Sacramento Kings: Not Qualified To Be Jesters

It is generally more interesting than one would assume to analyze and observe the Sacramento Kings. As a team, they’ve never reached the peaks that lend perspective to their valleys. While fans in Chicago, Los Angeles, Boston, Detroit, Miami, Houston, San Antonio, Dallas, Philadelphia, and now the Bay area are often engaged in debates about championships and Finals appearances over third of a century, Sacramentans are left to debate the outcome of a conference finals that slipped into memory over a decade ago. Many of the notable names that have been on the back of a Kings uniform had their high water marks in colors other than purple, before or after their time with the team.

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These are unfortunate realities for a team which has been mired in a never-ending struggle to ascend in a talent-saturated, organizationally developed Western Conference. Even in years where the Buss family is left to pick up the pieces, even in years where San Antonio re-tools before its next periodic championship run, even in years where the Jerry Sloan’s of the world walk back into history’s tunnel, even in years where small market teams appear unlikely to make playoff rumblings, the Kings have spent a decade on the periphery of the spotlight.

As of late, the team has begun to wander into the spotlight for the wrong reasons. The beginning of the decade saw concern over whether the team would move here or there, a subsequent change of ownership, and that group’s attempts to grapple with how to manage their new asset. Even with a once-in-a-generation All-Star center, and even with one of the most successful coaches in NBA history, the Kings have spent the last several months spinning their tires in the muck of organizational contortion. The era where developments come in 140 characters or less has stripped the veneer from even the most oak-strong pieces of the team.

Let’s get one thing straight, though: the Kings’ struggles are not as entertaining as we can sometimes pretend. The largely manufactured entertainment factor whipped up over the last year is certainly derived from real pratfalls, but the sudden mainstreaming of the team’s strife plays up too much of a narrative of irrational beings, maliciously or ineptly sabotaging the team’s present and future.

This week, basketball news was slow enough for this to be considered an entertaining take on the team’s off-season moves:

This is what NBA (and, largely, sports) media can often delve into: hyperbole and cross-media shoehorning. The concept here, that the 2015-2016 Kings are a nightmare brigade of degenerate and devious personalities, is not only not as funny as Grantland’s Jason Gallagher (the video’s creator) may think, but it’s not even as remarkable.

There is likely some self-knowing in this little media nugget, as it encapsulates the very sudden fervor that has overtaken Kings speculation since reports surfaced about George Karl and DeMarcus Cousins operating at a high coefficient of friction. Those who spend most of their time thinking about the more marquee names in basketball suddenly have a reason to talk about the other non-LA Californian squad. The story, which saw two big basketball personalities shooting rubber bullets through agents and front office conversations, gives people an easy entrée into the team’s narrative.

I’m not offended at such ham-fisted content, but I’d like to offer a scarier analysis of the Kings than comparing them to super villains. The Kings’ problems are actually very mundane.

Why is that unsettling? Because there is nothing terribly remarkable about the Kings at this point. Shaky ownership? Always a factor in a handful of NBA franchises – even playoff standbys like the Clippers and Hawks over the last couple years. A gruff and opinionated coach not getting along swimmingly with star players? That’s the oldest story in the league: Mo Cheeks and Matt Barnes; Darrell Walker and Tracy McGrady; the aforementioned Jerry Sloan and Deron Williams; Mike Dunleavy, Sr. and Baron Davis; Pat Riley and Shaquille O’Neal; Larry Brown and Michael Jordan (surely you remember). Players heading into a new market after an uncomfortable exit from their last? Try The Career of Dwight Howard. Or Bill Walton. Or Gilbert Arenas. Or Kwame Brown.

Here’s the real story: the Kings in their summer 2015 iteration are not a Suicide Squad, they’re just hired help. Caron Butler, Marco Belinelli, Kosta Koufos, Jason Anderson, Omri Casspi, Quincy Acy, Seth Curry, Duje Dukan, and Willie Cauley-Stein are not what you’d call villains, let alone super.

https://twitter.com/boogiecousins/status/628672259935354880

Of course, most of the narrative of the Kings as a motley crew of ne’er-do-wells comes from four men: Rondo, Cousins, Karl, owner Vivek Ranadive, and team vice president Vlade Divac. The two most in conflict, Cousins and Karl, appear to be mending fences. Because they are both talented basketball professionals with an eye on their mutual success, not supervillains. Ranadive appears to have ceded the reins of team-shaping to his new VP. Because he is a bright and remarkable executive who appears to be learning from his early experiences, and because he has a new arena to think about. In turn, Divac is making trades and acquisitions based on what little he has to move, and what little experience he’s had in the NBA since retiring as a player. Not a supervillain, just a man who is trying, bless his soul. Rajon Rondo is donning a Kings uniform simply to remain employed, not to vanquish another respected head coach.

So yes, the scary thing about the Kings is not that they offer a wild ride of intrigue and ill will, but that despite all their best efforts, they are the longest of shots for an eighth seed, that they have already shipped off a number of draft picks to reach their current makeup (including their 2016 first-rounder), and that they have Cousins and Karl under a long contractual cloud cover. They can hope the latter most factor doesn’t create too much thunder, but Ranadive and Divac are simply working not to raise the Kings’ roof, but simply to make sure their floor is higher.

This is a lot of wordage to devote to cooling off a harmless little hot take and an amusing video, but it’s important to emphasize not the banality of evil in this case, but the banality of mediocrity.

So to the best of the West, keep this in mind: the Kings aren’t gonna kill you, they’re just trying not be really, really… bad.

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