He's probably deleted the tweets by now but Marcos Breton went on this crazy drunken Twitter rant about the Kings a few months back. It was funny weird and sad all at once. It is hard for me to take him seriously since then.
It is personal with this guy and seems rooted in jealousy. He has this two-bit job and the guys he writes about don't.
One thing I know about success is you have to go through failure to get there. You don't avoid failure. Failure occurs on the path to success. So in the case of Vivek this is what he is experiencing as an owner. It is hard for me to fault a guy for being passionate and earnest about wanting his team to win even when he goes about the wrong way by meddling and impatience.
He's a smart guy and he will learn. He won't have build a 4B company if he didn't learn from adversity.
It is easy to lampoon the team is inept and incompetent and etcetera but the bottom line to me is that the Kings placed their bet on Karl have more left in the tank at age 64 following two cancers.....and there was nothing left in the tank. He's not a leader and this collection of talent needs one. It goes to show there are no certainties with players or coaches.
Karl has a clean bill of health (as far as I know) but the energy and the vigor is not there as anyone can see and this lack of zest and fire spreads through the team.
His stubbornness is detriment too related specifically to favoring veterans (Marco, Koufos) over hustle guys (Acy, Seth, Willie). This was forecastable based on his previous stops. But just like every player coaches have weakness and this was (one of) his.
The ACL injury with Rondo took away his lateral mobility. Rondo regained his burst of acceleration North and South but NOT East and West so all the defensive schemes Karl can institute are being executed with this inherent flaw.
(I know this from experience. I busted my ACL and am back to the athlete I was but I don't move side-to-side as well. It is not an issue of strength. It is an innervation issue where reaction time is slower.)
Then you have Marco who is actively helping the team lose games. Then you have Boogie who is prone to moping and getting discouraged and expending energy inefficiently and taking too many shots and resting on defense.
Add it up and you have 21-31 team. You fix this mess by (1) trading Marco for value pre-deadline (2) trading Rudy for value pre-deadline (3) firing Karl the day after the season ends (4) listening to grandfather offers for Boogie this summer (not actively look to trade him but don't hang up the phone) and building around Willie.
If a team wants to talk about trading the #1 pick in the draft and a young player for Boogie I am listening to that. Ben Simmons and a young star? That would pique my interest.
Here's your first problem. You make too much sense! Stop it! Your second problem, related to the first, is that your being objective, and looking at the big picture, instead of the now. To most fans, it's the now that matters. Always try and remember that we live in an instant gratification society. Tomorrow is for old people and I'm never getting old. OK, I exaggerate a bit, but I agree with a lot of what you have to say. Especially your analysis, if not your conclusions.
I think I've rewatched more Kings games this season than any other. Despite that, I've found it very difficult to nail down what's wrong to a just a couple of things. Oh I can come up with generalizations. Such as, our three point defense is terrible. That's a given, but when you watch a game and try to figure out why, you come away frustrated, because there's a multitude of reasons. My general conclusion is that this team is totally screwed up. There are players that play well, maybe better than well on both ends of the floor, and then they come back a game later, and play as though they're in highschool. Is that totally on the coach? Well, they do say the buck stops here.
If it were just that simple. Yeah, I know, Mike Malone would have won a championship if given the chance to continue. Hey, maybe, who the hell knows. But I doubt it. If we were to throw away the first eight games of this season, or only rely on our record in January, Karl wouldn't look so bad either. Actually, when you think about it, Karl has had an uphill battle from the get go. Cousins loved playing for Malone. At least up until Malone was fired. But he had to be brought screaming and yelling to play for Karl. Not a good way to start a season. I actually thought it might work, but I think it's clear that it won't. So it would appear that at some point, Karl will be gone. But, does that mean championship here we come?
Here is the question that everyone should be asking themselves. When you look at the current roster, and take into consideration of each players ability, do you see a championship team? Not today, but in the future, and if not, what would have to be done to make it so? The premise has been that if we just put the right players around Cousins, we'll be a contender for a championship. OK, who are those players, and how do we acquire them? Malone aside, who is the coach that will lead us to the promised land? Instead of being negative to everything Kings related, tell me how to fix it. I can howl at the moon all night, and the next night, it's still there.
Now this is just my opinion, so its worth what you paid for it. But I think this team is so far away from a championship with it's current roster that god wouldn't attempt to coach it. And if I'm right, then how do you fix it, and please don't tell me to trade McLemore for and all star SG. Unless you find a drunk GM sitting on the steps outside a casino in Las Vegas, your not going to get something for nothing. At the moment, we have no draft picks, and we have very few assets. And the assets we do have, no one wants to trade. According to the rumor mills, the players the Kings have that have been brought up in trade inquiry's, are Collison, Gay, McLemore, and Cousins. Makes sense, no?
As much as I hate to say this, it might be time to move in another direction. I think Vivek's biggest mistake, and he's made many, but his latest mistake was that he wanted Vlade to make the team into a playoff team going into the new arena. Unless your real lucky, shortcuts never work in life, and in the NBA trying to shortcut your way to the top can be fatal, and set your team back years. So our only two options at this point are, stay with the status quo, and try to add a piece or two as money and luck allow, or blow up the team and start in a new direction. I will admit, that despite my age, I'm leaning hard toward the latter. And I think either option could be sold to the public going into the new arena.
I'm not going to go into why I feel the way I do because then this post would be five or six pages long, and I'm sure many of you wouldn't agree with me anyway. I'll sum it up this way, and let you fill in the blank areas. Everything that's thought about or written about relating to this team, both positive and negative revolves around one person. DeMarcus Cousins! Whether the coach is the right coach or not, depends on whether Cousins likes the coach. Whether we resign Rondo or not, maybe depends on how it will affect Cousins. Whether we trade Gay or not, depends on how it might affect Cousins. We won't sell the "Year of the Monkey" t-shirts in the Kings store, because Cousins found that a tradition that goes back 5000 years is now suddenly racist. The inmates are running the asylum folks, and that always leads to chaos. Strangely enough, I don't blame Cousins. Don't get me wrong, he has some immature issues that need changing. But I blame Vivek for letting it get this far. Unfortunately, I think it's too late to turn it around.
). You don't need Cousins to be a good team. Also I find the "for fans of the NBA game" kinda ironic on a board where Kobe is hated and people want to see him just retire and stay home from the start of the season, or fans who were overjoyed when he had that achilles injury when the Lakers were gunning for the playoffs (which pretty much spelled the end of his dominant career). Anyway, trade Cousins or don't trade Cousins, I don't really care. I don't like DeMarcus Cousins anyway, so there's no way I stop being a Kings fan if he's traded. Just find a way to win games for a start eh? We can talk about playoffs and regrets that we ended up capping ourselves as first round exits when we actually get there or when Cousins is actually winning championships elsewhere or whatever other doomsday scenario you can dream up.
