A roast. A proper show format, with a target, a room and laughs written into the schedule. And according to Zach Lowe, Kings owner Vivek Ranadive did one at a training dinner, in front of the whole team and staff, turning it into a roast of lots of people in the room and listing the ways they had been failing as players, coaches, executives. I read that and my first question was: who did the intro?
Because a roast gets announced. Here it is again, Saturday-night version, half past eight, caretaker asked to switch off his lights:
“Mesdames et messieurs, dames en heren, this is the moment. Tonight, for you, a dinner. And on the mic… [two seconds of silence] … the owner! [jingle] Make some noise.”
There you go. Now everyone knows what’s coming. We laugh together, the target stands up, takes a bow. The caretaker would have switched off only half the strip lights, and the sound system would have had an opinion, but at least we’d have known it was a show.
Zach Lowe says some people were alarmed and thought: “this is not going over the way you intended”. Others got it. According to him, the owner was basically saying: here’s what people say about you. “Prove us wrong.” That’s a line for the end of a player intro. I’d put it right before the starting five come out.
An introduction at a dinner doesn’t fit in my column.
For me, everything is in order. A roast with no intro is a speech. A speech with an intro is a moment. The Kings confirmed the gist to Zach Lowe. The jingle is at their disposal.
Just saying.
It’s true, we checked: BasketNews.
