Divac wheels, deals to rebuild 29-win Kings team

Before Thursday, the only time I had spoken with Vlade Divac was years ago.

It was Vlade, local radio personality Seat Williams and me sitting in a tiny radio station DJ cubicle. Had it been basketball instead of chatting about basketball, Vlade would have taken most of the shots. He would have been expected to pull down most of the rebounds, too.

He still might have been with the Lakers then. Or maybe it was the Hornets.

On Tuesday night, he'll be with the Sacramento Kings, who are playing the Lakers in a preseason game at 7 p.m. at the MGM Grand Garden. Vlade played six seasons with the Kings at the end of his career. He was a deft passer for a big man, and he made the All-Star team, and now the Kings have named him general manager.

Years ago, I mostly remember interviewing his knees.

The cubicle at the radio station was so tiny we had to sit on little stools. You had to look through his knees and upward to see the familiar whiskers. Vlade sported the beard long before these baseball relief pitchers, only he kept his trimmed.

I remember how friendly he was, his affable demeanor around strangers who could not shoot, pass or rebound.

The gentle giant soon would become emotional, however. Tears would well in his eyes.

When I asked about the civil war, about the troubles back home in the former Yugoslavia — and I witnessed his impassioned reaction — I knew I would never understand it in the way he did. I remember writing that.

So now that they have officially given him the title of general manager, people probably think there's pressure to transform the Kings from NBA sad sacks into winners like they were in 2001-02 — that shining season when Sacramento went 61-21 and lost to the Lakers in seven games in the Western Conference finals.

Vlade Divac was the emotional leader of that team.

Pressure? Pressure was walking Croatian streets as a Serb en route to making amends with Drazen Petrovic's family.

This was after Petrovic was killed in an automobile crash, after he and Drazen had grown apart because of the strife in their homeland — after a fan had run onto the court during the 1990 World Championships clutching a Croatian flag, and Divac had pushed him away. "Once Brothers" is what ESPN called the powerful documentary.

So while drafting Willie Cauley-Stein sixth overall ahead of Emmanuel Mudiay may have caused consternation among a certain segment of Kings fans, I don't believe Vlade is sweating it that much.

Divac, 47, joined the Kings' front office March 3. He didn't officially become general manager until Aug. 31. But he has been wheeling and dealing like a NASCAR driver on fresh rubber since the day he came on board. There have been myriad meetings with assistant GM Mike Bratz, he said.

Of the nine Kings who played in last season's season-ending victory over the Lakers, seven are gone. Last season was turbulent, on and off the court.

"Me and Mike Bratz work together," Vlade said in prefacing our basketball chat. "I'm not big on (executive) titles."

He said he and Bratz felt it necessary to wheel and deal, probably because the Kings won only 29 games last season and lost 53. Former general manager Pete D'Alessandro officially was shown the door in June.

"When I came here in March, we talked about what we needed to do. We go could slow (and rebuild) in steps or, in Vegas terms, we could go all in. We decided to go all in," Divac said.

So Vlade and Mike Bratz kept the transaction wire buzzing.

A major move was trading Jason Thompson, Carl Landry, Nik Stauskas and draft picks to the 76ers, which freed up salary cap room, which enabled the Kings to dip a large toe in the free-agent waters. They signed Rajon Rondo, Marco Belinelli and Kosta Koufos. Bloggers were calling that the biggest Kings' free-agent haul since they signed Divac to a multi-year deal in 1998.

Will the Kings be significantly better than last season? Not according to local sports books, which have put them down for 30.5 victories on the over-under line.

When asked if he could have envisioned becoming an NBA general manager when he was shooting baskets in the snow as a youngster, Divac had an emphatic five-word response.

"No, no, no, no, no," he said, because during his day, few Europeans were playing in the NBA, much less wheeling and dealing in the front office. "It was such a big jump just being part of the NBA as a player," he said.

He also said I should have been there when the Kings were 61-21, when the Maloof brothers of Las Vegas would walk into a playoff game with fabulous babes on their arms — when you could "feel the energy" between the owners and the front office and the players and the fans.

He said the new owners are all in, too, or the Kings wouldn't finally be getting their new $507 million downtown arena. And so Vlade Divac, once the heart and soul of the Kings as a player, probably will continue to wheel and deal as a front-office executive within constraints of the salary cap. He said it would be great to feel the energy again.

— Las Vegas Review-Journal sports columnist Ron Kantowski can be reached at rkantowski@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0352. Follow him: @ronkantowski