On Wednesday, I wrote that the time had come for the Sacramento Kings to consider life after DeMarcus Cousins. It was a long, involved reckoning that reviewed the franchise's myriad failures during the Cousins era and surmised that the best path forward might be a fresh one without the baggage of the past five years. I stand by that assessment.
5 important takeaways from the latest round of Kings drama
A win on Wednesday brought temporary relief, but the Kings still have a lot of issues to resolve with DeMarcus Cousins, George Karl and the front office.
Steve Mitchell-USA TODAY Sports
Hours later, reports surfaced about Cousins cursing out George Karl in the locker room after Monday's game. Further reports claimed Karl wanted to suspend Cousins for the tirade, but GM Vlade Divac declined to do so. Cousins apologized for his outburst, then dropped 33 on the Pistons in a huge Kings win.
As it turns out, I have a lot more to say about this situation! Here are five thoughts on all this drama.
1. Only winning will solve the personality problems the Kings have. And that salvation is only temporary. Reading DeMarcus Cousins is pretty easy because he’s deadly honest and cloaks nothing about how he feels. If Boogie is frustrated, enraged or happy, you’ll know. During Wednesday’s game, he constantly looked like a man on the verge of emotional catharsis. He grimaced through celebrations and screamed in an angry sort of joy a few times.
The Kings led most of the game, and Andre Drummond was mostly a non-factor. Cousins stayed completely out of foul trouble. There was incredibly little to be upset about, yet Boogie constantly looked two degrees shy of a full boil. Clearly, everything that happened is weighing on him -- the losing, the renewed beef with Karl, perhaps a feeling that Sacramento's opinion on him is turning. Imagine how Cousins' simmering emotion will manifest when the Kings lose again.
And they will. This team is average at best, and probably much closer to mediocre. While Cousins’ apology was refreshing (and stunning, to be honest), his frustration with the state of things appears to have lingered beyond the team meetings that acted as a supposed catharsis. The volcano is still smoking, but it won’t explode until the Kings go on another losing streak. Let’s not pretend everything is hunky dory now.
2. DeMarcus Cousins is unquestionably a difficult adult. He’s also definitely worth the trouble. The stories about how miserable a human Cousins can be are traded like ghost stories among the NBA staffers who escape Sacramento. Yet Wednesday’s game was a master class on why you put up with Boogie’s outbursts and the drama that seems to hover over him.
He rediscovered his three-point stroke against the Pistons, shooting 4 for 5 from beyond the line. Back in the Kings’ opener two weeks ago, Cousins also hit 4 of 5 from beyond the arc. He missed nine straight over the next three games he played before Wednesday. On the season, he’s above 40 percent. That, plus his interior skill and strength, his agility and court vision off of the dribble, his rebounding and (at times) his defense add up to a top-10 NBA player who is 25 years old.
That’s basically the only argument against trading DeMarcus Cousins: He’s just too damn good. Maybe one player in each draft enters the NBA with a chance at being better. So trading Cousins for draft picks is really akin to praying for snow in the summer. I personally think the right set of prayers might be preferable to more of all this, but then I see Boogie dominate the dominant Andre Drummond and I wince. It’s really hard to give up on someone this talented.
3. There's something weird about George Karl's coaching staff. There's been a minor media kerfuffle in Sactown over the local newspaper's decision to mention Karl's victories over cancer in discussion of the coach's energy level. Energy is beside the point. Karl's assistant Chad Iske is the far more interesting story here. He's the guy barking orders during play and leaping off the bench. Karl calls timeouts, draws up plays and makes substitutions. Iske appears to do the rest during game action. Iske went so far as to earn a technical foul for screaming at refs during a fairly critical, tight stretch of Kings-Pistons.
Iske is a longtime Karl deputy: In fact, he was already in Denver as a video coordinator before Karl arrived in 2004. Once Karl was excused from the Nuggets, Iske moved on to Philadelphia. When Karl was hired by the Kings in February, he recruited Iske to be his associate head coach. Iske left the Sixers midseason and made it clear he'd have a huge role on the Kings staff.
Of course, those decisions were made before Vlade Divac took over the front office. Karl’s résumé is beyond question, and you imagine he gets a lot more rope given his illustrious history. But Iske is a shadow coach of sorts, and he doesn’t have a reputation as an NBA head coach. You have to wonder how these relationships weigh on the front office and the players, especially Cousins, who (as Bomani Jones noted on his radio show Wednesday) does not suffer any perceived incompetence. This isn’t to say Iske doesn’t know his stuff -- I’m sure he does, if he has Karl’s trust -- but there’s not much of a record there for anyone (the players included) to rely on.
In theory, players play and coaches coach. But there’s something a bit odd about how the coaches are coaching right now.
4. Vlade Divac’s lack of management experience is a blessing and a curse. As is well known, Divac has no NBA management experience and in fact didn’t work in the NBA (or live in North America) for the decade preceding his hiring. Based on the report that Divac asked his players whether he should fire Karl on Tuesday, his inexperience is quite clear. He’s stepped on himself, his coach and his boss a few times since last spring. He’s real rough around the edges.
He’s also beloved by basically everyone who knows him. Boogie and Vlade have become close. Kings franchisee Vivek Ranadive essentially hired Vlade because he loves Vlade, as does everyone else in Sacramento. Divac is a relationship guy, pure and simple. And while some expertise in the nuances of the NBA salary cap, advanced analytics and how the league’s markets work would be nice, that ability to build relationships has been sorely needed in Sacramento. With this roster of tumult and so many strong personalities around, Divac’s ability to build bridges is hugely important.
Let’s just pray he’s empowering guys like Roland Beech on the important details.
5. National ridicule might be the thing to galvanize the team. No one likes being the butt of the jokes. The Kings have been the butt of jokes for almost a decade. This is a team of proud players (sometimes to their detriment) and one imagines they would love nothing more than to shut up all the snark directed their way. Until Tuesday, they were aiming their fire at each other. Perhaps now they will decide to collectively direct their anger at everyone pointing fingers and laughing, like a scorned Voltron with a loose trigger.
Every NBA team fosters and feeds the usually absurd “nobody believes in us” canard. The Kings can actually say that. The realization of that doubt might be the thing to keep Sacramento on edge and competing hard every night over the next few months. If that happens, who knows what could happen in the standings? The mystery continues.
