You've been quite clear about your personal beef with Ham, but I'd say it's clouding your opinion. Ham, if he has access to the practice facility and is around the team, talks to people involved, which I believe he does, then he's going to have insight the average fan wouldn't.
Doesn't mean it's correct, doesn't mean bias doesn't come into play.
Damn straight it doesn't mean it's correct. I'm actually kind of surprised at how Kings fans in general took the infamous "Ham Podcast" at face value. There are some serious factual problems with Ham's story in that podcast that somehow have never been questioned to my knowledge.
Let's ignore the slander about Mbah a Moute faking injury. Let's ignore the odd narrative that PDA would make his case to Vivek that the Kings should be coached by CORBIN when his plan allegedly all along was to hire KARL. (Really, wouldn't he just have argued that Karl was available and better? Wouldn't that make more sense?)
Instead let's focus on two huge factual faults in that podcast.
One of the major allegations against PDA in Ham's podcast was that he delayed signing Casspi until later in the summer in order to give him a sub-minimum pro-rated contract. Hey, that's a terrible allegation...but it's just plain not correct, and anybody who goes to the length to
actually read the CBA would know better. Are minimum salary contracts pro-rated? Yes. When do minimum salary contracts begin pro-rating? The first day of the regular season (late October, typically). When did Casspi sign? September 18th. Here's where Ham either screwed up or (more likely, in my opinion) got bad info fed to him: there was a trick to Casspi's situation. The CBA has an increasing scale for minimum contracts based on service time. In order to prevent teams from shunning veteran players (on minimum contracts) in favor of cheaper young players (on minimum contracts) the CBA provides that for vets on a one-year minimum deal, the difference between the 2-year vet min and the player's actual min will be paid by the league and not count against the salary cap. But this only applies to one-year deals. Casspi signed a 2-year minimum deal (second year unguaranteed) with Houston a year before we signed him - this contract was NOT covered by the above provision. Houston waived Casspi, and the Kings (or any other team) could have claimed him. We did not. Instead, PDA allowed him to pass through waivers and subsequently signed him to the same (minimum) contract that he would have had otherwise. Except in this case, the NBA picked up several hundred thousand dollars of the contract by rule of the CBA. Did PDA save money? Yes. Did Casspi lose money? No, the difference was covered by the league, and there was no pro-rating. In direct contrast to Ham's claim which he used to denigrate PDA.
Second, while I don't believe he ever directly said it, Ham
strongly implied that instead of getting Malone PG help when IT went down with injury in March 2014, PDA instead brought up the useless Royce White on a 10-day contract. Of course, he's got the dates wrong. Royce White's 10-day contract began on 3/19. Thomas didn't miss a game until 3/26, and when White's 10-day contract ran out on 3/28, we went out and immediately signed Jared Cunningham to back up McCallum. Was Cunningham great? No. But the pickings are pretty darn slim in late March, and at least he gave McCallum some rest minutes.
And of course, facts be damned, let's not ignore that Ham devoted a full 90 minute podcast to the idea that PDA spent basically his entire time in Sacramento trying to screw Malone. Less than a month later, both PDA and Malone accept jobs with the same franchise? Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight.
Let's not treat James Ham as if he's an incontrovertible source. He can't even get his simple facts straight. And the fundamental thrust of his "groundbreaking" 90-minute podcast is completely obliterated by the fact that shortly thereafter the two allegedly "warring" parties decided to go work together again for a different franchise. That entire podcast was "sound and fury, signifying nothing". Was our front office dysfunctional? Hell, yes. Was it the result of PDA being a comic-book supervillain, out to destroy Malone and the Kings for no particular good reason as Ham's narrative required? Super, super-doubtful. There would appear to be a lot of blame to go around with PDA and Vivek and elsewhere (and yes, we can only hope that with Vlade on board everything will be copacetic from here on out).
So does Mike have a personal beef with Ham? Hell yes he does, and coming from somebody who knows the situation,
for very good reason. Does Mike's personal beef mean that his criticisms of Ham are invalid? Not a bit. Ham's podcast was factually shoddy at best (see above) and the newfound good relationship (or at the very least hatchet-burying) between PDA and Malone in Denver puts a stake right through the heart of his argument. So Ham has access to the practice facility. Whoopee. Congratulations. He subjected us to 90 minutes of crap, which wasn't a month old before it became obviously ridiculous regardless (and given the factual problems, should have been even before that).
Forgive the rant, but I think it's worthwhile (if a bit late) to point out the serious problems with the Ham podcast. I know it reinforced the "PDA Bad" point of view that most Kings fans were inclined to accept at face value but if it's that hard to make it line up factually with the bits that we know about, then maybe Mike's objections to Ham's reporting aren't to be so easily dismissed as just a "beef". It doesn't all add up. Maybe it did before Malone and PDA both took jobs in Denver, but now it plain doesn't.
