Dubai: Sacramento Kings legend Peja Stojakovic would love to return to the team with which he played his best seasons, he told Gulf News.
The Serbian former NBA star, in Dubai to pass on his experience to children at the BasicBall Academy summer camp at the Dubai World Trade Centre, is rumoured to have been offered a front office position with the California team.
Stojakovic said he had not yet agreed a deal with the Kings, but was “very interested” in the prospect of a role with the club that benefitted the most from his precise three-point shooting during his playing days.
The 38-year-old, who won an NBA title with the Dallas Mavericks in 2011, said: “That’s an idea and it’s still not decided yet, but I am definitely very interested in working with the team. I will know more in the next few days.
“I played [in Sacramento] for eight seasons and those were my best basketball years. Definitely it is a good opportunity. We’ll see. I am hoping for the best.”
The 6ft 10in Stojakovic, who played the small forward position in the NBA for 13 seasons, spent part of this summer working with the Kings as an adviser after an invitation from his former teammate Vlade Divac, now vice-president of basketball in Sacramento.
“We played together for six seasons,” said Stojakovic of his fellow Serb. “He asked me to come during the month of July to help him through free agency and the summer league. It was great to exchange ideas and just being involved in the game from a different aspect.
“I am very excited with the moves Vlade has made in the off-season and I think the team has improved with a great new coach [George Karl] and I think they can potentially be a play-off team.”
This summer, the Kings traded young guard Nik Stauskas and future draft picks in order to create salary cap space to sign veterans Rajon Rondo, Marco Belinelli and Kosta Koufos in free agency.
Some saw the moves as short-sighted for a club not expected to make the play-offs from the Western Conference.
But Stojakovic said the team has now surrounded mercurial star centre DeMarcus Cousins with the talent that will allow him to flourish.
“The team has a combination of everything,” said Stojakovic. “It has real talent in DeMarcus Cousins and Rudy Gay that you can build the team around. You have the potential of Ben McLemore and Willie Cauley-Stein and Darren Collison and you have experience in [Rajon] Rondo, [Caron] Butler and the guys who have been there and won championships.
“I think with the leadership of George Karl and the way he coaches, this team is built to be in the play-offs. Sometimes in sports we are impatient and we want results right away, but it is a process as well. You can’t turn things around in one night.
“I think the most important thing is we have great chemistry and the right environment for the other players to come in the near future and get back to where they belong.”
A reported rift between Karl and Cousins was hardly the ideal start to the plan. Some media outlets reported that the coach hoped his star player would be traded to the Los Angeles Lakers.
But Stojakovic said he believed the clash was blown out of proportion and the two had enough in common to lead the Kings to the play-offs at the next attempt.
“I think it was [taken out of proportion], he said. “You know how the media works, but both of them are professionals. Coaches are paid to coach the team and the players are paid to perform. I think after meeting both I have noticed how competitive they are and how desperate they wanted to win.
“Sometimes when you have people who are competitive and they want to get back to the winning stage, definitely they can exchange some of the words, but as of now they are on the same page and have the same goal.”
