“If talking heads can’t help you understand the Kings, perhaps Talking Heads can…”
And you may find yourself
In a general manager’s office…
And you may find yourself…
In the City of Sacramento…
And you may find yourself…
Behind the wheel of an NBA franchise…
And you may find yourself trading DeMarcus Cousins…
For Buddy Hield and a bag of assorted sundries…
And you may ask yourself, well…
HOW DID I GET HERE???
– David Byrne, lead singer of Talking Heads, basically
The Sacramento Kings were on my short list for “other favorite teams” in the early 2000’s, when my hometown Chicago Bulls were a raging tire fire and personal favorites Chris Webber and Jason Williams — the White Chocolate one, not the manslaughter-ing one — were starring in California’s capital. I say this only to express to you that I take no great joy in the fact that things have been almost straight downhill for Sac since those days — but even with all the bad things that have happened in the intervening 15+ years, the Kings may have had their worst day yesterday.
It’s not just that moving on from DeMarcus Cousins, arguably the most talented player in the history of your franchise, strikes me as a wrong-headed move. It goes beyond the simple fact that the return the Kings received for Cousins is an insult to the phrase “pennies on the dollar,” or the more complex theory that perhaps owner Vivek Ranadive put the kibosh on a deal GM Vladé Divac preferred because he has an unfortunate and unfounded basketball man-crush on Buddy Hield.
If you’re a fan of the Kings, the problem is that since Ranadive became the majority owner, there has been exactly one positive development that suggests he might have a chance at doing well, and it has nothing to do with basketball — it’s the successful construction of the Golden 1 Center, the Kings’ new home in downtown Sacramento.
Outside of succeeding in keeping the local team local, Vivek has done nothing to encourage a once-proud fan base, and Monday was a particularly low point in that respect. If there had been one core philosophy, one hill that he seemed determined to die on, it was the retention of DeMarcus Cousins. The unceremonious dismissal of the Kings’ wildly mercurial (and arguably only) talent makes it official — the Kings have no plan, no philosophy, no direction… and now no franchise player.
When I think about where it all went wrong, I want to go back about 3.5 years to when Vivek took over — well, actually, if I really want to think about where it started going wrong there are a lot of earlier points but I only have so much time so bear with me here. Upon taking control, he immediately dismissed a well-liked but perhaps slightly over matched head coach in Keith Smart, in favor of Michael Malone, who at that time was considered one of if not the best assistant coach in the league.
>The idea was to give DeMarcus Cousins a respected (and relatively authoritative) voice in his head coach, and to build up from what was essentially nothing around a big man who had already had some issues in terms of getting along with coaches and teammates. That idea looked ugly at the beginning, but as time went on began to show some dividends — after a down year in 2012-13, Cousins saw a significant bump in scoring, rebounding and blocked shots, and the Kings showed some life down the stretch (though not a lot of W’s).
The following year, the Kings got off to a great start — started 5-1, then 9-6, and then DeMarcus got sick with viral meningitis. Frankly there’s no interpretation for this besides bad luck. It sucks. It’s unfortunate. It sent the team into a tailspin that saw them lose 7 of 9 games… and then Vivek fired Mike Malone.
If you ask, Ranadive will tell you about how GM Pete D’Alessandro — who himself would be gone by the end of the season — had been trying to fire Malone since he was hired (and by the way, Vivek hired both guys all by himself, Malone shortly before D’Alessandro) but it doesn’t take a genius to realize that you should probably hold onto the coach who has had more of an effect on your franchise player in six months than anyone else had in the previous three or four seasons. Perhaps more to the point, the team had been relatively successful and clearly was making progress under Malone and that progress was derailed solely and obviously by the absence of the aforementioned franchise player.
Beyond the obvious idiocy of the move, though, it was a signal that there was a distinct lack of a concrete overall philosophy. It was a frightening indication that perhaps there was no overarching plan for the future.
Obviously there have been countless other signs and signals, indications and inferences to take; to name a few — the unloading of Isaiah Thomas, now an MVP contender, for next-to-nothing… the hiring of the obviously in-over-his-head Ty Corbin to replace Malone… the subsequent hiring of George Karl, whose high-profile clash with Cousins was as predictable as tomorrow’s sunrise… the absurd Nik Stauskas/pick swap trade that they are still dealing with fallout from and which they made ostensibly to sign key free agents like Marco Bellinelli and Rajon Rondo… the choice to empower a cabal of Kings’ legends under Vladé Divac to run the franchise despite a distinct lack of front office experience… ok, I named more than a few.
Nevertheless, in that morass of management mistakes, the dismissal of Malone stands out. It was the first time in Cousins’ career that he seemed to have a genuine relationship with a head coach, and certainly the first time that a head coach seemed to successfully demand DeMarcus’ respect. There had been concrete on-court progress as the team attempted to assemble a quality support staff around Cousins, and the franchise as a whole seemed to have a concrete direction.
The Kings, since then, have been an apparently rudderless ship — fits and starts of philosophy, adding pieces that seemed geared towards winning now, only to trade them for future assets, only to turn around and use those assets to acquire more players that might help now. Hire a win-now coach in George Karl without seeing how he feels about your win-now franchise player, who he then tries to force a trade for, only to bicker constantly with him in public AND in private and then engage in a series of “please fire me now” behaviors.
Now, here we are; the bigger question of “what in the hell are the Kings even trying to do?” remains, and in fact might be a more pressing question than ever. If you wanted to trade DeMarcus Cousins, there have been a lot of good opportunities to do so — any time over the last few years, for instance, apparently including a day or two before the trade they made when, according to GM Divac, *there was a better deal on the table!! I’m gonna go out on a limb and suggest that they could even have gotten more for Cousins three days later at the deadline, or three months later during the offseason.
To make a trade that’s been available for years and will be for another year at exactly the wrong time makes me think of Ron Burgundy talking to his dog Baxter in Anchorman — “You pooped in the refrigerator? And you at the whole wheel of cheese? How’d you do that? Heck, I’m not even mad; that’s amazing!” — and certainly won’t encourage a fan base that was already pretty discouraged.
In fact, it reinforces the one thing that has been pretty clear for the past few years: the Sacramento Kings are sailing the seas of the NBA based on the whims of the winds, not the navigational decisions of a competent captain. If David Byrne is a Kings fan, he’s likely the only one enjoying what is happening.