I had always assumed that Grant had overstepped his bounds within the Kings organization with how he handled Kevin Martin's situation on his talk show. Like many of you, I felt he went way over the line, calling Kevin soft when it turned out he actually had a broken wrist, and I wasn't enamored with how he had insinuated that Kevin should have just toughed out the high ankle sprain/bone bruise and just played through it. In fact, I felt a lot of the scrutiny on Kevin's every move the past few week was a direct result of the comments he made on air and the turmoil that it created. Simply put, I wasn't happy with Grant because I felt he had stirred the pot, and we were left with a disgruntled player as a result.

As for his motivation for making such comments, I just felt Grant was being Grant, making waves, stepping on toes, offending people with his direct nature. I wasn't sure if this was unplanned (i.e., it was a direct product of Grant's inability to be the least bit tactful), or if he knew exactly what he was doing, which is to say that as a talk show host, he had to be a polarizing figure to keep people tuned in, so he took a deliberately hard stance. I suspected the former was true, but in either case, I felt Grant probably didn't endear himself to the top brass with his comments as it magnified the challenges Kevin was facing (both in staying healthy and in fitting in with the new personnel), and I wouldn't have been shocked if I opened the morning paper one day to find that the King's had canned Grant's ass as a result of him shooting off his mouth.

However, it occurred to me on Friday as I listened to Grant mercilessly rip the Sacramento Bee for their handling of Sam Amick’s Don Fegan piece that Grant may have been simply repeating what he was hearing from those within the organization (again without the least bit of tact, but the important thing to remember was that Grant wasn't just coming up with this stuff on his own). That he wasn't a loose cannon, blazing away, but rather a company man, repeating the concerns that he had heard from management. What made me think this way, you ask?

Well, if you didn't catch Grant's show on Friday, Sam Amick wrote a piece on uber-sports agent Don Fegan because he represents Kevin, and the piece centered on how Fegan wasn't happy with the King's management, and specifically, that Kevin's trade was the inevitible result of Petrie selecting Tyreke Evans, a player who tends to dominate the ball, instead of a pass first point guard, like, say, Ricky Rubio. Unfortunately, the editor's at the Bee left out the part of Sam's article where he noted that Fegan was also Rubio's agent, so he obviously had a conflict of interest when he made the statement at the very least, and, more likely, an axe to grind.

Grant savaged Bee Sports editor Bill Bradley for how he treated Sam and for how the Bee simply edited this key information out of the piece. Peaches also repeatedly referenced how upset some folks within the Kings organization were about how they were portrayed. He mentioned again and again how on the plane ride down to LA, King's brass had complained about how the Bee handled the situation.  He then went on to be Grant in his own inimitable way, calling anyone who disagreed with him "idiots" and stating that if that was their position, "they don't know what the hell is going on." Basically, he went way overboard, bashing the Bee with Mike Lamb, riding shotgun, aiding and abetting in his familiar lapdog role.

What struck me here, however, was that Grant was using his bully pulpit to further the agenda of the King's management on the radio, and that this wasn't an isolated incident (he has taken up the sword for the Kings on several other issues--see, Arena). Now, I have to point out that I totally agree with him (and it pains me to write that last statement). I feel the Bee didn't handle the story well at all, but it dawned on me that something similar may have happened with Kevin's situation, and that rather than being a loose cannon, harping on Kevin's shortcomings, he may simply have echoed what he heard within the organization, which unfortunatly hastened Kevin's exit.