The Sacramento Kings remain the Sacramento Kings. They’re a dark cave. You’re constantly wheeling around thinking what you just saw was the light at the end of the tunnel. You start walking toward the light only to realize that no. That was just another thing that happened to be on fire for some reason. This happens about three or four times a year. The rest of the time it’s pretty dark. Often it’s loud.
Did you ever watch Kids in the Hall? It was on Comedy Central when I got home from school sometimes. When Kazaa was finally invented, there was one skit that I downloaded and watched over and over again until I had to delete it to save hard drive space. Childhood, right? Yeah. Lot’s of people died and there was a car crash. It reminds me of this team.
Vivek is David Foley, the masked men are NBA careers, and Kevin McDonald is the rest of the world carrying on with their lives as normal despite the madness of the Sacramento Kings that persists and keeps persisting at varying proximity. This isn’t to say that Vivek has any sort of violent tendencies let alone that he would act on them against any player, but the decisions he makes can alter a whole bunch of important things in peoples’ lives.
“Nik, you better start playing better or this is gonna happen to you.” Then the boom happens and Stauskas is on the 76ers. Playing well at times, it has to be noted.
“Isaiah, you better get along with DeMarcus or this is gonna happen to you.” Then bang. He’s on the Suns on an affordable contract before ending up on the Celtics starring in the fourth quarter as a Buzz Lightyear.
It could be said that it works the other way too. Signing with the Kings may not be death, but it’s certainly hell. That’s the thing about metaphors, they make the most sense when they don’t. Even that applies to the Sacramento Kings.
What?
I don’t know.
Through all the upheaval and dry cleaning of the last half decade, there has been one constant in DeMarcus Cousins. DeMarcus is a cousin to Schrodinger’s cat. With him on the team, the Sacramento Kings are simultaneously alive and dead. It all depends on your perspective. He’s either the cornerstone or the crack in the foundation. Kevin Arnovitz laid out the situation quite nicely.
There’s no right answer to the DeMarcus Cousins vs. Sacramento-Kings-In-General question. I mean there probably is, but we’re not going to find it before the trade deadline. Probably not after it either. Nihilistic? Sure, but Nihilism has worked well for kings in the past. King Lear was a comedy, right?
Do you trade Cousins? Well, who could you get back in return who’s nearly as good? Draft picks are nice, but the Kings aren’t so good at that. So no.
Do you keep Cousins? Well, to keep him happy, they traded away a great player on a cheap contract who is now closer to the top of the MVP conversation than DeMarcus has ever been. So no. Don’t do that either.
The cat is bored. The cat just wants something to happen. The suspense is killing it. Or it isn’t. I don’t know.
Who the Kings would bring in depends on whether they want to keep trying to build around Cousins or build up from nothing. With all the trades they’ve made in the past exhausting assets and youth, they’d be building from a Brooklyn Nets type situation. Maybe that’s an improvement, actually. Probably not.
There’s also the case that their talent evaluation could use some evaluation. The players they likely value highest (Cousins, Barnes, Afflalo, Collison, Gay) are players that would be worth substantially less elsewhere. That makes trying to decipher which players they might want to bring in much more difficult.
On the flip side, trading for flat assets isn’t much clearer. Their repeated drafting of big men to not play all that much is akin to the 76ers without the goodwill of obsessives to frame it as genius. That was a mean thing to say, and I’m sorry. I do trust the process. It’s just that thinking about the Kings puts me in this kind of mood.
The players that they seem to forget about (Cauley-Stein, Casspi, McLemore, Temple, Koufos) are players that would have the highest value elsewhere. From the outside, it’s hard to see how many circles in they’ve fallen, and if it’s just the first couple then maybe they can be redeemed.
Next: The 20 best NBA players who could be available at the trade deadline
Somehow, this is the fun part, and that’s sad. The most exciting aspect of the Sacramento Kings’ trade potential is their collection of underutilized players that could flourish elsewhere. Teams are always looking to find value in players that other front offices have overlooked. That could well be half the Kings’ roster. Unfortunately, we’ll never know as long as they’re on the Kings.
I’m kind of depressed now. When you think about the Kings, this is what’ll happen to you.