Although I've come to enjoy Cuz as a person and a player, and he's obviously an incredible talent, I'm not a true believer that Cuz is the only path forward for the Kings to have success.
after nearly ten years of ineptitude, futility, and self-sabotage, i'm continually amazed at the hubris of some who seem to believe that the next franchise player is just around the corner. the kings could have a top-3 pick in the next five drafts (hell, in the next ten drafts) and still fail to come away with an honest-to-goodness franchise talent. this team has had a half-decade to get it right with big cuz, and they've blown it so spectacularly that i still cannot for the life of me understand why demarcus hasn't demanded a trade yet. not one soul would blame him, even if we were to take his shaky reputation into consideration. if sacramento weren't such a sad little basketball backwater, we'd be seeing "free boogie" signs all across the nba...
now, from a semantic standpoint, you're certainly right that demarcus isn't "the only path forward for the kings to have success," but i can hardly imagine a better one or a more likely one, and i'll offer a
really simple solution for forging that path to success with demarcus cousins on board: all you have to do is
stop shooting yourself in the foot every other month. the number of self-inflicted f***-ups that have occurred in the last two years is absolutely
staggering. here's just ten that i can think of off the top of my head...
1) overpaying a past-his-prime carl landry. 2) failing to get an adequate return on tyreke evans via sign and trade. 3) blowing back-to-back lottery picks on sg's who weren't nba-ready in a half-assed attempt to mimic the warriors' outside shooting dynamic. 4) vindictively firing a lead scout for disagreeing about the second of those two draft picks. 5) failing to get
anything in return for isaiah thomas via sign and trade. 6) circumventing the head coach's authority by attempting (and then failing!) to poach alvin gentry away from another team in order to place him on the kings' bench in the likely event that he could eventually be promoted to head coach. 7) vindictively firing the team's head coach anyway despite the fact that he was achieving legitimate success, convincing his team to buy into a defensive philosophy, and forging a strong relationship with the team's franchise center. 8) tagging his lead assistant as the "interim" head coach only to institute him as the "permanent" head coach weeks before firing him altogether in order to hire an aging replacement with health concerns and a massive ego who is likely to clash with the team's franchise center. 9) actively creating disharmony within the ranks of the front office in the most pathetic of power plays. 10) perpetually leaking stories to the press in the contemporary nba's least successful attempt at damage control ever. the list just goes on and on and on and on. none among the world's greatest PR representatives could have made this sh** palatable for even the least discerning of kings fans...
if the new regime had been merely
average in their charge of rebuilding this franchise, rather than woefully, selfishly, and vindictively incompetent, then i'd say you could refer to some around these parts as "drama queens." but it's as if some kings fans have become so accustomed to disappointment that they can no longer recognize just how bad things have been. with nothing more than
adequate performances from this franchise's decision-makers, perhaps we wouldn't be sitting here wondering how much more demarcus cousins will take before he decides a trade demand is the only reasonable avenue left for him to pursue. but we weren't fortunate enough to have adequate decision-makers arrive in sacramento after years of maloofery had finally come to an end; we got stuck with chris mullin, pete d'alessandro, and an owner who couldn't look more out of his depth if he were riding a kids' bicycle with the training wheels still on...
thankfully, vlade divac isn't an idiot. as he was quoted in ailene voison's most recent piece, "Two plus two is still four. Right now our focus has to be on drafting wisely, finding good talent, and putting together a team that has good chemistry." there is reason to hope that something can be salvaged from the past two years' worth of shocking idiocy, but personally, i'm not keen to wait around another half-decade or more for this team to build a winner if they can't figure out how to not sabotage the best chance they have at success. a franchise that completely squanders the talent of a once-in-a-generation big man (and one with the potential to be a future hall of famer) does not, in my estimation, deserve another path forward to that success...
