Sam Amick

USA TODAY Sports

SACRAMENTO — Vivek Ranadive, resident owner of the Sacramento Kings and NBA lightning rod of the highest order, was surrounded by pleasantries and pageantry.

Their Golden 1 Center was finally open, a $556 million downtown Sacramento gem that he promised would be built three years ago when the team was nearly relocated to Seattle. The franchise value has skyrocketed as a result, from the initial amount of $534 million to a recent Forbes estimate of $925 million. And Ranadive, the former Golden State Warriors minority owner whose vision shaped much of the new arena’s design and who sat down recently with USA TODAY Sports, was being celebrated at every turn.

But promising as the present might be, Ranadive – the 59-year-old who founded the Silicon Valley company, Tibco Software Inc., and sold his shares for $316.4 million in Sept. 2014 – just couldn’t help but bring up the past. And who could blame him? From the time he took the role as lead owner three summers ago to the here and now, few – if any – NBA personalities have been more ridiculed.

The on-court results haven’t been pretty: a 90-156 record in the three seasons, with no playoff berths to speak of and a lack of stability along the way in the front office and coaching ranks. There has been friction between coaches, general managers, players and the like at almost every turn and constant claims of a dysfunctional culture. Last season, as rumblings of an uprising among the team’s many minority owners grew, Ranadive found himself surrounded by the negativity that has – at least for now – subsided.

Because of the length of the interview, this portion covers Ranadive’s early tenure. As he admits, the decision in those early days to hire the coach (former Golden State Warriors assistant coach Michael Malone) before the general manager (eventually Pete D’Alessandro) established a backwards structure that ultimately proved problematic. The problems continued.

Q: So you probably didn’t expect for the first few years to go like this, but you’ve said that there are definitely lessons learned along the way. Are you a different NBA owner now than you were before, and what have been the biggest takeaways in terms of learning the hard way?

A: “You have to keep it a little bit in perspective, Sam, because three years ago (when, according to documents obtained by USA TODAY Sports, he paid $54.5 million to become the lead owner with a 15.08% share; his share has since increased to approximately 17%), it was (Chief Operating Officer) Matina (Kolokotronis) – she gave me the keys to Sleep Train (Arena). I’d never been here before. I walked in, and there was nobody who wanted to be here. There was no coach, no GM, it was a ghost town. (Author's note: in actuality, longtime basketball president Geoff Petrie, vice president Wayne Cooper and their front office staff stayed on through the transition to help with scouting and share intel, with Petrie even taking a three-day trip to Greece to scout Giannis Antetokounmpo leading into the draft; then-coach Keith Smart made it clear he wanted to stay, but was told early on that he would be replaced). Then I went into the arena, and literally the roof was falling down.

“So figuratively, and literally, the roof was falling down on the place. We hadn’t sold a single ticket. We hadn’t sold a single sponsorship. My phone was ringing off the hook with people saying that they didn’t want to be here, so we had absolutely nothing. And by the way, I had also agreed to forego millions of dollars in revenue sharing, so that was a negative as well.”

Q: That was pretty healthy chunk, right? (According to The Sacramento Bee, the latest annual share that the Kings missed out on was approximately $30 million)

A: “It was a big chunk. And we wanted to succeed in keeping the team, and so when (then-commissioner) David (Stern) approached me to do this, we did it. But that was the starting point.

“(And) if you don’t succeed (in having the arena built), you lose the team. So we had multiple balls in the air. And of course it has been a learning process, and it’s different from a Silicon Valley business. In Silicon Valley, first of all the shareholders own the team, and you own the team. Here, it’s the fans and the city and even the media that owns the team. That’s one aspect of it. The second thing is that in Silicon Valley, we actually value and celebrate a diversity in views and opinions, and I have this metaphor of this jazz band that I like to use, and out of that we try to create something great.

“But in the NBA, really the premium is on harmony, on having the front office, the coaching staff, everybody on the same page. Of course I hired a coach before I hired a GM, and that – but again – I had a couple of weeks (to build). The draft started (in June 2013), there was nobody there. So there’s really a premium on speaking with one voice, kind of a one-for-all-all-for-one mindset, which is important. No. 3 is there’s obviously a process. It’s a linear process, and you can’t just be non-linear.”

Kings owner says new arena is 'world's best'

Q: Is it a lot tougher than you thought it would be though?

A: “Look, I came to this country with nothing. I grew up in Bombay, and there were people starving on the streets. And sure, it’s not fun being skewered in the press, especially with things that are not true. But you know what? At the end of the day, it’s a huge privilege and a huge honor to be able to own a team. To be able to take the team to China (for a preseason game), and watch what we’re doing with Chinese kids, kids of migrant workers. Or to go with the Commissioner to India and do a clinic for kids over there. So there was a lot of great (things) that I experienced, and like any journey there’s challenges along the way…When I was with the Warriors, I saw (how) we got booed in the first couple of years, so I’ve been through that. I’ve seen that.

“So I’ve seen it go (from down to up). But look, we’re doing a lot of great things, and we’ve just got to keep that in mind. We’ve created thousands of jobs for people here, and my role is kind of to set the values and set the mission and set the vision. (Kings general manager) Vlade (Divac), and the previous GMs, they make their decisions, and some of them will be great and some of them will be less great, but that’s the nature of the business.”

Q: You’ve mentioned things reported that aren’t true. From your perspective, what hasn’t been true and what haven’t you agreed with when it comes to the way you’re perceived?

A: “Well just that I’m overly involved with the team. I’ve never actually been on the team plane. I’ve never even sat through a practice (Ranadive still lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, but comes to Sacramento several times a week)…I had no involvement between the GM and the coach, or which player got picked or which player got traded. There was this five-on-four story which was completely absurd, which was categorically, patently untrue.”

Q: No involvement? You’re in the draft room, like most owners are, things of that nature…

A: “So what happened (in the 2014 draft in which ESPN cameras were allowed into the draft room), and again – these guys didn’t want me to talk about this. I’d had another player who had tried out for us that I had liked, and that I had thought was great. And by the way, I’ll tell you, it was (Orlando Magic point guard) Elfrid Payton. But everybody else wanted another player – (Nik) Stauskas (now of the Philadelphia 76ers). And so they told me to say (Stauskas), and obviously I’m not going to say that I wanted Payton but they picked Stauskas. I made a big deal of all-for-one and one-for-all, so ‘Whatever you guys decide, I’m going to say yeah to Stauskas.’ That got put on camera, but what was I going to say, that ‘Hey, I don’t agree with their choice?’ Even now, with Vlade, I have a private joke with him, that if his choices don’t work out with him in a couple of years, that he’ll be shaving his head.

“So if you see Vlade with a shaved head in a couple of years, you’ll know what happened. So look, I trust these guys to make the decisions. Obviously as a fan, I may have opinions, but a lot of the stories are just simply categorically untrue.”

Q: On the five-on-four front, I’d spoken to folks who swore there was real substance there. And the idea, obviously, was that owners are coming in the room with a persona that ‘I know it better than you do.’ I think that’s when it started feeding that fire.

A: “Yeah, and this is what was absurd. I’d never actually spoken to the coach (Michael Malone, who is now head coach of the Denver Nuggets). I’ve spent more time with this coach than I did with the previous coaches combined … I still have the highest regard for him, but you’re put in a difficult situation. I mean from Day One, the GM (Pete D’Alessandro, who now works with Malone in Denver as the Senior Vice President of Business and Team Operations) and him didn’t get along. They hated each other’s guts. They didn’t even want to share an assistant. Then later on, I found out that the GM had fired a guy who was part of the coaching staff and had sued us. (As Ranadive confirmed, he was referring to Shareef Abdur-Rahim, the former Kings assistant coach turned assistant general manager who left the organization in the 2014 offseason. According to multiple people with knowledge of the situation, the Kings – under threat of a civil lawsuit for “hostile work environment” from his representative – paid the rest of Abdur-Rahim’s deal. The people spoke to USA TODAY Sports on the condition of anonymity because of the private nature of the situation).

“And in retrospect, when I was told about (the Abdur-Rahim exit), I was shocked at some of the things that had happened. But there was – they tried to fire (Malone) right from the get-go, and I was peacemaker. In fact, (team president) Chris (Granger) was in the office when I sat everybody down and I said, ‘Guys, this is – we’re all in one boat.’ My exact (message) was, ‘You can’t say there’s a hole in the other person’s side of the boat, because if there’s a hole in the boat we all sink.’…These two guys (Malone and D’Alessandro), they never spoke. They hated each other. They hated each other’s guts. It was like one person would say one thing, and then the other person would say another thing. And they wanted to get rid of him very early on, and I was the one who said ‘No, no, let’s make it work. Let’s make it work.’”

Stern Q&A: Saving the Kings and post-retirement

Q: You’ve acknowledged the mistake of hiring the coach before the GM, but then the ripple effect kept going from there.

A: “Look, you’ve got to hire the GM and then the coach. But I also went to some – and I don’t want to name them – but I went to some very smart people for advice, and they said, ‘Hey, Malone is great. We like Malone.’ Sam, that practice facility was empty. I had the draft was going to start, and players were going to come in for tryouts. There was nobody there. I needed somebody to go and actually work out the players. Nobody wanted to there. (incumbent general manager) Geoff (Petrie) didn’t want to be there. The coach (Keith Smart) didn’t want to be there. There was nobody there.

“And so the draft was two weeks away, and I knew Malone (from his Warriors days) and had a lot of respect for him, so yes I made a mistake and I hired the coach before the GM. But I didn’t know a GM. I didn’t know who else I could bring in. And so everything came really fast. There was no time. The decision got extended, and then it was kind of the 11th hour, so there was very little time, and there weren't that many people. The one thing you discover when you buy a team is that all kinds of people get your number. I don't know how they get it. And your phone rings off the hook. And they all have an agenda, they have an angle, and I think the other mistake was that Joe (Lacob) had always told me that you need to be very closed in terms of information, and the word he used was 'toxic' - that leaks are toxic.

“And I came from a Silicon Valley culture of openness, and sharing information, not even dreaming that that information would be used in ways, and it would leak and it would get sabotaged and all these things would happen. So yeah, I learned a lot about it, and now I feel like we have a guy who's a legend in Sacramento (in Divac), who is highly respected, revered, loved. He has surrounded himself with great people, and he has brought people from the outside. We have a coach (former Memphis Grizzlies coach Dave Joerger) who is energetic and young and very - I think he's a great coach. That was Vlade's pick. He went through the process, he interviewed like 10 or 15 coaches, and he made his decision, and he told me that that was his decision and if I would come and meet with him, and I said 'Sure.'

“So I'm very happy with where we are today. Obviously there have been different parts of the journey that have been less fun, but look, I'll never forget that at the end of the day it's a huge privilege to be able to own the team, and I'm humbled by that.”