One of the strangest aspects of the Kings‘ hiring of Vlade Divac as the team’s president of basketball and franchise operations is that no one but Divac and team owner Vivek Ranadive actually understood he’d be in a powerful basketball operations position until a few days after the announcement, Tom Ziller of SBNation writes. It was assumed that because Divac had extremely limited prior front office experience, he would be more of a figurehead than being actively involved in personnel decisions, Ziller notes. There were even members of Sacramento’s front office who didn’t realize that Divac had the power to make personnel moves until Divac and Randive relayed that information to the media, the SBNation scribe adds.
Here’s more out of the Western Conference:
- The Grizzlies have workouts scheduled on Sunday for Rondae Hollis-Jefferson (Arizona), Cady Lalanne (Massachusetts), Denzel Livingston (Incarnate Word), Norman Powell (UCLA), J.P. Tokoto (North Carolina), and Maurice Walker (Minnesota), the team announced via a press release.
- The Nuggets are expected to work out Murray State point guard Cameron Payne, who is rocketing up draft boards, this Monday, Christopher Dempsey of The Denver Post tweets.
- Robert Pack has signed on to be an assistant on the staff of new Pelicans coach Alvin Gentry, Marc J. Spears of Yahoo! Sports reports (Twitter link).
- Working out for the Suns today were Bryce Dejean-Jones (Iowa State), Mouhammadou Jaiteh (France), Derrick Marks (Boise State), Michael Qualls (Arkansas), Chasson Randle (Stanford), and TaShawn Thomas (Oklahoma), Paul Coro of The Arizona Republic notes (Twitter links). Qualls suffered an undisclosed injury during the workout, Coro relays, and was replaced by Polish guard Mateusz Ponitka.
- The Kings have added John Welch and Chad Iske as assistants on George Karl‘s coaching staff, Spears reports (on Twitter). Both men were previously with Karl when he coached in Denver, Spears adds.