While sitting in the dentist’s waiting office during our oldest child’s dental appointment, I picked up an ESPN Magazine, and found a story about Sacramento Kings owner Vivek Ranadive that included …

Perhaps the window into Ranadive’s basketball soul — the spot where math, velocity and fire come together — can be found in a mostly empty arena in Nevada, on a snowy Tuesday night in late December. It’s the Idaho Stampede against the Reno Bighorns, the Kings’ entry in the NBA Development League, and there’s some weird science taking place on the court.

“One of the first things I did after getting the team was to say I wanted a D-League team,” Ranadive says. “In Silicon Valley, you have a lab. In basketball, I wanted a lab.”

The Bighorns are coached by the boyish and enthusiastic David Arsenault Jr. — he’s 28, so the boyishness comes naturally — who formerly worked as an assistant for his father at Division III Grinnell, a program known for attention-seeking scoring exploits such as Jack Taylor’s 138-point game in 2012.

When Arsenault interviewed for the job, he impressed with his willingness to pick up an unconventional system and drop it whole into the pro game. Asked to diagram a few plays, Arsenault started at one end of the court and finished at the other, à la Coach Ranadive. “I’d never seen anyone do that,” says Kings assistant GM Mike Bratz. Asked what he would do with 7-foot-5, 360-pound Sim Bhullar, a human obelisk the Kings were committed to playing in Reno, Arsenault said, “I can use any player who can do something well.”

The Kings told Arsenault they wanted to play fast and wanted to play differently, and he said, “Just how fast and how different do you want to be? Because I can probably play faster and more different than anybody in the country.”

The Bighorns press full-court, constantly seek steals and shoot primarily 3s and layups. Ideally, a shot is taken within 12 seconds. Midrange jumpers are discouraged, and players shuffle in and out, five at a time, in 90-second to two-minute shifts. The Grinnell approach — grandly called The System — is the perfect type of reinvention for a man like Ranadive, who came to basketball with no preconceptions.

“You’ve got to unlearn some things to play here,” says Bighorns point guard David Stockton. Asked what his father, John, thinks of it, David says, “He thinks it’s a little weird.”

The Bighorns scored as many as 174 points and allowed as many as 169 — in the same game. They made 31 3s in another. The intent is to speed up the game — “championship speed,” Arsenault calls it — and force turnovers by luring the opponent into the same pace. It’s a chaotic blur of overplays, easy dunks and pull-up 3s. No game has anything resembling a coherent throughline; a 20-point lead can become a 10-point deficit over the course of three or four rough shifts. It’s equal parts exhausting and entertaining, the combined fever dream of Jamal Crawford and J.R. Smith, or precisely how you’d envision basketball would be played if a meth lab sponsored a team.

“We get to do things there you’ll never do on an NBA floor — ever,” D’Alessandro says. Is this the positionless ideal? There are no guards, forwards or centers. Instead, positions are designated by defensive assignment: on ball, left wing, right wing, interceptor and safety. The basket is routinely left unguarded as Bighorns players overplay passing lanes.

Bhullar plays safety, to protect the hoop, and his shifts often force the Bighorns to play four-on-five offense. He simply can’t cover the court fast enough to play both ends, especially when things are going well and possessions last less than 10 seconds. (When he does get there, he’s nearly unstoppable at the rim.)

Players taught to work for a good shot are now asked to redefine their definition. A 25-foot jumper five seconds into the shot clock used to be a bad shot, but now a bad shot is a 12-footer after four passes. The System is great fun, but leave your conscience at home. Through it all, Arsenault stands on the sideline, silent and stoic, aware that whatever happens on the court is out of his control.

“I’ve never understood something,” Arsenault says. “If you’re limited based on location or recruiting or being a small-market team or just not being able to get some of the best players, why be the poor man’s version of everybody else? Why not try something new?”

Asked to describe Ranadive’s involvement with Reno, Arsenault says, “He’s the guy who is promoting the whole creative thought. He’s the mastermind behind the whole plan.”

And what exactly is that plan?

Arsenault pauses, his face stuck in a rictus of hesitation. To this point, he’s had the timing just so. He starts to answer, stops, shrugs and finally says, “That’s the million-dollar question.”

Readers of this blog are familiar with Grinnell and Arsenault’s father, also named David. Grinnell plays an immensely entertaining style of basketball to watch, and entertaining though really hard work to announce. It would be interesting to see that kind of system with some NBA teams. It would also be interesting to try that at the high school level, though you have to have the right kinds of players (basically guards who can shoot) to play that system in high school, and you’re unlikely to have that every year.