Ex-Kings GM Geoff Petrie Calls Vivek Ranadive's Comments 'Revisionist History'

SACRAMENTO (CBS13) - Former Sacramento Kings General Manager Geoff Petrie says Vivek Ranadive disrespected former Kings employees in a recent report.

"He doesn't need to apologize to me but he should apologize to all these other people," Petrie said.

Petrie is taking aim at a recent Ranadive interview.

"It crossed the line between fact and fiction," Petrie said.

The former Kings GM, who spent two decades with the organization, is responding to statements made by Ranadive in a USA TODAY report by Sam Ammick that Petrie says aren't true.

"It's hard to understand, how someone could conjure up a story that was so demeaning to so many other people," Petrie said.

Ranadive was quoted in the USA TODAY, when he first bought the Kings, "I walked in, and there was nobody who wanted to be here. There was no coach, no GM, it was a ghost town."

Petrie says the line trashes the legacy of the loyal Kings employees who were there to help Ranadive when he arrived.

"I was really upset on their behalf, that they would be marginalized in something that was so untrue," Petrie said. "So to have it represented that it was a ghost town and nobody wanted to be there, Keith Smart, he had a year left on his contract, he wanted to keep coaching, to represent that he didn't want to be there, it's just categorically untrue."

In a Deadspin website Q&A, Petrie also said of Ranadive, "I found him to be a very arrogant and dismissive little chap."