http://www.portlandtribune.com/archview.cgi?id=30118
Cut the stress? Not in the NBA
Heart procedure caps roller-coaster season for Kings, Petrie
By KERRY EGGERS The Portland Tribune
Tue, May 31, 2005
Geoff Petrie will visit Portland this weekend for the graduation of his daughter, Susanne, from Portland State. Petrie will be excited to be here, but really he’s excited to be anywhere.
On May 3, the day after Petrie’s Sacramento Kings were eliminated by Seattle in the first round of the NBA playoffs, he underwent an angioplasty to open a blocked artery. “It would’ve been nice to take a week and clear my head,” Petrie cracks. “I took two weeks and cleared my arteries.”
Petrie, 57, hardly seemed a likely candidate for the heart procedure. The Kings’ president of basketball operations is a regular jogger who exercises four or five days a week. The warning signs weren’t overly apparent.
“I wasn’t having any problems day to day,” says Petrie, a one-time guard and general manager of the Trail Blazers. “I was exercising a lot, but I wasn’t feeling right sometimes. “It sort of started all of a sudden. At first it felt like I was coming down with a chest cold. Then I thought allergies. I was still running four to five miles, though sometimes I’d have to slow down. It wasn’t the same every day.”
On May 3, Petrie decided to call his internist as he drove to work.
“I told him this is the way I had been feeling the last three to four weeks, and at some point we should probably check it out,” Petrie recalls. “He said, Better come over right now." The doctor told him it might not be anything.
“I figured I’d do the tests and be home by 7 p.m.,” Petrie says. “Instead, I was in the hospital at 5 p.m.” Petrie was out of the hospital the following morning, but he had an allergic reaction to one of the medicines.
“Got a rash everywhere,” Petrie says. “It wiped me out for five or six days. That was a lot worse than the surgery.”
After a week, Petrie returned for some half-days to work. Last week, he returned to work full time. “It’s a little bit slower time for us, anyway,” Petrie says. “If it had to happen, it came at a decent time.” The 6-5, 230-pound Petrie is back running and working out. “I feel fine,” he says. “I wasn’t feeling that bad before. I’m going to make an effort to drop 10 pounds. There’s not a whole lot in my lifestyle I can change, though, other than stress.”
The pressure’s on
There’s a little more of that in running an NBA franchise than in most jobs. Petrie’s stress level probably increased in the days following his angioplasty when it was revealed that owners Joe and Gavin Maloof had contacted Phil Jackson’s agent, Todd Mussburger, to gauge Jackson’s interest in coaching the Kings. This despite the fact that Rick Adelman, Sacramento’s coach the past seven seasons, has another year on his contract. “The only thing I have to say about Rick, he is our coach until he is not our coach,” Petrie says. “He has my full support until that changes. That’s the way it’s been with everybody I’ve ever worked with. That’s the way it is now.”
Asked if Adelman will be the coach of the Kings next season, Petrie repeated his previous comment. But he says the report about the Maloofs contacting Mussburger seems accurate. "The Maloofs said it was, so I assume it is,” Petrie says. “I haven’t talked to them a lot (since the end of the season). We haven’t even had our postseason meeting yet.”
Petrie’s blood pressure climbed a notch last week after The Sacramento Bee printed a story saying that forward Darius Songaila and guard Cuttino Mobley, who will become free agents July 1, may have played their last game for the Kings. “The tenor of that article was, those guys are gone,” Petrie says. “They’re just free agents. That doesn’t mean they’re gone. They’re exercising the right to try to get a new contract. We’ve had other free agents we’ve kept — a lot of them, actually. They both are important players for us. Free agency is treacherous, but I don’t think it’s a foregone conclusion they’re gone.”
Injuries sap strength
Sacramento notched its fifth straight 50-win season despite the loss of several key players to injury during the regular season and the midseason trade that sent Chris Webber to Philadelphia for Kenny Thomas, Corliss Williamson and Brian Skinner.
“Our regular season was very good overall,” Petrie says. “We ended up with the eighth-best record in the league despite having to deal with a lot of change and serious injuries to players. In a really competitive Western Conference, that was very good. We were all disappointed with our play in the Seattle series. We still weren’t at full strength, and we never really got control of enough of the games to give ourselves a chance.”
Is Petrie pleased with the Webber deal? “Oh yeah,” Petrie says. “We got three quality players who will help replenish our depth. They’re players who help us in different ways. We made a deal we felt going forward we needed to make. The flip side of that is, the six years Chris was here, the teams we had with him, the experiences we all had … it was a tough deal to make emotionally. He contributed an awful lot to a lot of success here, made a lot of us look smarter than we were at times. I wish him the best. I’m not about to make value judgments.”
Is the Kings’ window of opportunity for a championship closed? “When we made the (Webber trade), the window with the team we had was gone,” Petrie says. “That team’s not here anymore. Our team now is in transition. The core of this new team is going to be Mike Bibby, Peja Stojakovic, Brad Miller and whoever else we keep and add to that. I think we still have a chance to be pretty successful.”
Cut the stress? Not in the NBA
Heart procedure caps roller-coaster season for Kings, Petrie
Tue, May 31, 2005
Geoff Petrie will visit Portland this weekend for the graduation of his daughter, Susanne, from Portland State. Petrie will be excited to be here, but really he’s excited to be anywhere.
On May 3, the day after Petrie’s Sacramento Kings were eliminated by Seattle in the first round of the NBA playoffs, he underwent an angioplasty to open a blocked artery. “It would’ve been nice to take a week and clear my head,” Petrie cracks. “I took two weeks and cleared my arteries.”
Petrie, 57, hardly seemed a likely candidate for the heart procedure. The Kings’ president of basketball operations is a regular jogger who exercises four or five days a week. The warning signs weren’t overly apparent.
“I wasn’t having any problems day to day,” says Petrie, a one-time guard and general manager of the Trail Blazers. “I was exercising a lot, but I wasn’t feeling right sometimes. “It sort of started all of a sudden. At first it felt like I was coming down with a chest cold. Then I thought allergies. I was still running four to five miles, though sometimes I’d have to slow down. It wasn’t the same every day.”
On May 3, Petrie decided to call his internist as he drove to work.
“I told him this is the way I had been feeling the last three to four weeks, and at some point we should probably check it out,” Petrie recalls. “He said, Better come over right now." The doctor told him it might not be anything.
“I figured I’d do the tests and be home by 7 p.m.,” Petrie says. “Instead, I was in the hospital at 5 p.m.” Petrie was out of the hospital the following morning, but he had an allergic reaction to one of the medicines.
“Got a rash everywhere,” Petrie says. “It wiped me out for five or six days. That was a lot worse than the surgery.”
After a week, Petrie returned for some half-days to work. Last week, he returned to work full time. “It’s a little bit slower time for us, anyway,” Petrie says. “If it had to happen, it came at a decent time.” The 6-5, 230-pound Petrie is back running and working out. “I feel fine,” he says. “I wasn’t feeling that bad before. I’m going to make an effort to drop 10 pounds. There’s not a whole lot in my lifestyle I can change, though, other than stress.”
The pressure’s on
There’s a little more of that in running an NBA franchise than in most jobs. Petrie’s stress level probably increased in the days following his angioplasty when it was revealed that owners Joe and Gavin Maloof had contacted Phil Jackson’s agent, Todd Mussburger, to gauge Jackson’s interest in coaching the Kings. This despite the fact that Rick Adelman, Sacramento’s coach the past seven seasons, has another year on his contract. “The only thing I have to say about Rick, he is our coach until he is not our coach,” Petrie says. “He has my full support until that changes. That’s the way it’s been with everybody I’ve ever worked with. That’s the way it is now.”
Asked if Adelman will be the coach of the Kings next season, Petrie repeated his previous comment. But he says the report about the Maloofs contacting Mussburger seems accurate. "The Maloofs said it was, so I assume it is,” Petrie says. “I haven’t talked to them a lot (since the end of the season). We haven’t even had our postseason meeting yet.”
Petrie’s blood pressure climbed a notch last week after The Sacramento Bee printed a story saying that forward Darius Songaila and guard Cuttino Mobley, who will become free agents July 1, may have played their last game for the Kings. “The tenor of that article was, those guys are gone,” Petrie says. “They’re just free agents. That doesn’t mean they’re gone. They’re exercising the right to try to get a new contract. We’ve had other free agents we’ve kept — a lot of them, actually. They both are important players for us. Free agency is treacherous, but I don’t think it’s a foregone conclusion they’re gone.”
Injuries sap strength
Sacramento notched its fifth straight 50-win season despite the loss of several key players to injury during the regular season and the midseason trade that sent Chris Webber to Philadelphia for Kenny Thomas, Corliss Williamson and Brian Skinner.
“Our regular season was very good overall,” Petrie says. “We ended up with the eighth-best record in the league despite having to deal with a lot of change and serious injuries to players. In a really competitive Western Conference, that was very good. We were all disappointed with our play in the Seattle series. We still weren’t at full strength, and we never really got control of enough of the games to give ourselves a chance.”
Is Petrie pleased with the Webber deal? “Oh yeah,” Petrie says. “We got three quality players who will help replenish our depth. They’re players who help us in different ways. We made a deal we felt going forward we needed to make. The flip side of that is, the six years Chris was here, the teams we had with him, the experiences we all had … it was a tough deal to make emotionally. He contributed an awful lot to a lot of success here, made a lot of us look smarter than we were at times. I wish him the best. I’m not about to make value judgments.”
Is the Kings’ window of opportunity for a championship closed? “When we made the (Webber trade), the window with the team we had was gone,” Petrie says. “That team’s not here anymore. Our team now is in transition. The core of this new team is going to be Mike Bibby, Peja Stojakovic, Brad Miller and whoever else we keep and add to that. I think we still have a chance to be pretty successful.”
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i love bibby,stojakovic, and miller but those guys are role players and we need to add a superstar if we ever want to get back to championship status.
