SACRAMENTO – Beyond sitting in his courtside seats for every home game at Golden 1 Center, Kings owner Vivek Ranadivé has preferred to mostly stay out of the spotlight since he purchased the team from the Maloof brothers in 2013.
That is almost certain to change in the coming months.
With his organization facing a litany of critical decisions, Ranadivé holds all the cards and will have to step up front and lead the way in whichever direction he sees fit for the Kings.
First and foremost, Ranadivé had to figure out whether to keep general manager Monte McNair around — and the decision came immediately after Sacramento’s 120-106 NBA play-in loss to the Dallas Mavericks on Wednesday night, when the Kings and McNair mutually agreed to part ways, The Athletic’s Sam Amick reported, citing league sources.
The 2022-23 NBA Executive of the Year, McNair publicly accepted responsibility for firing coach Mike Brown early in the 2024-25 season and watched as the Kings responded with spirited play, only to see them wilt during the homestretch of the regular season before they melted under the pressure of the Mavericks in the No. 9 vs. No. 10 seed play-in game at G1C.
The Kings have yet to release an official statement on McNair’s reported departure.
Ranadivé also has to decide whether he plans to keep Doug Christie around and remove the interim from his title. The Kings responded very positively to the coaching change, and Christie has had a great relationship with Sacramento’s players.
Yet as good as things felt shortly after Christie inherited the reins from Brown, they turned equally sour toward the end of the season when it counted most.
There’s also the situation with Domantas Sabonis, the Kings’ three-time NBA All-Star center who is set to earn $95 million in base salary over the next two seasons.
Will Ranadivé stick with Sabonis and try to build up the pieces around him, or will the Kings owner try to swing a trade to send Sabonis and possibly another player to a team in exchange for a number of draft picks that will be vital to Sacramento moving forward?
Two years ago, the thought of a rebuild in the state capital seemed absurd.
The Kings had ended the longest playoff drought in NBA history at 16 years, had the unanimous Coach of the Year with Brown and a nucleus of players that seemed on the verge of taking Sacramento to the next level.
Firing Brown after only 31 games provided a little jolt of energy and enthusiasm that have long since dissipated.
Now it’s on Ranadivé to get the ship back on track.
He avoided speaking with the media following Brown’s firing, but the situation with his team is a lot more dire now than it was then.
And now that McNair reportedly has been let go, Ranadivé won’t have a buffer between himself and the media anymore — and he’ll have to answer the questions that undoubtedly will surface this offseason.
Hearing the boos rain down on the crowd at G1C on Tuesday, there almost certainly will be a lot of questions, too.
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