I believe that with Tyreke, there was more to it. I know this is an unpopular view, but I believe that they didn't think Tyreke fit into what they were trying to do. D'Alessandro said that he wanted to change the culture of the team, and what he wanted was a less selfish team that moved the ball along with playing good team defense. Malone when asked about the changes that needed to take place, he restated almost exactly what D'Alessando had said. Then yesterday, Mullin basically said the same thing again. Unselfish play! More passing! Keep everyone on the team involved and a part of whats going on. Little or no isolation play. When you take everything they've said into consideration, and you look at Tyreke's strengths, its easy to see that they didn't think he fit what they wanted to do. Then when you add his big salary on top of that, it was probably a no brain'er for them. Unpopular on this forum for sure, but if you take the emotion out of it, you can see their point. Even if you don't agree with it.
The truth is, that if you wanted to move Tyreke and get equal value for him, it should have been done before the trade deadline. Unfortunately, they didn't have control of the team then. I think they're looking at the team the same way you just looked at it. It hasn't been able to win even 30 games since, it feels like forever. So your the new GM and coach! How do you get excited about keeping all the core players that haven't been able to win anything. You probably don't, and so now you have to decide who you want to keep and who you want to get rid of. Its easy for us as fans to say this player or that player has to go. Its not that easy to accomplish that. You don't want to just give money away if you don't have to. The stretch provision is a nice tool, but it doesn't totally clear you of all the financial responsibility, and your still paying a player for doing nothing. I think its a tool that you use only if you need extra space for another deal. I don't think you do deals just to do deals.
I think they want to rebuild through the draft, and by bringing in players that for the most part fit the type of team they want to build.. There aren't many perfect players that fit on both sides of the ball. Case in point, James Johnson. Good defender, but terribly selfish, and poorly skilled player on the offensive side of the ball. He might have been tolerable if had stayed out of the way and not been a ball stopper. How much of that was Keith Smarts fault is unkown. Point is, the time for bringing in other teams rejects in the thought that just maybe we'll strike gold because a light suddenly goes off his head should be over. Its time to make good draft choices, and bring in proven players that know how to play the game. Its one thing to spend the time and money to develop your young players, but its quite another to try and develop another teams failure that's been in the league for 5 or 6 years already. Only contending teams with an already established core can afford those moves. Example: Its one thing for the Miami Heat to bring in a Michael Beasley, and quite another for a team like the Kings to bring him in.
If Cousins is to be our rock. Our foundation player, then we need to build from the ground up with pieces that fit the best around him. Helping to make Cousins a great player, an all star player won't make us a winner, but it will give us credibility and be a huge step in that direction. As the movie said, build it and they will come. Right now, we're just starting, so its going to take time. Its in an entirely different direction, and some may not like that direction. But the fact remains, that the direction we were going in, wasn't adding up to winning seasons. For the last 4 or 5 years, we started every season hoping we could just win 35 games or so. When you stop and think about it, that's pathetic. So I'm not saying that this group is going to be successful. That remains to be seen. But one thing is for sure, what we've been doing hasn't been successful. So I'm willing to wait and see.