Sacramento Kings owner Vivek Ranadive first caught the public's attention as a character in Malcolm Gladwell's "How David Beats Goliath." His penchant for David strategies has apparently carried over to NBA ownership.
In the book, Gladwell highlights that Ranadive had led his daughter's elementary school basketball team to success with no formal basketball training. By having his girls run a full-court press at all times, Ranadive was able to strip out some of the talent gap between teams.
Now the owner of the Sacramento Kings, Ranadive continues to look for alternate strategies to help what doesn't appear to be a particularly good team win. On the surface, that includes favoring ball-pressuring ability over actual defensive talent, and assembling a roster without much concern for offensive fit, in a sort of position-less scheme.
Beneath the surface, the discussion of David strategies has gotten plain weird. From Zach Lowe of Grantland:
Good news, though: The Kings are going to be entertaining! Owner Vivek Ranadivé has pitched the idea to the team’s brain trust of playing 4-on-5 defense and leaving one player to cherry-pick, according to multiple sources familiar with the matter. The Kings aren’t actually going to do that, but their D-League might, and it shows Ranadivé is committed to pushing boundaries in his search for an offbeat brand of “position-less” ball.
Playing defense 4-on-5 would surely see the Kings bleed points, but leaking a man out would mean a near-guaranteed two points after every stop. For a team that could be really bad on defense, anyway, it's not the most outlandish proposition (though it's close).
The unfortunate reality is that teams would very quickly learn to exploit this, either scoring every time out or holding a man back at the top of the 3-point line to quickly rush the cherry picker after a shot attempt.
But hey, Kings, try it out. Let's get weird.
