Let me just start by saying that this post is not intended to change any opinions, I'm sure it won't. I doubt anybody's on here will, we all have our sides and disagreements just tend to make us stick to them even more, human nature. I just want to say my piece here.
Another thing, this is not a point putting all the blame on Cousins and saying that we should keep George Karl, we shouldn't. I think Karl has had a great career, but perhaps did his worst coaching job here, maybe he didn't know what he was getting into. He did not utilize his players correctly at all, we don't need to be NBA coaches ourselves to see that. Him leaving is probably the best for everyone at this point.
Now onto Cousins. I'm taking the unpopular side, I don't believe we will ever be a winning team with him and I don't know if any team will. Best case we sneak into an 8th seed in a bad conference, but I don't care about that. I want a championship someday and I don't think Cousins will ever get one of those unless it's late in his career and he gets a cheap one as an end of bench player. As a premier player you need to have a certain character to win championships. As a premier player you must be a leader, someone the team respects and wants to be more like. He makes his teammates better on the court with his play and he gives his teammates confidence that when the game is on the line or when things are going bad that he will always be there, keep his cool, and make a big play that gets the win or will turn things around. With a superstar player you know that it's just a matter of time before they turn it on. Off the court a superstar motivates his teammates, can be positive or negative, but motivating nonetheless. He makes his teammates believe that greatness is coming, they just need to put in the same work that he does and give the same effort.
Cousins is the opposite of this and his teammates know this, in fact I would say the entire league knows it. He doesn't make his teammates better, sure he can pass well for a big man, he will get assists, but he will end up with even more turnovers and fouls. Do you think his teammates think he will keep his cool when things are going bad? Not a chance! He glares at the refs and gives up an easy transition basket because they miss one foul call, might even be the right no-call. His teammates can't rely on him to always be there, quite literally. Basketball is a game of runs, during any of those opponent's runs Cousins might get ejected from the game for complaining or at the very least commit a couple of stupid fouls and be out of the game for awhile. What about off the court? He motivates no one, positively or negatively. He blames and he complains, so there is negativity, it's just not motivating, it's just annoying and destructive. Sure, during a winning streak things are all good, but as soon as something bad happens it all falls off the rails. Take a look at this 5 game winning streak, everything was cool, everyone was getting along, Cousins and Karl included. Then came one double overtime loss to the Hornets, it was a good game, they should be proud of the effort, instead this team quit. Cousins is this team's best player, it is up to him and to some extent Rondo to make sure that didn't happen, they failed.
Let's look at some of the statistics, I'm going to use the ones Bricklayer used in his post as an example. I see where you are going with this, but I think these things can be interpreted in a number of ways. This really doesn't tell me how great Cousins is, it does tell me how great Curry, James, and Westbrook are though. It also tells me how good the Spurs team is, but that isn't really news. Look, every team's leading scorer is going to have a plus scoring number when they are in and a minus one when they are out. They contribute the majority of shots and points, they have the highest impact on the game. Most of a team's points will be scored with their best player on the floor, that's just basketball. We aren't debating whether Cousins is a good player, he is, he is our best player. In fact a +2.4 really isn't that impressive, we barely outscore our opponents when he is on the floor. Now the -8.3 does say something, it can say that the supporting cast is bad, which they probably are. Is it because of lack of talent though or a lack of effort? That's another discussion. Back to Cousins, bottom line, with him on the floor we are slightly better than the opponent, with him off the floor we are significantly worse. That can be said for any team's best scorer. Look at the Warriors, they are dominate with Curry on the floor, with him off of it they are almost as bad as the Kings. What does that say? Is Curry's supporting cast horrible as well? We know that isn't true.
I really think the worst thing that happened was that 9-6 start that the Kings had last year. That led a lot of people to believe that we had it all figured out, all it took was Michael Malone, he made everything work. I like Malone, I give him a lot of credit and I do think we would be in a somewhat better place this year if we had him instead of Karl, but not that different. That small sample size last year told us nothing, it was just a short part of a long season, let's not overvalue it.
This team needs a different direction, we have some good players, but we need more and I think trading Cousins can give us some of those. I don't think we will get better immediately. That rarely happens. Like when Toronto traded Rudy Gay and went from a last place team to a top 4 playoff team almost right away. I had to get that in, another topic though. Trade Cousins and give this team a full season and offseason without him and then let's talk again and see if we are truly disappointed by the results.