Sacramento: The Entire Kings’ Court Shares Blame

Sometimes it seems that loved ones try and push you away whenever you demonstrate willingness to engage in a meaningful relationship. You’ve had a meeting of the minds, there seems to be a sense of a major reset, and fences are being build — the world’s most advanced, state-of-the-art fences!

Yet before you can even embark on your first adventure after having put things into place, your loved one is shown to have yet more personal issues keeping you from lapsing back into the cynicism that always tempered your strong connection.

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This is life with the Sacramento Kings. They are the beloved old cousin who has shown promise but always seems to break that promise and compel you to keep them at an arm’s length. The problem that Sacramentans have is that this is their only cousin — they don’t have a Clippers or Nets to turn to.

Unless they feel like becoming commuting fans of the Warriors (there lies some strength in numbers, after all), they have to cling to the only hometown team they’ve even known. Are these people more likely to switch allegiance to another sport and become diehard Sacramento Republic FC fans? One presumes not.

This week has seen the months-long tension between All-Star DeMarcus Cousins and recently hired head coach George Karl come to a boil. Since Karl came into the fore following last December’s firing of Michael Malone (now the head coach of the Denver Nuggets), Cousins and his camp have bristled at the veteran coach’s mere presence.

Though Cousins’ best performances have come during his brief time under Karl’s watch, the awkwardness with which Malone left, Tyrone Corbin served, and Karl arrived has made the star/coach relationship untenable. Karl has put dedicated Kings observers on the back foot since declaring this April that he’d never seen an “untradeable” player in his career.

This immediately drew to mind a Cousins departure.

Finally, after what have been apparently months of chilly existence, it became publicly and explicitly rumored that Karl was indeed pushing for Cousins to be shipped out of town. George had arrived at clown college, and he wanted the most popular kid on campus to head for his tiny car out of town.

Since then, and despite the emphatic denials of Karl’s employers, the coach has been omitting the sort of black-and-white commitment to Cousins that many have hoped he would. Rather, he’s been as emphatic in demanding Cousins’ black-and-white commitment to the Kings project, and to embracing (or even humoring) Karl himself.

Let’s make one declarative statement: this mess, played out in public through all manner of sputtering, inadequate media, is the fault of all major players involved. No one is the clear villain in this, and all parties’ respective grievances are ones with which one ought to empathize, if not fully accept.

No one is a hero without their foibles contributing their part to this, the most recent tremor in one of the more disheartening readouts of sports organization tectonics.

First, let us deal with the management personnel in the Kings’ office, namely Vivek Ranadive. Yes, he is the savior who kept a team in its hometown of (now) 30 years, and yes, he displays boyish enthusiasm for the game, his quirky little market, and the futuristic vision of what a sports experience should be.

He is not bringing a feeling of firm grip to his show, at least not yet.

He was talked into throwing away a season by a GM and strategic adviser who saw fit to yank the cord on a season by firing a perfectly serviceable head coach in early winter. He allowed the hiring of another (permanent) coach before installing a replacement for that aforementioned GM.

Beyond that, he fired and hired those head coaches (including Tyrone Corbin, the casualty of the Malone-Karl interim) without assuring that his only major star was at least OK with the change.

Though he and Kings vice president Vlade Divac seem to have found strong partnership with one another, the fact that their coach and star are still wasting away in the flickering spotlight of offseason coverage demonstrates that the Kings owner must imbue a strong culture to ensure any sort of success in the coming years (months, too).

Cousins, too, brings his share of detrimental tendencies. He is a transformational player, and one of the true individual gems in not only the rough of Sacramento, but the NBA as a whole. That said, he certainly acts like he knows it. Whether on the part of his management, or by his own actions, Cousins has shown a proclivity for making tough situations tougher with his loud chafing at the sort of collateral that comes with his role.

His is an exceptional talent, but basketball operations cannot succumb to the mood swings of a star player. Yes, Magic Johnson‘s tenure as a youthful stick in the mud ousted Paul Westhead for Pat Riley, but that is not a model for how to aid an ailing small market team whose historical ceiling has been a trip to the Western Conference Finals.

Though Karl has tried to reach out often since the end of the Kings’ season, he has been met with a seven foot wall. This kind of power play is unbecoming of someone who could be part of a Kings resurgence. It suggests someone who can’t become comfortable with his talent unless all that surrounds it is molded to fit.

For this reason, he is unlikely to fit in a George Karl system of play based on mutual opportunity, selfless play, and trust. He will get his triple double(s) each season, he will be a reliable 20-point contributor and a touchstone for his position no matter where he goes, but at this point in his career it seems that his greatness creates a stronger fortress than it does a kingdom.

Karl’s role in this leaves him with some luster gone as well. Though he is one of the greatest coaches of all time (in terms of qualitative and quantitative accomplishment), he is old enough to know the media game.

His answers to public questions, and his soft shoe dance around his commitment to Cousins fuel skittishness left from years of Maloof malaise and Vivek Ranadive’s transition into an ownership rhythm. He is a man who speaks his mind, and does so often.

It can drive constructive and successful relationships, as it did with the Seattle SuperSonics in the 1990s, but even in his sage old age, the coaching legend still allows his candor to shade and alter landscapes. He has had star players under his watch before, and he has been in the rush of a changing media pace for the last 20 years.

He ought to know that forceful ambiguity in the face of his colleagues’ united front will only continue to service a narrative of him being as difficult as those he bemoans.

If the Kings do eventually decide to move Cousins and support a coach known for improving sagging teams, it may be a positive outcome. There is little to be gained from an icy ongoing relationship on and off the court.

There is a huge caveat: the Kings will have to cancel out the mind-numbing loss of Cousins with enough talent to make this season something hopeful and enticing for fans of the team and the league. Karl, Divac, and Ranadive cannot simply trade in a deluxe meal for a few Nuggets.

Though they will obviously be trading in a large bill for some coins, they should not go for a few 3-year-old quarters. They need to have a silver dollar in the mix somewhere.

They need to push teams hard to get a good return on Cousins — the Lakers deal apparently being pursued by Divac is a good example of that. They need to have something of that caliber in the chamber, or something just this side of a Herschel Walker trade in the works to maintain long-term confidence.

At this point, neither I nor many others can foresee this fresh management team as having the gusto, wisdom, or vision to do anything like that. Ranadive does not possess the more favorable qualities of a Jerry Jones or a Jerry Buss. He is still, from the feel of it, too caught in the whimsy of his new role to be as dogged and directed as either man.

Until the aftermath of the draft and more of the free agency period are under their belts, we won’t know the type of managing unit the Kings have in place, let alone how their efforts will bear out on the court this upcoming season.

On that note, I must add: Ja-Freaking-Vale McGee.

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