Geoff Petrie, who ran the Kings’ front office for two decades, is blasting Sacramento owner Vivek Ranadive for a “sophomoric attempt at revisionist history,” writes Kevin Draper of Deadspin. Ranadive conducted a two-part interview with USA Today in which he deflected blame for many of the franchise’s poor decisions. Petrie responded with an email to Draper calling Ranadive’s statements “an ugly lie” and taking issue with “representations regarding [former head coach] Keith Smart, myself, and our professional staff.”
Petrie and Smart were fired shortly after Ranadive’s group purchased the Kings from the Maloof family in 2013. Here are a few excerpts of Petrie’s interview with Deadspin:
On how he handled the transition after the sale took place:
“Leading up to the actual sale of the team, it was obvious the team was going to be sold. What became of the bidding match between the [Steve] Ballmer group and ultimately Vivek’s group, through the league office, people were concerned about their jobs, what their future was going to be, what it would hold for them. And really, we had a group of people there that had been there, and we had worked together for a long time and were part of the best heritage that the Kings have ever had in Sacramento. I brought everybody together at different occasions and said, “Look, we’re going to be professional here, we’re going to continue to work like we’d work any other year, we’ll prepare for the draft like we would every other year, and ultimately we will assist any new people that may come in here and try and make them comfortable and get them situated. And that’s what we did.”
On Ranadive’s statement implying that nobody from the previous regime wanted to stay and work for him:
“The way it came across in the article is like [Ranadivé] came in there and there was nobody there, nobody wanted to be there. Keith Smart wanted to be there! He had a year left on his contract. He didn’t get a discussion or an interview, he got a 90-second phone call in his car that they weren’t going to keep him. How do you arrive at a statement that he didn’t want to be there?”
On his first impression of Ranadive:
“I only had about an 8- or 10-minute little meeting with him. I found him to be a very arrogant and dismissive little chap. He doesn’t seem to understand that he owns it. He was the one that came in with Basketball 3.0, and changing the culture, ‘I have the smartest guys in the room, they’re four steps ahead of everybody else, I have 80 gigs of data, nobody else has that.’ Well, okay, you know?”
On the start of the Kings’ playoff drought:
“The really good team we had, it ultimately had to be rebuilt because the core of that team wasn’t one that started out in its early 20s, it started out in their mid-to-late 20s, so that period of time once you have a core that you can win with and become very good with, the longevity is not … and of course with [Chris Webber’s] injury that accelerated things. We had to get into serious rebuilding, and unfortunately the last three, three-and-a-half years of that period, were under some really difficult operating circumstances salary cap wise, and we were really limited in certain things. And then our last two drafts were not good, which is on us, although we did get Isaiah Thomas and Hassan Whiteside in there.”
On his desire to return to the NBA:
“Listen, I love the NBA. It’s been a lifetime of basically living your dream, even with the ups and downs over some of the different periods. But the ups were so great. You remember the people you worked with and the fans in both Portland and Sacramento are unbelievably loyal. I would like to see them get back to a higher level and all that. But as far as me, I certainly think I could be a good advisor to somebody. With running a team again, without having a really close relationship with the people you’re working with, pre-existing relationships I guess, probably wouldn’t be of great interest. But I am comfortable with the life I have and grateful for what it was up to this point. Fortunate and grateful.”