Sacramento Kings majority owner Vivek Ranadive gave a couple of interesting comments to USA Today’s Sam Amick in a Q&A Sunday:
“So what happened (in the 2014 draft in which ESPN cameras were allowed into the draft room), and again – these guys didn’t want me to talk about this. I’d had another player who had tried out for us that I had liked, and that I had thought was great. And by the way, I’ll tell you, it was (Orlando Magic point guard) Elfrid Payton. But everybody else wanted another player – (Nik) Stauskas (now of the Philadelphia 76ers). And so they told me to say (Stauskas), and obviously I’m not going to say that I wanted Payton but they picked Stauskas. I made a big deal of all-for-one and one-for-all, so ‘Whatever you guys decide, I’m going to say yeah to Stauskas.’ That got put on camera, but what was I going to say, that ‘Hey, I don’t agree with their choice?’ Even now, with Vlade, I have a private joke with him, that if his choices don’t work out with him in a couple of years, that he’ll be shaving his head.
While neither Payton nor Stauskas has really turned any heads with their play so far, it is inarguable who has had the better career. Payton is the starting point guard for the Magic, while Stauskas is struggling to retain a roster spot on one of the league’s worst teams. Hindsight is 20/20 for Ranadive. Ranadive also told Amick that former GM Pete D’Alessandro and former coach Michael Malone were not fans of one another:
“Yeah, and this is what was absurd. I’d never actually spoken to the coach (Michael Malone, who is now head coach of the Denver Nuggets). I’ve spent more time with this coach than I did with the previous coaches combined … I still have the highest regard for him, but you’re put in a difficult situation. I mean from Day One, the GM (Pete D’Alessandro, who now works with Malone in Denver as the Senior Vice President of Business and Team Operations) and him didn’t get along. They hated each other’s guts. They didn’t even want to share an assistant. Then later on, I found out that the GM had fired a guy who was part of the coaching staff and had sued us. (As Ranadive confirmed, he was referring to Shareef Abdur-Rahim, the former Kings assistant coach turned assistant general manager who left the organization in the 2014 offseason. According to multiple people with knowledge of the situation, the Kings – under threat of a civil lawsuit for “hostile work environment” – paid the final two and a half years of Abdur-Rahim’s deal.
