The owner of the Sacramento Kings is drawing flack for his bizarre technique to motivate his team ahead of the upcoming NBA season.
According to The Ringer’s Zach Lowe, Kings governor Vivek Ranadivé decided to celebrate the start of the season with a get together – which quickly took on a bizarre tone.
‘They went out to a fancy training [camp] dinner, team, the whole team, the staff, everything,’ Lowe said.
‘And at the dinner, Vivek Ranadivé spoke, and he kind of turned the dinner into a roast of lots of people in the room, telling them all the ways in which they have been failing as players, coaches, executives, whatever.’
Lowe added, ‘Some people were alarmed and were like, “This is not going over the way you intended.” Some people thought, “I get what he’s doing, he’s using the fact that we’ve become a media punch line to motivate us.”
‘He was not saying, “I, Vivek Ranadivé, believe these things about you, but here’s what people say about you, prove us wrong.”‘
Kings owner Vivek Ranadivé awkwardly roasted his players and staff at a team dinner
The Kings finished with one of the NBA’s worst records last season and are in need of a rebuild
The team chose Arkansas guard Darius Acuff Jr with the seventh overall pick in the draft
To say the Kings have been unsuccessful since Ranadivé purchased the team in 2013 would be an understatement.
Sacramento has put up a record of 436-610 in the seasons since he bought the Kings and have only made the playoffs just once.
In that playoff series, in 2023, the Kings lost in the first round at the hands of the Golden State Warriors.
The following season, the team just missed the playoffs and then continued to slide to the point of last season’s 22-60 record.
Sacramento then only came seventh in the NBA Draft lottery – taking Arkansas guard Darius Acuff Jr to give their fans new hope ahead of what should be a tough campaign.
