA (during interview): "Here is my philosophy about getting talent into small markets by going after overpaid contracts...(stuff)...For instance, I think Rudy Gay is a perfect target..."
Vivek (later): "Pete, you're hired! Now go get us Rudy Gay!"

What bothers me more is Vivek's insistence on kissing up to everybody. Seems like every time he appears in front of cameras with somebody - "Before we bought the team we knew that Pete was the guy we really wanted"; "Before we bought the team we knew Malone was the guy we really wanted"; "We always wanted Rudy to be here"; "I always surround myself with people smarter than me. Everybody at this table is smarter than me." ... It just goes on and on. After a while, it stops sounding sincere, you know?
 
I gotta say when I heard that press conference today I did an "uh oh" when I heard him say he told PDA to get Rudy and then the next day he said it again. But I didn't know about that interview with Grant/PDA yesterday that PDA mentioned he had brought up adding Rudy during the interview process. So Vivek saying "go get Rudy" was just him giving him the green light, not calling the shots on who we need to acquire.
 
kingsboi said:
so was it Vivek's idea to go after Collison also...I wonder
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No, I don't think so.

Logically Vivek's influence would have been at its zenith immediately after taking over the team and while suddenly hiring a comparative nobody as his out of the blue GM. What was PDA going to do two weeks onto the job? Say no? But I would expect the longer that PDA has been on the job the larger his own decisionmaking would become. And I would imagine Vivek, like most owners who have other businesses, would mostly be involved in the big flashy moves. Drafts, Rudy, chasing Iggy as a FA etc. One of the reason for my suspicion that smaller things like Casspi, Moreland etc. would be more likely to be PDA, unless Casspi's nationality played into Vivek's plan for worldwide NBA 3.0 or something.
 
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pshn80 said:
LOL! What are you worried about? As long as the Kings continue to make good pick ups who cares who had the most to do with it?

I like our improved team and look forward to continued improvement.
Click to expand...

Im not worried I suppose. thats why I said concerning ...."or not" Its just funny ...
 
Bricklayer said:
Alternately, if in your interview for the job you stress that you think Rudy Gay would be a great pickup and sell your future boos in it, he might very well tell you upon hiring you, ok, go get him.
Click to expand...

LOL! analytics power house Rudy Gay! obviously a Petey move! at that point Rudy Gay was a Petey nightmare. anyway I'm not worried. I posted it because its funny... The vote for Nic on draft day was funny too. or odd... whatever tho ... I'm pleased with how the team is turning around overall.
 
If Rudy Gay was really their target from the beginning, it makes the Derrick Williams trade a bit odd. Seems like they would have decided to hold on to Moute, who would have been a valuable defensive specialist off the bench
 
We're 6-5 with a brutal opening schedule and the Kings are still the Sacramento Kings. Meddle away Vivek.
 
sactownfan said:
LOL! analytics power house Rudy Gay! obviously a Petey move! at that point Rudy Gay was a Petey nightmare. anyway I'm not worried. I posted it because its funny... The vote for Nic on draft day was funny too. or odd... whatever tho ... I'm pleased with how the team is turning around overall.
Click to expand...

Here's the thing, PDA was essentially the salary cap guy in Denver, not necessarily the Sabrmetrics Jonah Hill in Moneyball guy (funnily enough, Denver's guy for that stuff wound up getting hired by us a few weeks ago). All of his random maneuvering to open up odd pockets of cap space in the offseason can probably serve as testament to that.

In fact, most of our roster is pretty much made up of an advanced stats guy's fever dream, with Rudy often being the butt of jokes, Demarcus often being considered an inefficient big man in the Petrie era, Darren Collison being worse than IT in just about every stat category, "advanced" and traditional, Ben McLemore putting up a ridiculous inefficient rookie season, and so on and so forth. Hell, we got rid of Isaiah Thomas, who was largely (har, har, har) an advanced stat nerd's favorite player.

Thus far into his reign, most of "Petey"'s moves have been *gasp* chemistry signings and old fashioned eyeball test signings, completely antithetical to this image of D'Allesandro as some sort of advanced stat bro needling away behind a keyboard somewhere.
 
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I have no problem with Vivek doing whatever he wants. The guy bought the team. The arena is getting built. The team is improving. What's not to like? The guy is an innovator. We are lucky to have him.
 
Siranthony said:
I have no problem with Vivek doing whatever he wants. The guy bought the team. The arena is getting built. The team is improving. What's not to like? The guy is an innovator. We are lucky to have him.
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That's really nothing. He could be the smartest man in the world, and be a basketball dunce. Or vice versa. The "he saved the team" jingle has nothing to do with whether he might damage the product on the floor by meddling. Maybe he will, maybe he won't, but he saved the team has nothing to do with it either way, and he was a good businessman has nothing to do with his basketball acumen. Every owner was a good businessman. Some of them are blithering idiots when it comes to basketball.
 
I thought the first thing he did was call Demarcus and tell him "lets make history together" or something.

Maybe he did a conference call.

I can't believe anyone actually believes that story. It's like when you go to a show and the artist says "hey, this is the best damn crowd we've had on this tour!!"
 
Albatros said:
I thought the first thing he did was call Demarcus and tell him "lets make history together" or something.

Maybe he did a conference call.

I can't believe anyone actually believes that story. It's like when you go to a show and the artist says "hey, this is the best damn crowd we've had on this tour!!"
Click to expand...
I like the one where he was listening to his transistor radio when the first man walked on the moon.

Or the one where he showed up in America with no money is his pocket (his family was rich).
Few things irk me more than people raised in wealth (he had servants) who pretend they are self made.

I call BS on the rudy thing too.
 
What's with all the Vivek hate? He kept the team in Sac and improved the team. And opened up his wallet to do it....honestly I don't care who is calling the shots or the word coming out of his mouth. The team seems to care about each other, sactown, and winning...Go Vivek! Go Kings! They are winning folks find something else to complain about.
 
The only thing that worries me about any of this is the implication that 'acquiring Rudy gay' came to be seen as one of the requirements of keeping the job and this is way back when Pete was hired so it would have had an impact on the Tyreke Evans decision. I just never felt like Tyreke got a fair shake with this ownership group and as talented a player as he is and the level of commitment he demonstrated about sticking with Sacramento through the Seattle scare, that always bothered me. Now Rudy Gay and Darren Collison are playing really well for us, so I'm not saying it was necessarily a bad decision in the end. The question with Tyreke has always been what type of players you surround him with and pursuing an alternative strategy has resulted in a competitive team. But I don't think you can find 10 players in the league who are more difficult for other teams to match-up with physically than Tyreke Evans and that includes Rudy Gay who is a gifted scorer and a freak athlete but prone to streaky shooting nights and not on the same level as a playmaker. Chemistry does matter and Gay seems to be a better fit with Cousins in that regard but it's still hard for me to see Tyreke pummeling the rest of the league with his Lebron-lite statline of 17, 7, and 7 and not wonder "what if?".
 
Bricklayer said:
That's really nothing. He could be the smartest man in the world, and be a basketball dunce. Or vice versa. The "he saved the team" jingle has nothing to do with whether he might damage the product on the floor by meddling. Maybe he will, maybe he won't, but he saved the team has nothing to do with it either way, and he was a good businessman has nothing to do with his basketball acumen. Every owner was a good businessman. Some of them are blithering idiots when it comes to basketball.
Click to expand...

I am firm believer that success in a sports franchise starts with the owner. How each owner goes about his business is probably different. I get the impression Vivek is a hands on personality.
 
hrdboild said:
The only thing that worries me about any of this is the implication that 'acquiring Rudy gay' came to be seen as one of the requirements of keeping the job and this is way back when Pete was hired so it would have had an impact on the Tyreke Evans decision. I just never felt like Tyreke got a fair shake with this ownership group and as talented a player as he is and the level of commitment he demonstrated about sticking with Sacramento through the Seattle scare, that always bothered me. Now Rudy Gay and Darren Collison are playing really well for us, so I'm not saying it was necessarily a bad decision in the end. The question with Tyreke has always been what type of players you surround him with and pursuing an alternative strategy has resulted in a competitive team. But I don't think you can find 10 players in the league who are more difficult for other teams to match-up with physically than Tyreke Evans and that includes Rudy Gay who is a gifted scorer and a freak athlete but prone to streaky shooting nights and not on the same level as a playmaker. Chemistry does matter and Gay seems to be a better fit with Cousins in that regard but it's still hard for me to see Tyreke pummeling the rest of the league with his Lebron-lite statline of 17, 7, and 7 and not wonder "what if?".
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Let it go. Let it go!
 
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