Sacramento Kings Name Monte McNair General Manager
Sep 17, 2020, 8:17 AM | Updated: 8:29 am
Monte McNair -- New GM of the Sacramento Kings (Patankar Photography)
(Patankar Photography)
The team has also named former interim general manager Joe Dumars as their Chief Strategy Officer
After news broke on Wednesday night about Sacramento Kings hiring Houston Rockets assistant general manager Monte McNair, there was a massive question that still needed to be answered:
Who is the general manager?
That question has been answered, as the Kings announced on Thursday morning that McNair will become the team’s new general manager and leader of all basketball operations.
“Monte is one of the NBA’s top basketball minds who has played an instrumental role in building several winning teams in Houston,” Kings owner Vivek Ranadivé stated in the press release. “I am excited to bring his
extensive experience and vision onboard to lead our basketball operations department, and it is my pleasure to welcome Monte and his family to Sacramento.”
McNair has been a huge part of the Houston Rockets front office since 2007, helping build the team into a perennial contender that has made the postseason in eight-straight seasons since 2012-13.
Along with the announcement of McNair, Sacramento also made it clear that former interim general manager and advisor Joe Dumars is here to stay:
Dumars will slide over into the role of Chief Strategy Officer, assisting ownership in “business, basketball, new ventures, entertainment and real estate”, per the team release.
Sacramento now will move into the offseason with a new general manager, something that the team has not had in over half of a decade.
The Kings roster could look very different come this winter, with plenty of question marks surrounding the future of a team that showed oodles of promise in 2018-19 before regressing this season.
- Will restricted free-agent Bogdan Bogdanovic be re-signed?
- De’Aaron Fox’s rookie-scale contract comes to an end following the 2020-21 season. Will McNair offer him a max-extension this fall?
- Buddy Hield is not happy with his bench role. Could McNair move on from the sharpshooter and trade him in a blockbuster deal?
- Luke Walton had an underwhelming first year as head coach of the franchise. Is it possible that McNair will want to select his own head coach?
We could be looking at an entirely different team come opening night.
Sacramento has not made the playoffs since the 2005-06 season, sitting one season shy of holding the longest playoff-drought in NBA history (15 seasons).
McNair has been in a winning front office for over 13 years. In all likelihood, the new general manager of a struggling Kings team isn’t going to come in and leave things as they are.
For what seems like the millionth time, Sacramento needs a facelift.
Former general manager Vlade Divac was hired with no experience in running an NBA front office. He went on to run the franchise for five years, never leading the Kings to a playoff appearance.
McNair is the polar opposite of the former fan-favorite Divac, making a name for himself with his impressive resume and success as a front office executive for an overall successful, winning franchise.
If the Kings want to get back to where they were in the early 2000’s, the person in charge of basketball decisions will have to be aggressive and mostly accurate in his moves.
With Sacramento, there is no more room or time for error.
The time is now.
