Magic headed for doom after promoting former Kings “worst GM in history”
This Wednesday, the Orlando Magic made a terrible mistake that only Sacramento Kings fans can see coming. The Magic promoted former Kings GM Pete D’Alessandro to executive vice president of basketball, according to ESPN. Since 2017, D’Alessandro served as the assistant GM for the Magic.
Fans know Pete D’Alessandro as a harrowing name from a dark time in Kings’ history. D’Alessandro served as GM for Sacramento from 2013-15, making some infamously poor decisions during that time.
The D’Alessandro era in Sacramento was so poorly run that Pete literally was asking fans their ideas on how to run the team in a Reddit thread. Being called the “worst GM in NBA history” by many fans, we have just one message to fans of the Orlando Magic: we understand your pain. We are sorry.
Here are a couple of things Magic fans can get not-so-excited about.
The firing of a world-class head coach
Infamously, D’Alessandro decided to fire then-head coach Mike Malone in December 2014, the first half of the season. Malone, who is now an NBA champion with the Denver Nuggets, led the Kings to a great start of the season with a record of 9-5, playing ahead of expectations set by previous years. Unfortunately, a freak illness of viral meningitis then caused superstar Demarcus Cousins to miss nine games leading up to Malone’s firing.
The loss of Cousins obviously stunted that part of a season where everything seemed to be going right, so the decision to fire Malone was inexcusable.
Malone told this to USA Today in 2016 about his firing:
"“It never needed to happen. We were headed in the right direction, and you always wonder, ‘What if?’”"
You do have to wonder – what if? Malone, who has led the Denver Nuggets to domination in the west over the past few years, could easily have pulled the Kings out of their playoff drought early.
D’Alessandro passed up fantastic prospects in the draft
Continuing on the trend of poor decisions from D’Alessandro, the 2014 draft is a night to forget for Kings fans. After passing up on names like Zach LaVine, Jusuf Nurkic, Clint Capela, Bogdan Bogdanovic, and now-superstar Nikola Jokic (to be fair to Pete, everyone passed up on Jokic), D’Alessandro selected Nik Stauskas.
Nik Stauskas was a good shooter at the time, but just not what Sacramento needed, and fans had a poor reaction to his pick.
Stauskas was never notable for the Kings, averaging only 4.4 points per game in his only season with the Kings before being traded to the Philadelphia 76ers the following summer. Stauskas has since played overseas and returned to the NBA, but is rarely making appearances.
Orlando Magic are headed for doom
The Orlando Magic, while historically had some NBA legends, are not a great team right now. They have missed the playoffs for the past three years, and have not won a series since 2010 (which, ironically, is still more than the Kings in that time).
There just doesn’t seem to be much direction in the Orlando front office, and with his final act as assistant GM to waive fan-favorite Bol Bol, you have to feel sorry for Magic fans for the next few years. Hopefully D’Alessandro has learned from his past and can improve the Magic, for their own sake.
