Sacramento Kings owner Vivek Ranadive and GM Pete D’Alessandro own up to mistakes

George Karl’s introductory press conference yesterday was interesting on so many levels. Karl had a lot of smart, important, and encouraging things to say, but I thought the words spoken by Sacramento Kings owner Vivek Ranadive and General Manager Pete D’Alessandro were even more revealing.

A simple apology, or admission of a made mistake can defuse nearly any point of contention.

I don’t know that Ranadive or D’Alessandro apologized for how the Kings have been operating over the past few months, and I don’t even know if they had to, but admitting that mistakes were made? That’s good enough for me. We’ve all been there.

D’Alessandro started this trend in the George Karl press conference. He took accountability for everything. Hiring George Karl was his decision. The impossible position Ty Corbin was put in post-Michael Malone firing was his fault. We can agree or disagree with some of D’Alessandro’s roster or personnel decisions, but I really respect his level of accountability here. It’s sort of ‘no duh, of course you made a mistake’ scenario, but even still, a lot of people in his position would have given us some sort of PR speak rigmarole. D’Alessandro didn’t do that. It’s a good step moving forward.

You can watch the full George Karl introductory press conference below.

Later in the day, CBS 13’s Steve Large caught up with Vivek Ranadive, and his comments were just as impressive.

"I made a mistake when I bought the team. I hired the coach before I hired the GM. Circumstances were different; we had a few weeks before the draft, and so on. So that’s what we did. This time around I said, look, I’m not going to interfere, I’m going to let the GM decide whether it’s Ty or it’s George or whoever it is. –Vivek Ranadive"

Can we move on now?

This doesn’t mean that D’Alessandro or Ranadive are no longer open to criticism. They certainly are, and D’Alessandro is probably on his last legs as the general manager of this team. If George Karl doesn’t work out, D’Alessandro is going down with him.

But it does mean that this case is closed for the time being. Things can still go sour, certainly. If Cousins and Karl can’t coexist for whatever reason, we will have to revisit the Malone firing. Until then, I’m not going there.

Ranadive put it best, “I make new mistakes; I won’t make the same mistake again.”

If the way this went down is Vivek Ranadive and Pete D’Alessandro’s final managerial mistake, than the Sacramento Kings are going to be just fine.

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