Exclusive: Vlade Divac talks about losing his Kings GM job — and the mistakes made
In the end, Vlade Divac owned it all.
In a Saturday morning phone call with me, less than 24 hours after stepping down as general manager of the Kings, Divac owned every decision he made that ultimately led to his downfall.
He owned drafting the oft-injured Marvin Bagley III instead of Luka Doncic, the Slovenian sensation who went to the Dallas Mavericks and is already one of the NBA’s top names.
He owned choosing not to pick up the option of the popular Harry Giles III.
He owned hiring Luke Walton to coach the Kings instead of Monty Williams, who went to Phoenix and took a struggling Suns franchise to within one missed basket of the NBA playoffs.
He owned every draft pick, every trade, every move in five years of running the Kings basketball operations.
Vlade Divac has always been a stand-up guy and getting removed from his dream job has not changed that.
“It’s the nature of the job,” Divac said. “I get it.”
The call from Ranadivé
The NBA is a results business and the results weren’t there for the Kings. Divac is the first to admit that. The Kings didn’t post a winning season under Divac and haven’t in 14 seasons – the longest stretch of futility in the NBA.
Divac’s phone rang on Friday and Kings primary owner Vivek Ranadivé told Divac that he was passing the management authority to former Detroit Pistons GM Joe Dumars. Divac knew his time was up.
“It’s a part of life. You have to make tough decisions,” he said.
“I didn’t expect it but then I wasn’t surprised either. We didn’t accomplish what we expected this season. That’s the bottom line...That’s my responsibility.”
Divac said his immediate plan is to stay in Sacramento. He said he will always support the Kings.
“I like this place,” he said. “Down the road who knows? But for some time I’m gonna be here.”
He thinks and hopes he will always have a relationship with the franchise for the rest of his life. But for now Divac is the latest basketball operations casualty in the seven seasons that Ranadivé has run the team.
Off the court, the Kings are in a much better position than they were before the current ownership took over the team. The Kings play in a beautiful facility in Golden 1 Center. Collectively, the ownership group has financial might. Ranadivé is thought to own less than 20 percent of the team, but as managing general partner, he has broad authority to run the team as he sees fit.
Whether Ranadivé will own up to his failures is a question for another day, but Ranadivé’s fitness calling the shots is a pressing question that continues to hang over the Kings like a specter.
Ranadivé’s reputation is of someone who meddles, micromanages, second guesses and believes too strongly in himself when it comes to topics beyond his expertise, such as running the basketball operations of an NBA franchise.
Kings losses mount
The list of organizational pratfalls under his watch is not pretty and the bottom line is, Ranadivé has not been any more successful in his first seven years of running the Kings than the Maloof brothers were in their final seven years of owning the Kings.
A reckoning for Ranadivé is coming, no question. If the Kings put up another losing season, they will tie the Los Angeles Clippers for the NBA worst of all time with 15 straight. And if the Kings go onto break that record? Then Vivek Ranadivé owns that one.
I asked Divac whether Ranadivé meddled in his affairs.
“Maybe the first year when I came in, but after that he was very supportive,” Divac said. “He let me do what I wanted to do. He wanted to know what was going on. He shared his thoughts with me about decisions. But it (running the basketball operations) was all mine.”
Controversy 1: Picking Bagley over Doncic
Being an NBA GM means making tough decisions that could go either way and then having those framed as epic lost opportunities.
For Divac, a decision of his that will haunt future years was his call to choose Bagley over Doncic in the 2018 NBA draft.
After years of often getting stuck in the seventh spot or 10th spot of the NBA draft lottery – positions where surefire talent is not as certain as the first three picks – the Kings finally landed a prime position with the second pick.
The conjecture is that Divac, an authority on European basketball talent, disliked something about Doncic, whether it be the player, or the player’s father, or whatever.
But if you talked to Divac, the answer was always the same: He chose Bagley because he thought Bagley would fit with the Kings assets.
Without question, Divac’s biggest draft success was taking point guard De’Aaron Fox in 2017. Fox became the focal point of the Kings offense. He is the primary ball handler and go-to guy when the team needs a basket or when the team needs to feed talented shooters, such as guard Buddy Hield.
Doncic is also the kind of player who controls the ball, finds open players and drains big shots. Instead of duplicating assets, Divac reasoned that Bagley – a big man who could run, protect the basket and create physical problems for opponents under the basket – would be the perfect complement to Fox.
The pick also embodied the kind of person that Divac is: A Serbian man from a war-torn country who has spent his adult life looking for peace and positive human connections. He picked Bagley because he liked Bagley and he loves Fox. He envisioned them being an unstoppable one-two punch for a decade in Kings purple.
We all know what happened: Bagley has been constantly injured and Doncic, at 21, is a nightly highlight reel. He’s become so renowned, that he has joined NBA greats of yore by being known by one name: Luka.
Starting this weekend, the Mavericks are in the NBA playoffs. The Kings are making news for another dismissal.
Was this draft pick a major issue between him and Ranadivé?
“Yeah,” Divac said.
“That was my decision,” he said. “I still believe Marvin has big upside. But I needed more time to prove it. I’m sure Marvin is going to prove everybody wrong. But in this league, you need to produce right now. People don’t have patience but I’m OK with that.”
Controversy 2: The Giles option
Divac has been criticized in some circles for not picking up the option on Giles, the popular big man who has yet to realize the potential that Divac saw in him. By not picking up his option, another team could outbid the Kings for Giles’ services – a move some media critics see as a blunder.
But for Divac, the move was based on his values and his confidence that he could bring Giles back anyway.
Divac said he didn’t pick up Giles’ contract option because Giles showed up to the Kings training camp last year out of shape. Last summer, Giles was tabbed as the only Kings player who didn’t show up regularly to work out and get ready.
This offended Divac, whose dedication to his craft landed him in the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame.
“My message to him was to be a pro,” Divac said. “You have to be a pro. And he responded very well. When we came back (after league-wide the COVID-19 shutdown) he came in shape. I was very pleased. My idea was to keep him around.”
In a sense, the Giles situation was emblematic of the 2019-20 Kings season. Divac’s good intentions ran headlong into unforeseen setbacks. Divac was trying to school Giles, but now can’t finish his project of turning Giles into a pro with tough love.
Bagley was injured in the first game of the season and never really recovered. Fox was injured. Richuan Holmes was injured. Bogdan Bogdonavic was injured. The Kings finally began playing good basketball when the the league was shot down by the coronavirus in mid March.
And when play was to resume, which team had four players test positive for COVID-19? The Kings. Which team had a player unwittingly leave the protective bubble the NBA established in Orlando? The Kings. Holmes was hungry, stepped out the bubble and had to quarantine for 10 days.
The team got off to a poor start. Holmes – such a force for the Kings before his injury – never really got going. Neither did Hield, one of the players who tested positive for COVID-19.
“But those are all excuses and not what I want to emphasize,” Divac said. “I know how the fans feel. I know their frustration.”
After raising hopes with 39 wins last season – the most in more than a decade – the Kings fell to 31 wins this season.
Controversy 3: Walton’s coaching
As Divac said, the fan base is understandably angry. Fans have focused their anger on Walton, Divac’s handpicked coach who was rocked by allegations of sexual harassment one week after he was selected. While Walton’s accuser later dropped her case against him, and a Kings-NBA investigation couldn’t corroborate her claims, the damage was done.
Walton was kept away from the press last summer. The team began 0-5. Fans sometimes booed when his likeness was shown on the big screen at G1C. And just when the team began playing well, it had to stop because of a pandemic.
“Luke will be a great coach,” Divac said. “If they give him a chance, he’ll be just fine.”
That’s a big if. In the NBA, general managers tend to want to hire their own coaches. Walton has three more years on a contract that Divac offered him but now must play for a new GM – either Dumars or someone else.
Hield, the elite shooter Divac signed to a big contract, was angry at the end of the season and showed it. He’’s not starting under Walton and isn’t happy with that. Hield struggled mightily when the NBA returned, after testing positive for COVID-19.
“He didn’t like the role he was in,” Divac said. “I support his feeling. But for Buddy Hield, he has to look in the mirror and see what he does right and what he does wrong. He’s an elite shooter in this league. But he has to provide that (more consistently). He has to do a better job defensively. It’s hard to win in this league.”
It is and it’s very sad that Divac won’t get his chance to win as the Kings GM. All his trades and draft picks are being dissected now and that’s also the nature of the business. On the negative side, Doncic gets mentioned. Other draft busts get mentioned, as do a trade to Philadelphia and drafting busts such as Georgios Papagiannis.
But Divac traded troubled big man DeMarcus Cousins and got Hield in return. Cousins has since been decimated by injuries that would have been a disaster for the Kings. Divac drafted Fox. He identified Holmes as an undervalued asset. Bogdonavic blossomed under him.
He just didn’t win. Now it’s over even though Ranadivé had signed him to a four-year extension.
“I’m thankful for the opportunity of being a GM,” he said.
Does he feel bitter?
“I’m not going to throw anyone under the bus,” he said. “You never know if another opportunity will come up for me but I’m not going to chase it. What’s far more important than having a goal is the way you act on the way to your goal. My satisfaction will come when the Kings start winning.”
This story was originally published August 15, 2020 at 2:04 PM.
