Voisin: Future of Kings in Divac's hands

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VF21

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Seems like a lot of this is what more than a few KF members have been trying to get across.

Few members of the Kings’ front office were stunned or even bothered by general manager Pete D’Alessandro’s departure Wednesday to the Denver Nuggets. Though the timing was terrible, with the NBA draft two weeks away, his exit was anticipated for reasons that range from petty to grandiose, including the usual assortment of rookie mistakes.
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Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/sports/spt-columns-blogs/ailene-voisin/article23825323.html#storylink=cpy

I didn't see this posted anywhere. If I missed it, just let me know. :p
 
“Mike (Bratz) is a simple guy,” Divac said. “He is in his office all the time, watching tape, talking to people. You ask a question and he gives you a straight ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answer. So we are going to take our time and think about exactly what we need, what expertise we are lacking. Then we make our move.”

Well if that's even half true hopefully things stabilize here soon.
 
The biggest thing I noticed about the Kings the last 5-10 years was the lack of stability. The organization was too impatient. It has to be step by step.
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That was the Vlade quote that jumped out to me. I'm glad he understands that. The biggest problem I've had with the front office since Vivek took over is the inability to develop and articulate a long-term plan, commit to it, and see it through. We've seen a lot of short-term opportunism which sometimes works and sometimes doesn't, but ultimately what that created was an unbalanced roster and players who don't know what their role is and/or what the front office is actually trying to do.
 
it appears to me that vlade divac understands that he needs to bolster his front office with the right people, but he also appears to understand the need for some measure of continuity. you've gotta have a longterm sense of your plan, and you just can't cycle through new coaches, assistant coaches, gm's, assistant gm's, scouts, etc every other season. there's enough player turnover as it is in the contemporary nba, so a front office needs to maintain some measure of stability through all the chaos associated with building a roster. there needs to be unity and synergy between ownership, a front office, a coaching staff, and the players themselves. while i have my reservations about anyone leftover from pete d'alessandro's brief tenure in sacramento, having been brought over by d'alessandro isn't an automatic disqualifier of bratz's utility to the kings' front office. at this point, simply making sensible moves devoid of drama, posturing, or power-grabbing will be a huge step forward for this franchise...
 
Vlade is just the type of well respected class act to get the stench of weasel out of the Kings FO.

Crack a window Vlade! Crack alllll the windows!
 
Larry David said:
Voisin says Karl was a Vivek's idea .... except when it was PDA's idea in February 2015

http://www.sacbee.com/sports/spt-columns-blogs/ailene-voisin/article10311275.html
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It's apparent that Voisin had either 1) a bad source then, or 2) a bad source now. I'm betting on the former but the way stuff has come out of this front office, I don't think we'll ever know for sure, but it wouldn't surprise me if giving PDA the credit back then was a feeble attempt to restore some kind of support for the unpopular GM.

I recall back in the day wishing that Petrie would someday write a book so we'd know the truth about things like Webber's trade, etc. I don't want PDA to write a book. I'd like, however, to get him hooked up to a lie detector. :p
 
the key word in all of this has been stability. The Kings' motto as of late has been if it's not working right away, it won't work at all and let's clean house all over again and rinse and repeat for nearly a decade.
 
Voison's source was alternately PDA or Vivek. She describes having lunch with PDA in that article after Karl was hired where PDA seemed entirely too smug and self satisfied, all too happy to be the hero. I think he was more than happy to weave a fascinating tale of how he wooed George Karl. PDA was becoming less and less popular. Maybe Vivek just let him have this one. Reality is that Karl wooed the fans and the owner group in a very embarrassing public job hunt that left Corbin impotent and eventually cast off like last week's trash.

Might have been prudent to ask PDA why he signed Corbin for the rest of the season if he truly wanted Karl all along. Cause that never added up. But when you're on such a lovely lunch date, it's easy to let things slide.

Lying is just second nature to PDA.. Throughout that article she describes how comfortable he was. He thinks he can talk his way out of anything.

I'm not entirely sure Vivek isn't of the same ilk.

And for PDA, it usually worked. But not to the fans. The fans caught on at that staged interview that something was seriously amiss. He went up there absolutely confident he could talk his way out of it. People who don't rely on relationships with PDA were a lot quicker to detect the bs than the media.

Aaron Hernandez thought that he was invincible too. So did OJ.

I think many in the media were fooled by him. He has superficial charm that allows him to continue toward his self absorbed goals, whatever they may be.

Denver is also fooled. They rehired him gladly. So, if you (not anyone in particular) were also fooled, you're not alone. He's one of the best I've ever seen. I wanted to believe him. He's sitting there in Denver popping the champagne (maybe with Woj, who probably has this sac story way down on his list of things to care about) over how he's won the media battle yet again, smearing vivek's name nationally while locally PDA is getting absolutely torched here. But he could give a bleep what the local media thinks. He used them up and moved on. Local media is scrambling to refute Woj. But no one outside sac is reading it.

The narrative nationally of Vivek as a crazy man was set long ago. Anything that continues that narrative goes to print without a second thought. Woj likely knows it's utter bunk that Vivek forced the firing. But would you give up PDA as a source? He's probably got a few more 4 on 5 cherry picking Vivek stories to sell. Can't give that up.

Attempting to take credit for the Karl signing was just to keep his job, and get a little glory for himself to tack onto his resume. Although now we have multiple people saying he was actually against signing Karl.

I'm now expecting reports that he wanted Payton too. Why not? He's publically contradicted himself so many times already.
 
there is trouble in river city. And no Grant things aren't all fine now. No FA will sign here unless they are seriously over paid. Then when we do overpay Vlade will get trashed in the Media and Vivek will continue to hire pieces that don't fit and on and on....
 
We've always had to overpay for quality free agents. As for trouble, I don't see it that way. I see it as a lesson learned the hard way, but a lesson learned nonetheless. Vivek/Vlade cleaned house. And while it should have been faster, it was still done.
Now it's time to turn the page and let Vlade take the reigns.
 
jdbraver said:
there is trouble in river city. And no Grant things aren't all fine now. No FA will sign here unless they are seriously over paid. Then when we do overpay Vlade will get trashed in the Media and Vivek will continue to hire pieces that don't fit and on and on....
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Man, this makes Chicken Little look like Mr. Rogers.
 
jdbraver said:
there is trouble in river city. And no Grant things aren't all fine now. No FA will sign here unless they are seriously over paid. Then when we do overpay Vlade will get trashed in the Media and Vivek will continue to hire pieces that don't fit and on and on....
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Instead of making up bad stuff in your dream for the Kings' future, why don't we talk about the here and now and be a little more positive.
 
RichieInRocklin said:
Instead of making up bad stuff in your dream for the Kings' future, why don't we talk about the here and now and be a little more positive.
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You can choose to be more positive, but there's still red flags all over the place. Even the recent Vlade hiring and how it was done reeks of unprofessionalism.

This is the craziest thing about Divac’s arrival: According to league sources, no one but Divac and Ranadive actually understood he’d be in a powerful basketball operations position until a few days after the announcement. It was assumed that because Divac has extremely limited front office experience — one year as a scout for the Lakers — and deep business connections, he’d be a glad-hander instead of a personnel boss.

Even folks in the front office, according to sources, were unclear Divac had personnel power until the big man said as much in the media and Ranadive confirmed. Imagine getting a new boss and not realizing it until a few days after s/he arrives. That’s some serious professional whiplash.

There's not another team in the NBA with this much **** following around their FO and organization. While I think most agree we've taken a step in the right direction, we're still in a puddle of crap. There's high concern with the Karl/Cuz relationship. There's concern within our FO. There's concern about how much damage our reputation will have on the free agent market. There's concern about just how much Vivek has learned and the circumstances around the Vlade hire says he still has more to learn. It was a good hire but not executed professionally. That we didn't fire Mullin/PDA is yet another concern as we appeared to just hope they would leave. That shows an unwillingness to immediately step up and solve an obvious issue. I'm also concerned we do something stupid around the draft in an attempt to make up for this last year's fiasco and shoot ourselves in the foot yet again.

I'm also curious what happened to Corbin who was supposedly kept on as a consultant. Not that we need him but that again reeks of not being professional.

Still, I'd say people are "a little more positive" than they were around Christmas, so there's that.
 
rainmaker said:
You can choose to be more positive, but there's still red flags all over the place. Even the recent Vlade hiring and how it was done reeks of unprofessionalism.

This is the craziest thing about Divac’s arrival: According to league sources, no one but Divac and Ranadive actually understood he’d be in a powerful basketball operations position until a few days after the announcement. It was assumed that because Divac has extremely limited front office experience — one year as a scout for the Lakers — and deep business connections, he’d be a glad-hander instead of a personnel boss.

Even folks in the front office, according to sources, were unclear Divac had personnel power until the big man said as much in the media and Ranadive confirmed. Imagine getting a new boss and not realizing it until a few days after s/he arrives. That’s some serious professional whiplash.

There's not another team in the NBA with this much **** following around their FO and organization. While I think most agree we've taken a step in the right direction, we're still in a puddle of crap. There's high concern with the Karl/Cuz relationship. There's concern within our FO. There's concern about how much damage our reputation will have on the free agent market. There's concern about just how much Vivek has learned and the circumstances around the Vlade hire says he still has more to learn. It was a good hire but not executed professionally. That we didn't fire Mullin/PDA is yet another concern as we appeared to just hope they would leave. That shows an unwillingness to immediately step up and solve an obvious issue. I'm also concerned we do something stupid around the draft in an attempt to make up for this last year's fiasco and shoot ourselves in the foot yet again.

I'm also curious what happened to Corbin who was supposedly kept on as a consultant. Not that we need him but that again reeks of not being professional.

Still, I'd say people are "a little more positive" than they were around Christmas, so there's that.
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Reeks of professionalism? Maybe and maybe not. What are the old fables of Princes and Kings dressing in pauper clothing to find out how the people really felt and acted? In a front office characterized by deceit and in-fighting, how best to get the "real" feel of the landscape but go in a someone without power?
 
Bombshell after bombshell in this article.
George Karl?

That was Ranadive’s move.

Vlade Divac?

That was Ranadive’s move, too, though a year before Divac was hired as vice president of basketball and franchise operations, Ranadive tried to bring the Kings’ icon back as a goodwill ambassador/basketball adviser, only to meet stiff resistance from D’Alessandro and Mullin. There was more. There were suspicions, conspiracy theories, closed-door sessions, the persistent belief that D’Alessandro and Mullin were plotting a summer of 2015 palace coup with Mullin taking over as coach and D’Alessandro rewarded with a long-term deal.
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It'd be nice if we fans were actually afforded the TRUTH about what went on.
The worst thing about the franchise is that everything is spin, CYA, and self-aggrandizement- noone stands behind decisions and says as they're happening who is to blame/credit, and why.
And that's allowed to happen because noone apparently has any vision, or solid plan, going forward. The front office has been consistently contradicting itself in plan/approach for 2 years now.
Remember, 2 summers ago, when every other decision they were making was contradictory? Everyone here was getting whiplash about what their actual plan for the team was.

And now, Ranadive says he wanted to bring in Vlade as an advisor... but he let PDA/Mullin stop him? How? He's the freaking owner! If PDA was disallowing the owner from getting other opinions and voices, then Vivek is trying to make us believe he was basically a hostage to PDA and Mullin, unable to rectify the bad decision s that brought them into the organization!
Does he truly realize how bad that makes him (and the organization) look?

And just to make things worse, PDA and Mullin were creeping around the team office, with hushes, whispers, and closed-doors, actively planning a "palace coup"?

Who the hell is in charge of this freakshow?!?
 
IfAt1st said:
It'd be nice if we fans were actually afforded the TRUTH about what went on.
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you-cant-handle-the-truth.jpg


But seriously, we aren't ever going to know what was really going on. Obviously things were not hunky-dory in house and obviously everybody thinks that they were the party wronged most. The story you read is going to be the story as seen by whoever's camp is talking. So you get what have here, which is a completely inconsistent narrative. We've got various claims of responsibility for decisions - X was Vivek's decision; X was PDA's decision - sometimes even coming from the same journalist. We've got dueling stories, one painting PDA as the aggrieved party, one painting him as a comic-book-film supervillain whose only goal was to be evil enough to screw things up as much as possible, and the three things I'm sure of are that neither of them is true, that we'll never have a full understanding of what we hear is and isn't true, and that most people are going believe or reject narratives based on their biases going in.

And just to make things worse, PDA and Mullin were creeping around the team office, with hushes, whispers, and closed-doors, actively planning a "palace coup"?
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Note that Voisin said that sources said they were having closed door meetings and whispering AS IF they were planning a backdoor coup. On the other hand, consider the situation. Firing Malone blew up in their faces, and both of them had pretty much fallen out of Vivek's good graces and were clearly on their way out (as borne out by the events of the last month or so). Is their whispering a Machiavellian conspiracy to take over - which they can't do because they're not the owners - or is it "holy crap, we're screwed, what do we do?"

Anyway, we really have two choices here. We can either rehash this over and over in order to really make sure that we (probably wrongly) pin ALL of the blame on whichever party it is that we don't like, or we can let it go.

My advice is to let it go. PDA and Mullin are out. It's over. Do we want to wallow in our misery and dwell on the negative past? Or do we want to focus on the future and the hope this franchise has? Pretty much everybody likes Vlade (whether they have confidence in his ability to run basketball operations or not) and believes that he can get what remains of the front office working on the same page. We have a coach who is pretty much assured to end up in the hall of fame. We have a player who is arguably the best big man in the game today and we have the opportunity to surround him with a playoff quality team next year through either using or trading some pretty decent assets (Gay, Ben, Nik, #6...). And as I've pointed out, by getting rid of PDA/Mullin, the war in the front office would appear to be over.

And if you don't want to take my advice, there's always high blood pressure medication.
 
Capt. Factorial said:
Anyway, we really have two choices here. We can either rehash this over and over in order to really make sure that we (probably wrongly) pin ALL of the blame on whichever party it is that we don't like, or we can let it go.

My advice is to let it go. PDA and Mullin are out. It's over. Do we want to wallow in our misery and dwell on the negative past? Or do we want to focus on the future and the hope this franchise has?
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While I am perfectly happy looking forward, I also don't want to see the past whitewashed. I keep seeing tweets (Jillian Adge, for one, is all over his jock) about:

"It was all inexperience."
"Who cares who fired who anymore? Can we just move on please? It's a new season."
"It was doomed to fail from the start when a coach was hired before the GM"

and other BS - just looking to paint PDA in a good light instead of acknowledging the reality of the situation. And I, as a Kings fan, refuse to just ignore all the harm (and potential lingering harm if Boogie bails, etc.) done. If someone wants to stick their head in the sand and ignore it, fine. But I fully intend to make sure that the disfunction PDA and Mullin wreaked in the FO isn't just forgotten and washed from memory because they were (nicely) shown the door.

A good coach was fired, a season flushed down the toilet, and our best player in a decade may be about to wash his hands of our franchise because of the backstabbing twerp who thinks by holding an hour interview on a radio show and insult the intelligence of the fans he can move on from what happened with no lingering smell on his teflon ass.
 
Warhawk said:
A good coach was fired, a season flushed down the toilet, and our best player in a decade may be about to wash his hands of our franchise because of the backstabbing twerp who thinks by holding an hour interview on a radio show and insult the intelligence of the fans he can move on from what happened with no lingering smell on his teflon ass.
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Some articles paint PDA as a victim of the Kings affliction. Some paint Vivek as someone who was swindled into being the crappiest owner in two years of all professional sports in the US. Reality may lie somewhere in the middle.

That's why I'm not ready to just go ahead and say smooth sailing from here; VR is still here. The irritant is still here, and he's still pushing for things that are about reaching India with his 3.0, instead of just trying to win.
 
rhythmless said:
Some articles paint PDA as a victim of the Kings affliction. Some paint Vivek as someone who was swindled into being the crappiest owner in two years of all professional sports in the US. Reality may lie somewhere in the middle.

That's why I'm not ready to just go ahead and say smooth sailing from here; VR is still here. The irritant is still here, and he's still pushing for things that are about reaching India with his 3.0, instead of just trying to win.
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Well, by all accounts PDA and Mullin both pushed for Malone to be canned. They flew out to Vegas to convince Vivek to do it. I don't see Vivek doing that on his own with Vivek being the one who hired Malone and at the beginning of the second season they are winning. It sure wasn't the players who pushed for Malone's exit.

The whole coaching thing really sank this season. Should have done it before or after last year - no reason to do it mid-season.

PDA also appears to have been the source for a lot of leaks to the media, throwing the star player under the bus for the Karl hiring, etc.

I'm not concerned about the India stuff, most of that is just fluff on the side. If the owner wants to have a specific player be the 14th guy on the roster and let him play 5 minutes at the end of a game in a losing season for marketing or national pride reasons, no big deal to me.

I don't think Vivek is blameless at all in all this, but I think it was more of a rookie owner being way too hands-on the first year or two and not hiring vets to do the job. Everyone was a rookie, but that is a complicating factor, not the root cause. It appears that Vivek is moving in the right direction a bit with being more hands-off about stuff.

While Vlade hasn't had this position before, he has some good qualities and experience that will lend itself to being successful.
  • Obviously, being Vlade, he is familiar to us and we believe him when he says he wants to help the Kings. He is a unifier, someone who gets people to work together in a team-oriented way. We know this and see it in him, both as a player and a person.
  • Vlade was the president of his former club KK Partizan for four years.
  • He was a scout for the Lakers.
  • He was the president of the Serbian Olympic Committee for two terms.
  • He has established/founded at least two charitible organizations for the Serbian people, with over $3,000,000 raised for one foundation alone.
While none of the above is the same as being in the role he has now, I would argue some are similar and the accumulation of his qualities/experience is promising for his success.

We have a non-rookie HOF coach. Not necessarily the best or perfect one for this team, but a long time head coach who has chops. Hopefully it works in our favor a bit.

So, I see improvement on that side. Vivek backing off a bit and more experience taking over.
 
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