Kings fans are well aware of what general manager and vice president of basketball action Vlade Divac said in February 2017. Just days after the trade of All-Star center DeMarcus Cousins, Divac promised that he had a plan. And if his plan did not work, he would take responsibility.
“I believe we will be in a better position in two years,” Divac said Sacramento Bee columnist Ailene Voisin. “I want to hear from the same people again in two years’ time. If I’m right, great. If I’m wrong, I quit. But when I go down, I go down. ”
Although it’s been three and a half years, not two, Divac essentially keeps his word. The Kings general manager, who first joined the team in March 2015 and earned the GM role in August, stepped down Friday. Special Adviser Joe Dumars will take over on an interim basis.
This movement was not expected. In April 2019, the team appeared married to Divac for the long term. That month, franchise head coach Dave Joerger, hired Luke Walton, was fired, and Divac received a four-year extension. Walton’s deal was also for four years, agreeing with GM and head coach to contractual timelines in a move to create a new, cohesive era of Kings basketball. Interestingly, Walton will not follow Divac through the door. The Athleticis Sam Amick report that the job of the head coach is safe. Although NBC Sports’ reported James Ham the next GM could change that.
Divac was an off-the-wall hire back in 2015. Owner Vivek Ranadivé brought the former Kings legend back to Sacramento as vice president of the basketball action team, in what looked like a move to connect the current board with the glory years of the franchise (Around the same time, Peja Stojakovic also earned a front office role). Speculation grew that Divac replaced then-GM Pete D’Alessandro, something that was only confirmed when D’Alessandro left the team in June 2015, just weeks before that year’s NBA draft. Divac was officially promoted to the GM role just a few months later.
Out of that chaos came an administration that appeared unpolished. In June 2018, Divac said the Kings “were a super team, just young.” Also in 2018, the Kings’ Twitter account posted a photo of Divac showing the team’s concept board in the background. In December of that year, Divac admitted that he “did not know” how the payroll worked when he arrived at the Kings’ front office.
Carefully, the results were mixed – at best. His first major move as GM, a 2015 salary cap dump that cost the Kings Nik Stauskas and a future for first round, is one of the most chaotically aggressive moves in recent NBA history. The team used that money they saved from trading on an uninspiring core of Rajon Rondo, Kosta Koufos, and Marco Belinelli, and Sacramento improved its profits overall by a whopping four victories. Divac drafted Georgios Papagiannis, an obscure foreign player who was purely unusual for the selection, with the 13th pick in the 2016 draft. He played 38 games with the franchise over a season and a half, and was out of the NBA shortly thereafter. Divac handed over major contracts to players such as George Hill, Zach Randolph, Dewayne Dedmon, and Harrison Barnes. And he fired Joerger after the coach set a 2018-39 record in 2018-19, the best season the team has had since 2005-06.
All of this has certainly contributed to Divac’s welcome to the franchise. But his real legacy as Sacramento’s GM will, of course, be the selection of Marvin Bagley III in the 2018 draft. Kings fans were desperate for Luka Doncic, and concept experts had hailed Doncic as a surefire star. It remains unclear that three teams will pass him, but at least the Suns and Hawks have solid young cornerstones in Deandre Ayton and Trae Young, respectively. Bagley has played just 75 games with the team in two seasons, and has not been very effective when he has been on the floor. Doncic is an All-Star who will soon be competing for MVP trophies, if not Final trophies. The kings could have the bright future the Mavericks have now, but they are over. It’s Sam Bowie’s current selection, a decision so disastrous that it will haunt the franchise for decades. Divac is fond of Sacramento from his playing days, but there was no escaping an error.
Divac deserves some credit over its term. Technically the team is better now than it was when Divac Cousins traded. When the Kings made that deal, the team was 24-33, a winning percentage of .421. They ended the 2019-20 season with a winning percentage of .431. If you care, it almost seems like progress. Trading Cousins immediately worked for the franchise, as Buddy Hield – the main player who got the team in return – developed into a solid player in Sacramento (although it looks less likely that Hield in the long run with the franchise wants to keep). In 2017, Divac signed De’Aaron Fox, who is easily the best player the Kings have had since Cousins - and has the potential to be even better. Divac also brought Bogdan Bogdanovic into the city in a sham 2016 deal with the Suns.
But the blunders have lifted the brief moment of competence. Divac promised he would do things his way, and if they did not work, he would go down. The timeline was not exactly good, but in the end that is what happened.
