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If you can recall a more combustible season from an otherwise anonymous team, at least from the modern era, I’d love to hear it. Anything to get my mind off of the 2014-15 Sacramento Kings. [ Follow Dunks Don't Lie on Tumblr: The best slams from all of basketball ]
The team itself may have had playoff aspirations entering the season, but those outside Sacramento (figuring that it would take around 49 wins to make the playoffs in the West) would have settled for, at the very worst, competency. This was still a mismatched roster working off of a series of lottery draft pick whiffs, trying to settle on a rotation and a cogent philosophy.
Instead, the owner and the general manager fired the team’s highly-regarded coach (thought of well by observers and franchise players alike) just after an illness to DeMarcus Cousins sent the Kings on an early-season swoon. A season that began with a 9-5 start was sent reeling once the Kings ownership group promoted Tyrone Corbin to the We’re Obviously Going to Fire This Guy After the Seasons Ends Interim Head Coach role, promising the basketball lifer that he’d have the gig for the rest of the year prior to firing him after a 7-21 run. [ Yahoo Fantasy Basketball: Sign up for a league today ]
Enter George Karl and, because the team’s owner enjoys doing this, Vlade Divac. Karl finished the Kings’ season by winning as many games as the coach that the Kings fired to start the season, Michael Malone, but it took him six more games to do as much. Meanwhile, Divac ascended from what felt like a ceremonial role as team ambassador to a fully-fledged gig as the team’s personnel chief. This was news to the incumbent GM and his staff, who fled in Divac’s wake.
Yet again, the Kings were left with a coach that was hired prior to the personnel director, which has never worked in Kings history and rarely works in NBA annals. The owner of the outfit squelched any goodwill he earned for helping keep the Kings in Sacramento by valuing name guys over substantive decision-makers, digging deeper holes for one of the NBA’s saddest franchises along the way. Good thing the name guys, despite what looks to be an ongoing disconnect, have potential.
George Karl will, eventually, burn your team. He will clash with your front office, possibly your owner, and he will pee your players off. Before he gets to that point – and that point will come – he will sand down the edges and help your team win. He will think on the fly, call appropriate sets, and he will motivate. Karl has never been good at running teams with heavy expectations, but if you’re looking for an “it’s just us against the world, men”-sort of leader, he’s your guy. And the Kings need that guy right now because, well, nobody trusts this roster.
Vlade Divac, meanwhile, knows how to run organizations. He might come off as the affable 7-footer that smoked as a Laker and flopped as a King, but he can put things in order. Just a few months after moving up the ranks in Sacramento he managed to put Karl – a man who is fighting to earn the record for most coaching wins in NBA history, mind you – in line after Karl said some accurate-yet-pointless things on record about DeMarcus Cousins, before pushing to trade his star center .
As a result, everything is cool now ; with Karl even apologizing for discussing any King (read: DeMarcus bloody Cousins) in those terms: “But it’s my responsibility to be smart enough to not say things like that,” Karl continued. “So I did apologize because I thought that was the only thing, maybe some other things, but really the only thing that got us separated was that comment that then everybody wrote the we’re going to trade [Cousins].”
“To be honest with you, I apologized to DeMarcus for making the trade comment that I’ve never coached a player that’s untradeable,” Karl told Christensen. “That was wrong for me to say, because you all (the media) took it and blew it up into crazy.”
Yeah, George. The media. Because Woj totally makes stuff up, and because we totally didn’t say you were right in pointing out that any player is just about available for the right price before slamming you for going public with those thoughts – the actual thing you apologized for. The media.
Can we talk about basketball now? 2014-15 season in 140 characters or less: lol
Did the summer help at all? In the sense that it mostly kept George Karl and DeMarcus Cousins away from each other, and away from the media, yes. We apologize for clinging to the soap opera aspect of this, but players and coaches rarely come more combustible than DeMarcus Cousins and George Karl, and Karl tried to get Cousins traded against the wishes of his bosses . He’s been there since February. Beyond that, the Kings did truly shore up a bit. We hope.
Rookie Willie Cauley-Stein was reported to look somewhat winded and zaftig during the first week of camp, but if he’s able to translate that “I’m Shane Battier, but I’m also 7-feet tall”-game to the pros, he could be the perfect frontcourt pairing with Cousins eventually.
Signee Marco Belinelli has fared well on teams with both great and poor spacing (the Kings figure to be the latter), while Kosta Koufos remains as good as reserve centers come.
Meanwhile, the team signed heady types like Quincy Acy, Luc Mbah a Moute, and swingman Caron Butler while retaining Omri Casspi (who enjoyed an NBA rebirth under Karl last season). These aren’t boffo names, but if Karl and Divac are working in concert this could settle into a solid enough rotation.
Go-to offseason acquisition: Anytime your team acquires Rajon Rondo, it’s going to be Rajon Rondo. We’ve prattled on endlessly about the Cousins and Karl dynamic, and for good reason. With that established, Rajon Rondo is going to have the ball in his hands this year. He’ll be directing Karl’s offense and running – George hopes – Karl’s plays. He’ll have an entire training camp, a purportedly healthy knee, and a learned knowledge of the roster to lean on. In short, Rajon Rondo has no excuses.
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The team itself may have had playoff aspirations entering the season, but those outside Sacramento (figuring that it would take around 49 wins to make the playoffs in the West) would have settled for, at the very worst, competency. This was still a mismatched roster working off of a series of lottery draft pick whiffs, trying to settle on a rotation and a cogent philosophy.
Instead, the owner and the general manager fired the team’s highly-regarded coach (thought of well by observers and franchise players alike) just after an illness to DeMarcus Cousins sent the Kings on an early-season swoon. A season that began with a 9-5 start was sent reeling once the Kings ownership group promoted Tyrone Corbin to the We’re Obviously Going to Fire This Guy After the Seasons Ends Interim Head Coach role, promising the basketball lifer that he’d have the gig for the rest of the year prior to firing him after a 7-21 run. [ Yahoo Fantasy Basketball: Sign up for a league today ]
Enter George Karl and, because the team’s owner enjoys doing this, Vlade Divac. Karl finished the Kings’ season by winning as many games as the coach that the Kings fired to start the season, Michael Malone, but it took him six more games to do as much. Meanwhile, Divac ascended from what felt like a ceremonial role as team ambassador to a fully-fledged gig as the team’s personnel chief. This was news to the incumbent GM and his staff, who fled in Divac’s wake.
Yet again, the Kings were left with a coach that was hired prior to the personnel director, which has never worked in Kings history and rarely works in NBA annals. The owner of the outfit squelched any goodwill he earned for helping keep the Kings in Sacramento by valuing name guys over substantive decision-makers, digging deeper holes for one of the NBA’s saddest franchises along the way. Good thing the name guys, despite what looks to be an ongoing disconnect, have potential.
George Karl will, eventually, burn your team. He will clash with your front office, possibly your owner, and he will pee your players off. Before he gets to that point – and that point will come – he will sand down the edges and help your team win. He will think on the fly, call appropriate sets, and he will motivate. Karl has never been good at running teams with heavy expectations, but if you’re looking for an “it’s just us against the world, men”-sort of leader, he’s your guy. And the Kings need that guy right now because, well, nobody trusts this roster.
Vlade Divac, meanwhile, knows how to run organizations. He might come off as the affable 7-footer that smoked as a Laker and flopped as a King, but he can put things in order. Just a few months after moving up the ranks in Sacramento he managed to put Karl – a man who is fighting to earn the record for most coaching wins in NBA history, mind you – in line after Karl said some accurate-yet-pointless things on record about DeMarcus Cousins, before pushing to trade his star center .
As a result, everything is cool now ; with Karl even apologizing for discussing any King (read: DeMarcus bloody Cousins) in those terms: “But it’s my responsibility to be smart enough to not say things like that,” Karl continued. “So I did apologize because I thought that was the only thing, maybe some other things, but really the only thing that got us separated was that comment that then everybody wrote the we’re going to trade [Cousins].”
“To be honest with you, I apologized to DeMarcus for making the trade comment that I’ve never coached a player that’s untradeable,” Karl told Christensen. “That was wrong for me to say, because you all (the media) took it and blew it up into crazy.”
Yeah, George. The media. Because Woj totally makes stuff up, and because we totally didn’t say you were right in pointing out that any player is just about available for the right price before slamming you for going public with those thoughts – the actual thing you apologized for. The media.
Can we talk about basketball now? 2014-15 season in 140 characters or less: lol
Did the summer help at all? In the sense that it mostly kept George Karl and DeMarcus Cousins away from each other, and away from the media, yes. We apologize for clinging to the soap opera aspect of this, but players and coaches rarely come more combustible than DeMarcus Cousins and George Karl, and Karl tried to get Cousins traded against the wishes of his bosses . He’s been there since February. Beyond that, the Kings did truly shore up a bit. We hope.
Rookie Willie Cauley-Stein was reported to look somewhat winded and zaftig during the first week of camp, but if he’s able to translate that “I’m Shane Battier, but I’m also 7-feet tall”-game to the pros, he could be the perfect frontcourt pairing with Cousins eventually.
Signee Marco Belinelli has fared well on teams with both great and poor spacing (the Kings figure to be the latter), while Kosta Koufos remains as good as reserve centers come.
Meanwhile, the team signed heady types like Quincy Acy, Luc Mbah a Moute, and swingman Caron Butler while retaining Omri Casspi (who enjoyed an NBA rebirth under Karl last season). These aren’t boffo names, but if Karl and Divac are working in concert this could settle into a solid enough rotation.
Go-to offseason acquisition: Anytime your team acquires Rajon Rondo, it’s going to be Rajon Rondo. We’ve prattled on endlessly about the Cousins and Karl dynamic, and for good reason. With that established, Rajon Rondo is going to have the ball in his hands this year. He’ll be directing Karl’s offense and running – George hopes – Karl’s plays. He’ll have an entire training camp, a purportedly healthy knee, and a learned knowledge of the roster to lean on. In short, Rajon Rondo has no excuses.
Continue reading...
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