Longtime Kings GM Geoff Petrie has added a potential successor to Sacramento's front office: Jason Levien. That slice might only be interesting to the most devoted NBA heads or Kings fans. But here's the key: Levien is a player agent. More specifically, he's Kevin Martin's player agent. Levien actually has a long history with Petrie. The Sacramento Bee reports that when the Kings drafted Hedo Turkoglu in 2000, Levien accompanied Petrie to Istanbul to negotiate Hedo's release from European club and Turkish national team obligations. Levien clients Orien Greene and Loren Woods have also had short stints in Sacramento.
Levien will soon join the Kings as an assistant GM alongside Wayne Cooper, who has been with Sacramento for 15 years, the last 12 of which have been served as Petrie's deputy. The writing on the wall is legible: Levien was brought in by Petrie and the Maloofs to add some expertise now and later have at least a shot at the team's top job when Petrie retires or moves on.
Logic dictates that this is the case: Levien is giving up millions of dollars by leaving the agent game.
It's great news for the Kings, as Levien has a pretty incredible background: he's a former Harvard fellow, wrote Harold Ford's keynote for the 2000 Democratic National Convention, worked for the Clinton administration and landed big contracts for Martin, Udonis Haslem and Luol Deng under his own shingle. And he's done all of this by age 37. It seems clear that Petrie pursued Levien and sought to add him to the team -- this isn't some power move by the Maloofs. Depending on how Cooper is dealt with and how long Petrie (one of the best draft evaluators in the modern era) sticks around, the Kings have a good rebuilding movement working in the front office, too.
