Kings to Holt: No reason for doubt
Maybe Peter Holt feels better after Wednesday night. Then, Richard Jefferson played like the investment he was supposed to be.
Or maybe Holt wonders if he made the right decision last summer. He splurged on a roster that is currently 10-9, and this went against what he once believed in.
But if doubt is going through his mind, someone has a message for him.
This person once splurged, too.
“And I don't regret a thing,” said Gavin Maloof, one of the owners of the Sacramento Kings.
The Spurs can still recover this season, especially if Manu Ginobili ends a few more games as he did against Maloof's Kings. Holt has always been optimistic; he stuck by Gregg Popovich in the early days, and he certainly will now.
Still, the Spurs are currently ninth in the West, and the financial outlook is worse. Holt and his fellow investors will lose millions no matter what follows.
Maloof knows all about this. There was a time when he thought, if he just paid more, the Kings could be the Spurs.
There was also a time when he and his brother, Joe, almost bought the Spurs. The Maloof family had earlier owned the Rockets, and Gavin knew San Antonio well. He attended Trinity.
So, with the late Gen. Robert McDermott as his ally, he and his family bid for the Spurs in 1996. Holt edged him in a close vote by the ownership group.
“I think it was a fear of the unknown,” Maloof said Wednesday. “They didn't know who we were.”
In those days, before the AT&T Center was built, there was reason for fear. Relocation was a real issue.
But the years suggest the Maloofs would have been Holt-like had they owned the Spurs instead. They would later buy the Kings, and they've been patient, involved owners in another small market. They are also still waiting for a new arena in Sacramento.
The Maloofs didn't mind spending money, either. In the summer of 2001, they kept Chris Webber with a $120 million deal, and the team peaked the next season. The Kings won 61 games only to lose a heartbreaking Western Conference finals to the Lakers.
Getting that close, the Maloofs felt they had no choice. They leaped into the luxury-tax world by giving Mike Bibby a 7-year contract worth more than $80 million.
The Spurs were winning their second le then, and with the league's 18th-highest payroll. That's when Holt made his vow to avoid the luxury tax. He said he would not join the “insane.”
What followed confirmed Holt's fear of fiscal risk. Webber suffered a knee injury in 2003, and the Kings were stuck.
Still, those in the Spurs' front office saw what the Kings did then, and they liked the reasoning: When you have a chance to win — when you have a special group — don't you have to spend what it takes?
“That's it,” said Maloof. “You owe it to the fans, but mostly to yourself. Winning is the motivating factor.”
The Kings were never the same after Webber's injury. Their record dropped incrementally year by year, until they were the worst in the league last season. Maloof said the drop was “painful and disheartening,” and here's another message for Holt.
“Maybe we held on to the dream a little too long,” Maloof said. “Maybe should have started rebuilding a little earlier.”
Maybe, on bad nights, Holt thinks about this.
But there's no going back now. Holt has already committed. He's losing millions on a roster that needed a fourth-quarter surge to beat the Kings at home to stay above .500.
Insane?
Maloof says it's the only way to go.
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The saddest words in the English language: what might have been.The Spurs were winning their second le then, and with the league's 18th-highest payroll. That's when Holt made his vow to avoid the luxury tax. He said he would not join the “insane.”
Ouch.But there's no going back now. Holt has already committed. He's losing millions on a roster that needed a fourth-quarter surge to beat the Kings at home to stay above .500.
What might have been indeed..
That sucks for Sacramento's owners too, they seem like real basketball fans..paying so much and getting so close, only for the league to take it from you..
That 2002 Kings team was one of the best teams in recent NBA history...it sucks that they got jobbed..
They had a game 7 on their own home court. They jobbed themselves.
How does that make it right?..
There clearly shouldn't have been a game 7 in the first place..
Informative story. Obviously Holt has done well for himself and the Spurs. Must be nice to be able to afford to LOOSE millions.
The only thing wrong with Sacto was the Spurs had one piece they needed. They had Dog Crispy, the most pussy whipped man in the universe. They needed Bruce Bowen, a monster defender who would have hit most of those 3 pointers that DC clanked.
What a shame for the Kings. They had so much talent at that time.
Heh-heh, I forgot about that dude. Without doubt one of the weirdest persons to ever don an NBA uniform, and IMO an over-rated defender who didn't have even an atom of Bowen's tough clutchness.
Yeah they got robbed, but man they really did choke hard in game 7. It was on their home court and they missed so many free throws it was crazy. I am sure I read that Doug Christie said every time he went to the line in game 7 he was scared to shoot. Maybe the earlier games in the series made them this way in game 7, but they really did play a bad game 7.
Ya they did, I'm just saying..I still remember Peja airballing a baseline 3 in clutch time like it was yesterday..
I used to defend Harvey's articles, but his insistent dialectical approach just seems like auto pilot at this point.
Back in the day, Sacto had some talent (Hedo, Gerald Wallace, Bobby Jackson, Doug Christie). They shipped a lot of it away.
Well, I agree on Hedo, but they lost Wallace to the Bobcats in the expansion draft. Christie was at the end of his career when they traded him, and Bobby was traded after the Webber-trade that effectively meant the end of the Kings' days as a contender.
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