Trading your star player during the all-star game is like telling your kid that you and your wife are getting divorced right before he blows out the candles at his birthday party. There's an unwritten code and Vlade just sorta violated it.
Let's not ascribe adjectives usually reserved for war heroes and cancer patients to a guy who hurriedly pushed a trade through before his Warriors fan boss could change his mind.
Actually, a lot of trades are put together during the all star break. I mean logically it makes sense. All the GM's in the league are in the same place at the same time. It's just that the trades usually are announced a few days later leading up to the trade deadline. Apparently Vlade felt that the deal he had might be in jeopardy if he waited, so he pulled the trigger. This actually breaks down into two discussions. One is whether Cousins should or should not be traded. The other is whether Vlade did a good or bad job of going through the process of trading Cousins.
I won't get into the first one because it's too much of a personality contest. But I think we can all agree that how Vlade went about accomplishing Cousins Trade could have been done much better. My problem is that we don't have all the details of what went on behind closed doors. Much has been made of Vlade lying to Cousins. Obviously if he told Cousins he wasn't going to trade him, then he lied to him. But maybe he wasn't lying to him when he said it. Maybe he mean't it at the time, and then minds changed afterwards.
Here's what I know, and most of it is second hand, but from people that I respect. There was a meeting between Cousins, Vlade, and Vivek, and others in Kings management. They discussed giving Cousins a max deal and basically told him that they had no intention of trading him. During the meeting they said one of the requirements for Cousins was to continue to improve his demeanor on court, and controlling his emotions. A few days after the meeting, the Kings beat the Warriors, and after the game Cousins got into it with a Warrior fan in the stands as he was leaving the floor, and then cursed out another Warriors fan outside the locker room and flipped him the bird. He also promptly went and got three quick technicals and got suspended for a game.
Bear in mind, all this happened after a meeting where Cousins promised to continue improving on controlling his emotions. My guess is, that this is the straw that broke the camels back. Your on the verge of signing a player to about 40 million dollars a year for five years, and you can't trade him if you desire to do so, until he finishes the first year of his new contract. That's a lot of money folks, and I know it's easy to spend other peoples money, but if it doesn't work out, the franchise is in deep trouble. It's not easy to trade a player that's making that amount of money.
I'm not going to get caught up in whether Cousins should have been traded or not. It's all subjective, and the results will play out over the next few years. To me, it's now water under the bridge, and I'm moving on from it. I'am willing to discuss the process that Vlade went through, and why he ended up caught in the mess he's in right now. I don't think Vlade and Vivek were ever on the same page when it came to Cousins. I think Vlade has wanted to trade Cousins from the get go. Not because he didn't like Cousins, but because Cousins style of play didn't fit the style of basketball Vlade wanted to bring to the Kings. And, Cousins was an asset that could bring back good value. Especially at that time.
I believe Vivek was sincere when he said he wanted to build the team around Cousins, so Vlade did his best to accommodate him. Thus the stupid trade with Philly, which Vlade thought was the only way he could accumulate enough cap space to get the players to build a win now team around Cousins. I've always felt that building a team around Cousins was a good idea. Not the only idea, but non the less, a good one. Where I had a problem was thinking you could wave your magic wand and do it overnight. That was the bad idea. The win now at any future cost to the franchise idea. But it is what it is, and all the bitching in the world isn't going to change it.
Vlade has some smart people around him, and I think if he's allowed to listen to them without Vivek meddling, he can get this franchise headed back in the right direction. Big if though. By the way, Vlade is a charming guy, but when it comes to explaining trades or signings, he needs a good spokesman to handle that. English is his second language, and at times he gets himself into trouble with lack of clarity.
Anyway, in short, I think what we had here, was the top two people in the organization wern't on the same page. Vlade wanted to trade Cousins and Vivek didn't. Suddenly because of the Warrior incident, Vivek got angry and changed his mind. Vlade got to the all star game, and desperately wanted to get a deal done before Vivek changed his mind. He previously had a deal with the Pel's that included more 1st round picks, but after they spoke to Cousins agent, who wouldn't guarantee that Cuz would resign with them, they withdrew some of the offer. At that point, Vlade was afraid of not taking an offer for fear of getting an even worse one, or of Vivek having a change of heart.
All speculation on my part, but it's based on reading a lot of articles and listening to a ton of podcasts. So take it for what it's worth. It doesn't excuse anything, but maybe gives you some insights as to the why and how it happened.
