Under the guidance of Sacramento Kings legend and current VP of basketball operations and GM Vlade Divac, the Kings have assembled the most talented roster they have had in nearly a decade. So why are so many expecting the worst out of Sacramento this season? It’s complicated.
The long-term consequences for how Divac went about creating enough cap space to acquire the likes of Rajon Rondo, Kosta Koufos, Marco Belinelli, Caron Butler, Seth Curry, James Anderson, Quincy Acy and Duje Dukan all while retaining Omri Casspi in a single offseason remain to be seen. But to say the trade Divac made was controversial would be an understatement.
The now-infamous dump of salaries, a prospect and draft picks that sent Nik Stauskas, Carl Landry, Jason Thompson and a slew of future draft considerations to Philadelphia for the rights to international prospects Arturas Gudaitis and Luka Mitrovic will undoubtedly be referenced in any long-term look at the Kings, and with good reason. This team is better than it has been for quite some time, but at what cost? Only time will tell.
The Kings still have All-Star center DeMarcus Cousins, who is one statistical leap from becoming one of the five best players in the NBA. They have Rudy Gay, a woefully underrated scorer who can’t seem to shake his reputation as an inefficient chucker despite his stats suggesting otherwise.
They have George Karl, a future Hall of Famer desperately trying to chase a championship and the all-time coaching wins record. They have effective veteran role players in Casspi, Darren Collison, Koufos, Butler and Belinelli. They have promising prospects such as Willie Cauley-Stein and Ben McLemore, And they have Rajon Rondo. Yeah, Rajon Rondo.
It’s an eclectic group, from owner Vivek Ranadive to Divac to Karl to Cousins to Rondo to Cauley-Stein. They’ve embraced the Suicide Squad moniker (thank you, Jason Gallagher) because that is what this team is in spirit.
Nearly everyone is expecting some sort of Cousins-Karl explosion, a disengaged, ineffective Rondo, a poorly run front office by first-time GM Divac and a meddling owner asking his coach to play 4-on-5. Yeah, we’re still talking about that.
The Kings are trying to channel that “nobody believes in us” energy. If it works, I couldn’t imagine a more exciting team to support than these Sacramento Kings. If they flame out, I couldn’t imagine a more toxic explosion than these Sacramento Kings.
Here are just five of a possible infinite amount of things to watch in Sacramento this season. This team is going to be fascinating.
1. Can George Karl and DeMarcus Cousins co-exist?
If you asked me this question in July, at the height of the emoji war, I would have said “absolutely not,” but things have settle down considerably. The Kings have been surprisingly competent and tight-lipped since Divac told everyone to stop talking. The leaks have stopped. The jabs between Cousins and Karl through Twitter and anonymous reports have stopped. They have had their sit-down, dirty laundry airing, come-to-Jesus moment, and that relationship seems to be at a manageable place heading into training camp.
I would imagine the Cousins-Karl relationship is neither as bad as some reports have indicated nor as good as Kings fans would like it to be. It’s somewhere in the middle, and somewhere in the middle is a lot better than where it was a few months ago.
But it is something we are going to have to monitor all season. I firmly believe that winning doesn’t necessarily heal all wounds, but it applies a pretty tight Band-Aid to them. This team has to win, or it could get ugly.
2. The front office has lots of new faces, too
At the beginning of last season, the primary decision maker in Sacramento was Pete D’Alessandro. Mike Bratz was his assistant. Chris Mullin was an advisor to Vivek Ranadive. Dean Oliver was in charge of analytics. And Michael Malone was the coach.
Bratz is the only holdover from last season’s front office. Divac is the man in charge. Bratz is his assistant GM. Peja Stojakovic is the director of player personal and GM of the D-League Reno Bighorns. Former Dallas Mavericks front office mainstay and 82games.com founder Roland Beech is the VP of basketball strategy and data science. And George Karl is the coach.
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The Kings have been criticized for promoting Divac to the top of their basketball braintrust despite his limited NBA front office experience. I don’t want to say that criticism is undeserved, but the beauty of the NBA is that these questions will be answered sooner than later. If Divac is in over his head, we will find out. If he isn’t, we will find out. It will be very interesting to see how the Kings manage their roster, the trade deadline and contract negotiations over the next 12 months.
3. Do the Kings play big or small?
The Kings have a lot of work to do when training camp opens in San Diego today. Divac will hand Karl a versatile, talented but challenging roster, and it’s up to Karl to find a rotation that works, because his options will be nearly endless.
The single most intriguing lineup decision heading into camp will be whom Karl decides to start next to Cousins. There have been rumblings that Gay has been told he will be playing more power forward this season, which would result in a dynamic offensive lineup that could struggle defensively and on the glass.
Conversely, the Kings signed Koufos, one of the better interior defenders in the entire NBA. Injecting Koufos into the starting lineup would push Cousins to power forward, a position he hasn’t played since Samuel Dalembert roamed the paint in 2010. I’m in favor of the big Koufos-Cousins frontcourt. But that doesn’t necessarily complement Karl’s fast pace offensive system, and a starting lineup that includes Cousins, Koufos and the poor-shooting Rondo could have severe spacing issues.
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4. Can’t we all just get along?
We already touched on the Karl-Cousins dynamic, and while that could certainly fit under the chemistry umbrella, this is an issue that goes a lot deeper than coach and star player.
Divac signed 10 guaranteed contracts this offseason. The Kings have next to zero on-court chemistry right now simply because most of the players haven’t played with each other.
This is particularly important for a player like Rondo, a meticulous point guard with a need to learn exactly where, why, when and how his teammates like the ball. He has to get used to where Cousins likes to post up, how Belinelli and McLemore like to use off-ball screens, where they like the pass as shooters, how to find a balance between feeding two high-volume scorers in Gay and Cousins, etc.
The good news is that this team spent more time together this summer than any Kings squad in recent memory. Every other week it seems like most if not all of them were somewhere, working out. The acknowledgment from these players of how much work it’s going to take to make this come together conveys maturity we haven’t seen in Sacramento for far too long.
5. The bench should be much better
Statistically speaking, the Kings had one of the best starting lineups in the NBA last season before Collison’s campaign was cut short due to a hip flexor injury that would eventually require surgery.
This is a different roster, yes, but the core elements that made that starting lineup so effective are still in Sacramento. And unlike last season, they may have the depth to sustain solid play for 48 minutes.
We can spend hours debating how much motivational gas Rondo has left in the tank, but I would argue that the single greatest outcome of his acquisition is that it presumably pushes Collison into the Kings’ dreadful bench unit that now includes Belinelli, Cauley-Stein, Butler and Casspi. Every one of those players is markedly better than the ones they are replacing from last season.
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Tony Xypteras covers the Sacramento Kings for Sactown Royalty, SB Nation’s Sacramento Kings site. You can follow him on twitter @TonyXypteras